Why Boston rents are so high.

odurandina said:
housing-market-starts-like-ended-last-year-with-higher-prices-fewer-homes-for-sale/

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...le/MXgrxk9OYswTJ9pu4wHoOK/story.html#comments
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We are losing the Bostonian community around the surroundings of Boston--- all multi units are being converted into Condos or the landlords just rent them out for very high rents.

The class of people in the SEAPORT IS your either rich or you decent paying job paying 150K+ A year. NO FAMILIES ARE LOCATED IN THIS AREA.

Gotta love the LIBERALS that run our state.
Give GE unlimited tax breaks
SEAPORT BILLIONS in tax breaks
All our taxmoney only enriched the corporations, developers, politicans, Unions
Which ONLY INCREASED TRAFFIC and made BOSTON unaffordable for the average family.

Democrats really work for the overall best interest of the American people/
 
Are we at the point where I can suggest that rifle just might be a Russian troll?
 
Rifle's been posting like this since before Russian trolls could type.
 
City Kounselor Dennis Karlone of Kambridge has proposed that a mandatory right of first refusal must be offered by landlords selling housing to existing tenants (including also former tenants who had lived there in the previous 12 months!) The proposal has stalled but oh what a glorious attempt at dismantling some of the kapitalist horror of private property. Well done kollectivist komrade and do try again. http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/ne...home-rule-petition-for-right-of-first-refusal
 
Airbnb and the Unintended Consequences of 'Disruption'
Airbnb was supposed to challenge hotels by letting tourists pay renters. But its platform is unwittingly producing a subsidy of tourists, paid for by nonparticipating urban dwellers, who bear the cost of higher rental prices.
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In other words, by allowing capital-holders to re-bid their real estate to tourists, we allowed tourists to outbid the people who'd live here full time, and to bid up the prices for those who choose to rent full time.

You can think of that as a demand problem (we allowed freespending business and leisure visitors to direct their demand into the local market that hotel licensing was supposed to have fenced off)

But it is also a supply problem:
- not enough hotels (to supply leisure travel)
- not enough housing units, generally.

The subsidy that *I'd* propose for building housing would be a state law overruling local rules that limit height by transit (eg. allow a housing builder to build very tall at Central Sq)
 
Brad Plaid said:
City Kounselor Dennis Karlone of Kambridge has proposed that a mandatory right of first refusal must be offered by landlords selling housing to existing tenants (including also former tenants who had lived there in the previous 12 months!) The proposal has stalled but oh what a glorious attempt at dismantling some of the kapitalist horror of private property. Well done kollectivist komrade and do try again. http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/ne...home-rule-petition-for-right-of-first-refusal
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What happens if you sell it for a $1.00 to a family member? Does the Seller have a right to sell it to the buyer they choose?

So would the universities be entitled to buy the properties if their students were housed on that location for over a year?

Its your Property. This is nuts.
 
Arlington said:
The subsidy that *I'd* propose for building housing would be a state law overruling local rules that limit height by transit (eg. allow a housing builder to build very tall at Central Sq)
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Ah yes, the California SB 827 solution:

(b) An eligible applicant shall be exempt from local maximum height limits as follows:
(1) If the transit-rich housing project is within a one-quarter mile radius of either a major transit stop or a stop on a high-quality transit corridor, the maximum height limitation shall not be less than 85 feet, except in cases where a parcel facing a street that is less than 70 feet wide from property line to property line, in which case the maximum height shall not be less than 55 feet. If the project is exempted from the local maximum height limitation, the maximum height limitation for a transit-rich housing project shall be 85 feet or 55 feet, as provided in this paragraph.
(2) If the transit-rich housing project is within one-half mile of a major transit stop, but does not meet the criteria specified in paragraph (1), any maximum height limitation shall not be less than 55 feet, except in cases where a parcel facing a street that is less than 70 feet wide from property line to property line, in which case the maximum height shall not be less than 45 feet. If the project is exempted from the local maximum height limitation, the maximum height limitation for a transit-rich housing project shall be 55 feet or 45 feet, as provided in this paragraph.
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Let's do it.
 
Brad Plaid said:
City Kounselor Dennis Karlone of Kambridge has proposed that a mandatory right of first refusal must be offered by landlords selling housing to existing tenants (including also former tenants who had lived there in the previous 12 months!) The proposal has stalled but oh what a glorious attempt at dismantling some of the kapitalist horror of private property. Well done kollectivist komrade and do try again. http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/ne...home-rule-petition-for-right-of-first-refusal
Click to expand...

I don't see what problem that would solve?

Currently the tax code makes it more advantageous to own then to rent (due to interest deductions and the deduction that Boston allows primary homeowners to take). If you want to give the landlords more power, change those elements of the tax code.
 
TheRifleman said:
What happens if you sell it for a $1.00 to a family member? Does the Seller have a right to sell it to the buyer they choose
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Already you are not free to, for example, only sell to white people

A law like this functions pretty well in Washington DC. I worked for a nonprofit (for a summer) that helped tenants form a co-op (or conclude they couldn't) The banks and builders got very adept at quickly determining which coops were feasible and which were not: if no coop could be formed, everyone knew pretty quickly and there was little drag/friction in selling. If a coop could be formed, the other market actors (banks, GCs, and my non-profit) put together a tenants' matching offer reasonably quickly (they were fairly cookie cutter).

If you're selling and the tenants can match the best offer you had, what do you care who buys?
 
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This new ball and chain, like so much that is supposedly well-intentioned, could easliy turn into a bureaucratic mess of unintended consequences. Government fiat is a poor substitute for an organic free market.

Rep. Denise Provost first proposed this as a state-wide mandate last fall (link to a WBUR article that references the DC law mentioned above http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/10/17/first-refusal-bill-to-empower-tenants).
She looks like just the type who would love to dictate what you can and cannot do with your property! Build more! Why is that such a difficult thing for our "brave leaders", like Provost, to push for instead of these kinds of Kremlin measures?
 
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