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Boston Globe - July 21, 2008
Bloom's off the brick row house
Buyers picking modern high-rise over classic style
By Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff | July 21, 2008
Jonny Moore's fantasy about living in Boston involved stepping out the wide door of an elegant brownstone and on to a picturesque, tree-lined street.
When his employer transferred him here from Dallas, Moore followed his real estate agent up the tilting stairways and down into the musty basements of brownstones and row houses for sale in the South End. He began to wonder what unseen repairs lurked behind the walls of buildings constructed in the late 1800s.
"But the thing I could not handle," said Moore, were the ugly air conditioning units spoiling beautiful bay windows. In June, Moore, a computer programmer, and his partner, Michael Olinger, a flight attendant, purchased a one-bedroom in a new midrise building on Shawmut Avenue in the South End with central air conditioning and a clean, dry basement.
Brownstones and brick row houses - Boston's signature architecture - are losing their cachet among the buyers driving the city's busy downtown real estate market. Despite their elegance and authenticity, these older buildings don't have the modern features and amenities of the fancy condominium buildings sprouting up all over downtown: elevators, covered parking, soundproof walls, and personalized services such as catering and concierge.
"We are sucking people out of those brownstones," said Diane Maloney, whose Boston firm is marketing 45 Province Boston both to baby boomers moving in from the suburbs and city dwellers trading in row houses for modern luxury. The building is selling at a respectable pace: 35 of the 138 units in the 32-story, ultraluxe condo tower under construction near Boston Common have sold for between $830,000 and $3.7 million. "Schlepping up the stairs and parking in the alley doesn't look so good" to buyers anymore, she said.
Sales of condos in Boston's traditional brick row houses and brownstones have dropped sharply, while sales of units in new buildings are on the rise, according to Listing Information Network Inc., which tracks Boston's market. So far this year, 525 condos in brownstones and row houses were sold in Boston, down from 2,442 during the same period last year. But sales in modern buildings, primarily those built since the mid-1990s, surged to 875, compared with 767 a year ago.
Condos in Boston's historic buildings are also sitting longer on the market: 114 days, compared with 75 days for units in new buildings.
South End agent Dan LaBarre said the popularity of brownstone living peaked about five years ago, when a building boom in condo towers took off, offering wealthy homebuyers a new wave of luxury living. These new condos particularly appeal to empty-nesters who wanted to simplify their lives in retirement and view brownstones as "a lot of work," he said.
High-income professionals with demanding jobs also found the older buildings were too much work. John McManus, 38has a litany of complaints about the renovated brownstone he owned for three years in the South End: smelly trash in the alley, burglaries, and a neighbor's noisy dishwasher. An idle dishwasher did not offer a respite: He could hear mice scampering in his ceiling. His most unpleasant memory was having to pour so much time into maintenance.
"I've got enough stress with work and everything else in my life," said McManus, a money manager.
McManus moved to the Trinity Place Condominiums in 2001, where the taste of full-service life in a modern building converted him. He and his wife are now selling that residence to buy a 1,400-square-foot condo on the 20th floor of one of Boston's hot new addresses, the Clarendon in Back Bay. The condo listed at $2 million.
Designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern, the 33-story Clarendon has a 24-hour concierge, underground parking, catering services, and a private library. His condo fee there will be $1,200 a month, compared with the $250 he used to pay in the brownstone. The additional cost is worth it to McManus, because he will not have to worry about his wife's safety when she's home alone, about their two cars parked in the underground garage, or even about doing his laundry. "I give it to the concierge," he said. "No more brownstones."
Condo fees reflect the wide difference in amenities offered by new and old buildings. In brownstones, fees can average from as low as $150 to $450 a month; at the new buildings they run $600 to $1,200 and can get as high as $4,500 a month for a unit listed for sale at the exclusive Residences Mandarin Oriental Boston opening on Boylston Street.
Agents and developers said the current crop of wealthy buyers has more money than their predecessors a decade ago, and can afford more from their residences. Boston buyers "are spending an enormous amount of money, and they spend it differently" than they once did, said Beal Co. chairman Bruce Beal, codeveloper of the Clarendon.
But it's not as though Boston's brownstones and townhouses will go completely out of style or be so overlooked that some fall into disrepair. The buildings, after all, are integral to a city that takes pride in its history and in the preservation of the pieces from its past; indeed, to many visitors and residents alike, they are among the most memorable images of the city.
And, with downtown living remaining popular, brokers predict there will always be buyers who remain interested in these architectural icons, with their unique flourishes, such as wood-carved fireplace mantels and dentil molding.
These buildings also have an important determinant of property values: location. Situated largely in Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and the South End, they are surrounded by restaurants, stores, and nightlife. With prime downtown land growing more scare, developers of many of the newer buildings have had to settle for the odd lot or secondary locations, moving into areas such as Downtown Crossing or the farther reaches of the South End.
After living for seven years in a full-service condo building, Anthony Longo, chief executive of the buyer brokerage firm Condodomain.com, recently purchased a four-story townhouse in the South End and is renovating the building with his girlfriend.
"I'm taking all the great things I had in my new building and putting them into this charming building, but it's more expensive," said Longo. But he said most of his clients still prefer units in newer, easier to maintain buildings.
The privacy and anonymity that comes with living in a high-rise appeals to buyers such as Robert Tito, a real estate broker with NAI Hunneman Commercial. He is considering buying downtown, but the Westford resident said agents kept showing him row houses in the $700,000 range that either were ground-floor units with "subterranean" bedrooms or lacked elevators. Another downside of living in a small building, he said, is that only a handful of people own it, meaning privacy is more elusive.
Brownstone living "is more intimate," Tito said, "and that's not what I want to do."
Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.
