Open Houses in Beverly, October 12

You’re looking at the best deals in Real Estate in this region in 20 years.  And this region, for its short summer and long traffic delays, is as stable as it gets in the US.

And my little corner of this region is way prettier than the others.  Come up and see.  Slumming it and renting your way to this point may have ultimately been a good idea — but now is the time. Sellers and sellers’ agents will never be this desperate again.  Make an insultingly lowball offer and see what happens.

Then hope the banks have money to lend….

100 Northridge Road #100
Beverly, MA 01915
Beds: 3/Baths: 1.5
SQ.FT.: 1300
$79,900
Open House: Sunday, October 12, 2008 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

423 Essex Street
Beverly, MA 01915
Beds: 4/Baths: 1.5
SQ.FT.:1872
$ 334,900
Open House: Sunday, October 12, 2008 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

9 Beach Street
Beverly, MA 01915
Beds: 3/Baths: 2.5
SQ.FT.: 2080
$ 650,000
Open House: Sunday, October 12, 2008 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Fall: Heater Filters, Wood Stoves, and Duct Cleaning

Boston Sweet Digs Home

Sarcastic Econ Cat Sez: Bailout Bill Working Purr-fectly

O noes! Seems like some CNN editors need to look up the definition of “hubris,” or perhaps “market volatility”. Because that is definitely what we have here: a market with no compass.

Irresponsibly low interest rates–which drove investment firms into the subprime markets in the first place–continue to force people to put their money somewhere other than bank accounts and Treasury bonds.

But scared people with money are almost as bad as scared people with guns; instead of stimulating the economy, panicked investors are tearing it apart. Today’s trade volume: 8,716,329,600, four times average.

Predictably, the response to this has been nationalization, worldwide, and on a broad scale. And highly regulated, nationalized economies are notoriously inefficient. Not the thing you want to see if you’re hoping to regain the 30-some-odd percent losses your portfolio incurred over the past few months. Looks like that bailout bill we “needed” might turn into the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act of our generation.

Anyway, if you traded you gold or oil for a house, like I suggested a few months back, you’d have cashed out at the best possible time, and you’d have an investment that paid you dividends every day in the form of shelter, not needing to drive, and potential income from renters or roommates.

I still think a property downtown is a good option. Brokers like to say “buy when there’s blood on the streets,” but you still want to make sure the blood isn’t yours.

295 Commonwealth Ave #6B
Back Bay, MA 02115
2 beds, 2 baths
860 sq. ft.
$659,000

280 Commonwealth Ave #206
Back bay, MA 02116
1 beds, 1 baths
612 sq. ft.
$480,000

76 Marlborough St #4
Back Bay, MA 02116
2 beds, 1.5 baths
1,312 sq. ft.
$829,000

Support Your Local Neighborhood Turkey

Boston Sweet Digs Home

Fall: Heater Filters, Wood Stoves, and Duct Cleaning

The days are getting shorter, but what really bums me out is that we’re closing windows and getting ready to run the heater. I hate dry, canned air, and no matter how much I run the humidifier, it still sucks.

Last spring we had a wood stove installed. Honestly, wood isn’t cheaper than gas heat right now ($350+ per cord) unless you truck it in from more rural areas.

And I got burned — 2 guys from the South Shore were supposed to bring me 2 cords for $440.  I’ll be lucky if I get one out of what they dumped in my driveway (a cord is 4′ high, 8′ long, and 4′ wide, stacked).  Worse, I paid cash, so good luck reporting them to the state.

But, once in a while, if you have a chainsaw and a truck, you can score a month’s worth of free heat.  I look for the big orange tree and brush trucks — the guys who run them are always glad to give you the wood they’re supposed to feed into the chipper (apparently it isn’t as fun as it looks), and sometimes you can get a tree removal service to drop a whole tree, in pieces, in your yard.  It doesn’t hurt me that my neighbor lets me use his log splitter (thanks, Mike!).

Remember you can’t burn green wood — it needs to dry out.  And — watch for termites and carpenter ants.  If you get them, you have to get rid of them ASAP.  That means poison, as much as I hate to say it.  You can’t be all vegan about termites unless you live in a yurt.

I think we’re going to get some Biobricks to supplement our cord wood — Biobricks are made from waste wood (sawdust) like pellets. We decided against a pellet stove because we wanted to be able to burn found wood (oak pallets, scrap lumber — anything that isn’t treated or varnished or painted), but they are very clean and very efficient, when the lumberyards don’t run out of the fuel.  Biobricks are the same stuff, but engineered for regular wood burners. And no bugs.

Why not run the gas heater instead?  Well…nobody’s dieing because of Biobrick, and I’d rather spend money burning a waste product than a fossil fuel.  Sawdust, in industrial quantities, can be a pollutant; in Biobrick, it’s a clean fuel.  That matters to me.  And we like sitting by the fire.  I’d have a wood stove if I lived in Georgia.

The chimney was brutal — $2,000 for a stove was okay, especially as the it was a housewarming gift from a very special person, but the chimney ran us almost that much. We had to run 6″ Metalbestos stainless stell chimney pipe up the back of our house, and that’s often cheaper than rehabbing an old masonry chimney.  Pellet stoves cost significantly less to install because they use a shorter, small pipe, and becuase the temperatures of the vented gas are lower than the temperatures inside a woodstove chimney.  Seriously consider going for a pellet stove if you have little space (they’re great for condos) or if you know you’re going to buy your fuel anyway.

One other big issue is air quality. Our VT Castings stove claims to be very environmentally sound, but I know I’m going to get particulate. So, I have a 4 part plan to burn wood and stay healthy.

First, I’m going to run a HEPA air filtration unit in the living room near the stove. I already use one in my bedroom at night when I sleep in a/c or enclosed rooms. This will grab particulate at the source.

Second, I’m going to have my ducts cleaned. Sounds dirty, I know, but they hook vacuums up to the ducts of your heating system and suck all of the nastiness out into a big truck.

Third, I’m putting a HEPA filter on the furnace. I’m thinking of getting them for the grills of the ducts, too, to keep dust out of the ducting from both ends. I will run the blower on the furnace all the time when the wood stove is heating, and hopefully the filter(s) and the furnace will catch most of the particulate in the house, keeping the general level down.

Fourth, I had them put one of those spinning chimney caps on top of the chimney — I’m wasn’t waiting to see if it needed one. I want it to draw perfectly all of the time, even on windy days on the North Shore.

New On The Market This Fall

Boston Sweet Digs Home

Support Your Local Neighborhood Turkey

So let’s pass on talking about another down day on Wall Street for some lighter news. It seems that Boston’s growing turkey population is really getting ahead in life.

After completing some undergrad work at MIT this spring, it seems the intelligent-yet-delicious birds have now begun pursuing their MBAs at nearby Harvard.

While most at HBS have greeted the new arrivals with open arms, there has been some resistance, including an anti-turkey Facebook group that must be invisible to non-HBS students because I can’t seem to find it.

It’s nothing, of course, compared to the uproar that struck when turkeys attempted to roost in nearby Brookline; the hate speech in that incident culminated in unfounded accusations of attempted murder.

So while Brookline may be Boston’s premier family-friendly neighborhood, do you really want your children growing up in an environment of anti-avian intolerance? Sure, the turkeys may not share your secular humanist views, but they bring much-needed diversity to the region in the forms of white meat, dark meat, and giblets.

So show your kids these birds aren’t just something that ends up on your kitchen table every November, and check out a home in Cambridge. And if you learn to grow to enjoy the presence of turkeys in your neighborhood, remember that there are far better business schools out there than Harvard.

998 Memorial Dr #998
Cambridge, MA 02138
4 beds, 4 baths
2,300 sq. ft.
$1,585,000

987 Memorial Dr #672
Cambridge, MA 02138
3 beds, 2 baths
2,106 sq. ft.
$1,350,000

11 Story St #28
Cambridge, MA 02138
Price:
2 beds, 1 bath
775 sq. ft.
$489,000

Apocalypse Watch: Day 2

Boston Sweet Digs Home

Image: Flickr user cmurtaugh under cc-by-nc-sa-2.0.

Can A Family Live in An Apartment?

The New York Times just published an article on “family friendly” housing. Thanks to a families with young children who are choosing to stay in the city, family-friendly housing has become a big issue in the Big Apple.

In most parts of the country, “family friendly” means a four-bedroom home with a yard and a family room, preferably on a cul-de-sac. In New York, however, “family-friendly” means a two bedroom, maybe three, and hopefully at least 1300 square feet. An in-unit washer and dryer officially seals an apartment’s “family-friendly” status.

What else makes an apartment attractive to those with kids? According to the New York Times:

• Other children in the building so that 3 a.m. wailing will be tolerated, if not necessarily appreciated.
• A friendly doorman who will give the kids a high-five.
• An elevator in the building, so kids don’t have to be carried and strollers don’t need to stay parked underneath the stairs.
• Shower curtains rather than a glass partition around the tub.
• A large second bedroom big enough to sleep two kids.
• A balcony or terrace with a high wall, or preferably, no balcony at all.
• A location within walking distance of parks, schools and play centers.
• An open kitchen so that the cook can watch the kids while cooking.
• A garage underneath the building.
• Oh, and did I already mention an in-unit washer and dryer?

While families have long accepted apartment life in New York, it’s a newer concept for many Bostonians more accustomed to a two-family, or even better, a single-family home in suburbia. And yet, Boston’s South End is in the middle of its own baby boom. And that’s despite the fact that families must struggle along without a yard and garage parking.

Meanwhile, Brookline, has long attracted families willing to live in smaller quarters in exchange for the opportunity to attend Brookline schools. In honor of all those families who opted for apartment life in New York, the South End, and Brookline, here are a few Brookline condos for less than $550K that could potentially satisfy the needs of people with kids… I can’t, however, promise an in-unit washer and dryer.

15 Park Vale, #2
Brookline
BEDS:3/BATHS:1
SQ.FT: 1290
$549K

50 Garrison Road, #1
Brookline
BEDS:3/BATHS:2
SQ.FT: 1492
$549K

17 Stearns Road, #3
Brookline
BEDS:2/BATHS:1
SQ.FT: 1250
$529K

Brookline, Brighton Archives
Sweet Digs Boston Home

Apocalypse Watch: Day 2

If there’s a positive spin to put on today’s 500-point Wall Street plummet, it’s that the market didn’t get much lower than the lowest point yesterday. The bad news is that everyone from Ben Bernanke to whoever it is than answers polls on the TheStreet.com think things are only getting worse.

The good news, Boston, is that you don’t live on foreclosure alley. You don’t need either candidate’s economic plan to prop up your home values and preserve your retirement. Yes, there have been a few price drops (a few from Back Bay are listed below), but across the board, homes prices aren’t falling anywhere near as fast as the economy as a whole.

306 Commonwealth Ave #4
Back Bay, MA 02115
2 beds, 1 bath
880 sq. ft.
Original Price: $719,000
Reduced Price: $679,000

280 Commonwealth Ave #206
Back Bay, MA 02116
1 beds, 1 bath
612 sq. f.t
Original Price: $580,000
Reduced Price: $480,000

286 Beacon St #5
Back Bay, MA 02116
Price:
1 bed, 1 bath
1,067 sq. ft.
Original Price: $729,000
Reduced Price: $679,000

Has the Crash Ended the Renter’s Dilemma?

Boston Sweet Digs Home

Image: Flicker user brentdanley, under cc-by-nc-sa-2.0

New On The Market This Fall

Surprise…it’s Fall in New England.  I’m seeing the odd red leaf and smelling wood stoves; it’s got to be autumn.

Sellers and their agents are wringing their hands and cursing the stock market crash.  The last time this happened, people pulled out of the market and inflated real estate prices, but I don’t see that happening again — although I do think we’re in the cellar as far as prices go.  I guess that will depend on what happens with this bailout, and whether or not the government steps in to stop foreclosures and renegotiate bad loans before they lead to more “illiquid assets.”

That’s something banks could have done on their own, BTW.

Normally, agents would be busy this time of year — now is when you buy if you want to spend the winter holidays in your new home.  It usually takes 60-90 days to close on a house.  So, for those of you giving a big Howard Dean “Whoooooooo!” over the possibility of further price drops, here are some of the newest properties to hit Redfin:

3 Greenwood
Beverly, MA 01915
Beds: 4/Baths: 3.5
SQ.FT.: 4800
$1,250,000

23 Ashton Street
Beverly, MA 01915
Beds: 3/Baths: 1
SQ.FT.:1112
$ 289,900

27 Railroad Street West, #14
Beverly, MA 01915
Beds: 2/Baths: 1.5
SQ.FT.: 1326
$ 335,000

Megalomaniacal  Financial Fantasies…and Open Houses In Salem

Boston Sweet Digs Home

Has the Market Crash Ended the Renter’s Dilemma?

So what does 700 billion dollars buy you these days? Certainly not a whole lot of confidence in the stock market. Fortunately, I’m sure The Decider and his cohort have a similarly foolproof Plan B to head off the continuing financial debacle.

Not that you need any more good news, but historically speaking, big recessions tend to start in autumn months…

But hey, the good news? Heating oil should be cheap this winter, and thanks to a few measures cleverly tacked onto the aforementioned bailout bill, winter ’round these parts should be getting significantly less chilly in the coming years. It’s also worth noting that from Great Depression to the recession of the late 80’s stock market crashes have been phenomenal killers of housing bubbles.

Probably not the news you want to hear if you own a home; definitely not the news you want to hear if you’re trying to sell a home; but potentially excellent news if you’ve been on the sidelines, attempting to rent your way past the bubble. For you, oh champion of risk aversion, it might just be time to cash out that long-moldering CD and crack open a bottle of Clicqout.

Some fresh meat that picked a bad day to go onto the market:

205 Richdale Ave #A21
Cambridge, MA 02140
2 beds, 2 baths
1,097 sq. ft.
$437,000

400 Broadway #2
Somerville, MA 02145
1 beds, 1 bath
640 sq. ft.
$265,000

3 W Cedar St #2
Beacon Hill, MA 02114
2 beds, 1 bath
740 sq. ft.
$539,900

“…at least I have my good appliances.”

Boston Sweet Digs Home

Hitting the Links

• Filene’s still plans to develop Downtown Crossing. [CondoDomain]
• $1.75 bought some lucky eBay winner a house in Michigan. [MSNBC]
• The City set aside plans for its 1000-foot tower. [Boston Reak Estate Blog]
• The T finally decides to enforce the no-cell-phone-at-work rule. [Boston Herald]
• Are the police really trying to make the streets unsafe by preventing flagmen from doing their jobs? It sound like it. [Universal Hub]
• A Pentecostal church hopes to turn Whitey Bulger’s old headquarters into its new home. [Boston Magazine]
• The Rose Kennedy Greenway officially opened. [Bostonist]
• Harvard University wants to install a wind turbine above Harvard Square. [MetaBoston]
• Lesley University doesn’t want to deal with the same community outrage Harvard is dealing with, so administrators want help from residents. [Allston Brighton Community Blog]
• National Grid is considering solar power. [Globe St]
• A sad video showing a “trashout,” the removal of an abandoned home’s contents. [Zillow Blog
• The Mandarin Oriental offers discount packages, but I still can't afford a night's stay. [The Beantown Bloggery]

Hitting the Links
Boston Sweet Digs Home

Goodbye Hamilton Elementary

Last week, we got the sad news: Brighton’s Alexander Hamilton Elementary School is going to close. The closing is part of a measure to save the Boston Public Schools $13.8 million over the next five years. As part of the changes, the school department also plans to dramatically reorganize several schools in Brighton. Garfield Elementary will close and the building will become a new pilot high school affiliated with the Mary Lyons K-8 school. Garfield and Hamilton students will attend a new K-8 at the Thomas Edison Middle School on Glenmont Road.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sad to see Hamilton go. I used to live on Strathmore Road, just a couple of blocks down the road. I didn’t have kids attending the school, but Hamilton is where I voted and attended community meetings. I don’t know the educational merits of closing the school, but from a resident’s perspective, the closing is nothing but bad news. In an urban neighborhood heavy on students and young professionals, it was always a pleasure to see little kids and real families on the street. The school gave the neighborhood a sense of history and continuity, helping Cleveland Circle feel like more than a temporary waystation for young career climbers on their way up and out.

Now the question is what will happen to the old Hamilton building. Will it be reclaimed for another public use? Will it be turned into luxury condos? There’s no word yet on what the future holds for the building itself, but since the building is located so close to Cleveland Circle, the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and public transportation, as well as another group of luxury condos recently built along Chestnut Hill Avenue, it’s highly unlikely that it will remain unused for long.

And for old time’s sake, here are a few properties adjacent to Hamilton elementary where at one point in the city’s history, a family might have lived, maybe sending their children to Hamilton:

163 Chestnut Hill Ave, #303
Brighton
BEDS:2/BATHS:2
SQ.FT: 1199
$489,000

141 Chiswick Road
Brighton
BEDS:4/BATHS:2
SQ.FT:1198
$438,500

129 Chiswick Road
Brighton
BEDS:4/BATHS:2
SQ.FT: 1409
$439,000

Brighton, Brookline Archives
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