Housing (Supply Crisis & Public Policy)

Jouhou

Jouhou

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So hopefully there are developers, city officials etc who lurk on this board.

Boston really hasn't been doing a bad job pushing along more housing... it's the rest of the region that isn't pulling it's weight.

So to the developers and city officials out there PLEASE build more housing!

For the rest of us, is the cost of housing breaking you? Because it is for me. I live in Portsmouth NH which does have a ton of boston commuters and metro boston prices extend out this way. I find it disheartening to know ill never be able to afford even a 1 bedroom condo in town here. I'm stuck renting until the end of time.
 
Jouhou said:
So hopefully there are developers, city officials etc who lurk on this board.

Boston really hasn't been doing a bad job pushing along more housing... it's the rest of the region that isn't pulling it's weight.

So to the developers and city officials out there PLEASE build more housing!

For the rest of us, is the cost of housing breaking you? Because it is for me. I live in Portsmouth NH which does have a ton of boston commuters and metro boston prices extend out this way. I find it disheartening to know ill never be able to afford even a 1 bedroom condo in town here. I'm stuck renting until the end of time.
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What would you consider affordable for a 1 bedroom condo?
 
^ $300k is still doable in many parts of boston. Unrenovated places in Dot, Hyde Park, some parts of Brighton, some parts of Roxbury.

Say what you will about these condos not maybe being the nicest, nor being on the nicest street. But if you do renovation work yourself (which I actually enjoy doing), and find a place near a key bus route....then you have indeed got yourself a viable condo in the City of Boston.

I love Portsmouth. But lets face it, it is a "nice" city. Meaning, many of the condos will sell at a premium relative to the equivalent distance away from Boston because Portsmouth is on the nicer side of things. I am willing to bet that elsewhere at the same radius away from Boston as Portsmouth, there's probably no problem finding a sub $300k 1-bdrm place.

I'm not trying to be difficult; you do raise good points about rising cost of living relative to middle class wage...but lets stay grounded about the fact that "niceness" is still part of the equation.
 
bigpicture7 said:
^ $300k is still doable in many parts of boston. Unrenovated places in Dot, Hyde Park, some parts of Brighton, some parts of Roxbury.

Say what you will about these condos not maybe being the nicest, nor being on the nicest street. But if you do renovation work yourself (which I actually enjoy doing), and find a place near a key bus route....then you have indeed got yourself a viable condo in the City of Boston.

I love Portsmouth. But lets face it, it is a "nice" city. Meaning, many of the condos will sell at a premium relative to the equivalent distance away from Boston because Portsmouth is nice. I am willing to bet that elsewhere at the same radius away from Boston as Portsmouth, there's probably no problem finding a sub $300k place.

I'm not trying to be difficult...you do raise good points about rising cost of living relative to middle class jobs...but lets stay grounded about the fact that "niceness" is still part of the equation.
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It has a lot to do with NIMBYS and an imbalance between jobs and available housing too. When I was a kid this place was actually pretty run down. Now I can understand the 3 million dollar condos on the waterfront next to the park, but not the $900,000 non-new construction condos next door to me. I also wonder why developers aren't just mowing over the NIMBYS to redevelop parking lots at the prices they can get for these places. Across the water in kittery, things have gotten just as unaffordable. I'm willing to pay a premium to keep my time inside a car to a minimum, but this is ridiculous.

It sucks competing with lonza executives for limited housing in Portsmouth. This area seriously has too many jobs relocating here without enough housing, hence why the prospect of Amazon moving to the boston area horrifies me.
 
In Massachusetts, we are seeing small bits of progress with 40B. That said, places like Brookline have gotten some leniency from the state due to the rate of 40B projects being proposed, which is slowing down the development that we actually need.

I also wonder whether there continues to be a shortage of people in the trades. If so, projects in Boston may draw workers away from prospective projects in surrounding communities, even as far away as Portsmouth.
 
bigpicture7 said:
^ $300k is still doable in many parts of boston. Unrenovated places in Dot, Hyde Park, some parts of Brighton, some parts of Roxbury.

Say what you will about these condos not maybe being the nicest, nor being on the nicest street. But if you do renovation work yourself (which I actually enjoy doing), and find a place near a key bus route....then you have indeed got yourself a viable condo in the City of Boston.

I love Portsmouth. But lets face it, it is a "nice" city. Meaning, many of the condos will sell at a premium relative to the equivalent distance away from Boston because Portsmouth is on the nicer side of things. I am willing to bet that elsewhere at the same radius away from Boston as Portsmouth, there's probably no problem finding a sub $300k 1-bdrm place.

I'm not trying to be difficult; you do raise good points about rising cost of living relative to middle class wage...but lets stay grounded about the fact that "niceness" is still part of the equation.
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Yeah, I was looking around Zillow earlier and Dot/Hyde Park you can get places from sub-200k to 300k from condos to single families. I don't know much of the market in Portsmouth, NH though (although a friend of mine was looking at $1,200 a month studios in Salem, NH) which seemed kind of crazy.

I don't see why anyone would want to pay those prices for that commute to Boston when one can actually live in Boston for the same price or less with access to public transit (and parking), but, I guess that is just me and I hate rush hour traffic.
 
bakgwailo said:
I don't see why anyone would want to pay those prices for that commute to Boston when one can actually live in Boston for the same price or less with access to public transit (and parking), but, I guess that is just me and I hate rush hour traffic.
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investment income? as in, they still pay massachusetts taxes on their salary, but not on investment income.

that is at least one of the classic explanations.
 
bakgwailo said:
Yeah, I was looking around Zillow earlier and Dot/Hyde Park you can get places from sub-200k to 300k from condos to single families. I don't know much of the market in Portsmouth, NH though (although a friend of mine was looking at $1,200 a month studios in Salem, NH) which seemed kind of crazy.

I don't see why anyone would want to pay those prices for that commute to Boston when one can actually live in Boston for the same price or less with access to public transit (and parking), but, I guess that is just me and I hate rush hour traffic.
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I've personally wondered about the commuters myself. We have a thriving biotech industry so maybe they have a home here but got a better job in boston. Also airline employees. I see a lot of delta/jet blue employees on the bus down there and I guess it's convenient since the bus drops them off at their terminals.

As for myself, yeah I really wish I could work in boston and be able to live for slightly cheaper, but I have a highly specialized skill set that makes it difficult for me to be as valuable for a different employer.
 
Boston Globe headlines.

$8.5m loan fund to help nonprofit developers buy affordable-housing sites
Only in democratic states were we find non-profit developers who work for free right?
The demand in housing is red hot in the area but the city & state have to offer incentives.

Boston needs to build taller and smarter in centralized MBTA locations to help grow the city in a better way for the public.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...-developers/JF2GOYgWxMMi3G3BqFkeZP/story.html
 
TheRifleman said:
Only in democratic states were we find non-profit developers who work for free right?
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You failed to understand the simple straightforward article. Also, your partisan flame-bait sentence does not make sense. Please try harder.
 
Non-profit developers gain access to ---

"The Walsh administration has rolled out an $8.5 million program designed to help nonprofit housing developers acquire vacant and underused properties that could be used as sites for affordable housing. The city will kick in $2.5 million, along with $6 million from the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, to create a loan fund to help affordable-housing developers buy sites for projects."

The point I'm making is everything is supply vs demand. The city & state won't even support private developments to build higher in the city but they are going to rollout programs to help Non-profit developers build.

Get the F*ck out of here.
Boston realestate is priceless to the public and the previous & current city and state Politics have given the Seaport & other prime real estate away to corporations for pennies on the dollar.

Wake the fuck up. GE, Liberty Mutual, JPM, Fallon, Fan pier. ECT. That is why realestate is so expensive the taxpayers continue to subsidize their corporate deals. As Boston is becoming one of the Top most expensive cities in this country to live in.

Now the city & state are going to work with Non-profit developers.

No shit we need cheaper housing for the poor people you gave all the taxpayers money to the corporate billion dollar corporations.
 
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Seeing as those properties were all sold from private owner to private developers.... The state or city didn't give anything away.

As for tax breaks... It's been explained enough what they are and you don't comprehend them. Also, it's been pointed out many times that vertex didn't meet the requirements and much of the tax breaks were taken back, meaning they are paying their fair share. Which is equal to what hundreds or possibly thousands of homeowners pay in their real estate taxes.
 
SeamusMcFly said:
Seeing as those properties were all sold from private owner to private developers.... The state or city didn't give anything away.

As for tax breaks... It's been explained enough what they are and you don't comprehend them. Also, it's been pointed out many times that vertex didn't meet the requirements and much of the tax breaks were taken back, meaning they are paying their fair share. Which is equal to what hundreds or possibly thousands of homeowners pay in their real estate taxes.
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First off it wasn't Vertex who got the deal. It was Fallon the Developer who reaped 100's of millions in taxpayers infrastructure costs along with lowering his construction costs to give Vertex the so called tax deals.
Then the Politicians enacted BID and tried for the Greenway Tax on the existing successful downtown businesses to support such fraud. Take from the successful guys give to our friends who help us get elected.

How can you justify the Liberty Mutual Tax break to help build in the Backbay which was only 5% vacant at the time. (I do love the building they built) But they were able to swindle millions in tax dollars to continue to build on their corporate wealth. How is that good for the taxpayer or the community when real estate overall costs and taxes continues to rise through the moon only for the support of the wealthy? Its like the super wealthy corporations stealing from the overall population to become more wealthy and stifle anytype of competition from ever competing.

Bottom line: It costs at least a 500k to Million to buy a decent house anywhere close to Boston. And our politicians have given the Seaport away to a group of corporations for peanuts without even building a proper infrastructure for the area to be really successful. How can you justify this?

If the city just invested in infrastructure alone forget all the side deals to the developers or builders with the corporations then the area would have evolved naturally and very unique. It was all OPEN SPACE right on the water next to the city.

The cost of living in Boston is out of control---The average working class family cannot afford to live in Boston anymore. I love how Massachusetts and California. YOU ARE EITHER SUPER WEALTHY or You live off the system.
The middle class do not exist in certain areas of the states anymore.
 
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6000 Applicants for new subsidized apartments near North Station for 239 units.
That's insane-- Boston has become unaffordable for working and middleclass families starting out in society.

And if Amazon is heading to town another 50,000 high paying jobs. Real estate prices and rents will continue to rise in and around Boston and Cambridge areas.

Massachusetts needs a big infrastructure investment plan.
MBTA
Highway expansions
 
fattony said:
That's want got us into this mess in the first place.

There will be no highway expansions in Massachusetts in our lifetimes.
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If that is the case (Then a massive 100billion dollar investment in the MBTA)
Also monorails around the waterfront and the seaport and casino.

Traffic and housing affordability has become the major issues in Boston.

For developments in the core of the city
Taller Skyscrapers with Resdiential units on MBTA hardrail platforms routes could also help.
 
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