Why Boston rents are so high.

TheRifleman said:
Boston and the surrounding areas are GONE.
You need to rich to move into the area.
Medford, Somerville, Charlestown, Cambridge a starter a house with a couple of kids would probably run you 850-1,000,000

My question is you see the high cost of living along with the major traffic problem.
Then why would this Liberal state give such generous tax breaks and incentives to the corporations to claim we need job creation?
Liberty Mutual
Fan Pier
GE

But then they give a private developer a problem knocking a garage down to add more housing supply on a rapid transit line.
The logic in this state does not make sense.

The city of Boston needs add supply in housing very desperately to bring the costs down.
The way I see it is Massachusetts there will be very Rich people living in the inner city of Boston and very upper class of society. There will be no more balance anymore.
All the poor people will get pushed out to Worcester or New Bedford areas.

Boston is a very Liberal city but the only people that can afford it millionaires. I thought liberals were about a society of balance.

I did say Trump was a better candidate than Hilary: He might be draining the swamp in Washington only to put his own swamp in place.

How hypocritical was the democratic party for the voting fraud that took place for Hilary Clinton elected over Bernie Sanders in the primaries only to lose to Trump. I saw that coming a mile away.

If I was a Democrat I would have requested an Investigation on the relationship of debbie wasserman Schultz who was the DNC Chairman and Donna Brazile who pretty much fixed the race again Bernie Sanders.
There should be people arrested on this.

No justice and this why Liberals suck. Oh sorry
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Stop blaming the rich you f*cking liberal.
 
So according to Rifle tax breaks to retain jobs are bad. So what does he think about the huge tax breaks that Mike Pence gave to Carrier Corporation in order to keep jobs in Indiana. Sounds like Crony Capitalism to me and sets a bad president.
 
Affordable housing is an important enough topic that we should be able to have a serious discussion of it here.

I don't find the ideological labels valuable, partly because they result in too many ad hominems and partly because ironies and strange bedfellows are so myriad in housing that trying to call people out on ideological consistency is pointless.

Can we start by admiting hat restictive zoning and a hostility to adding density hurts?
 
This is what I'm saying:
#1 Setup up a new tax system:
#2 A currency backed by Gold/Silver
#3 Set interest rates in a more balanced way fair to the working class buying power/Savers

Housing Costs/Prices
#1 Build Smart---Height in the core of the city and on along transit lines
#2 Invest the taxpayers money in infrastructure
#3 The city of Boston will have to get creative on some-type of Transit line that can shuttle groups of people efficiently. This should be MIT goal for the city of Boston and the surrounding areas.


I actually have a friend in Winchester who was very concerned with the zoning process in Winchester which is completely favoring the builders over 1st time home buyers to buy old structures completely knock them down and build a new construction homes which loses character and charm for Winchester.

I would favor more 1st time buyers buying old structured homes over builders knocking old structures down to build new construction homes. It completely destroys the unique town of Winchester character.
 
TheRifleman said:
#2 A currency backed by Gold/Silver
#3 Set interest rates in a more balanced way fair to the working class buying power/Savers
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Agree with everything else you said except for these two points.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...orlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timwors...really-isnt-a-good-idea-just-no/#f52b3dba812d

And you mention raising interest rates. All that will do is make it harder for middle class households to obtain mortgages.
 




Build baby build.......

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...FiICHSGtPkfa5fZdpBgL/story.html?event=event12







Condo sales hit lofty heights last year in Boston

By Tim Logan Globe Staff February 21, 2017

Condo prices in Boston hit fresh highs last year, thanks to sales at several new high-end buildings and the continuing demand for living in the core of the city.

The median price of a condo in central Boston — neighborhoods from the Fenway to downtown to South Boston — jumped 16.2 percent last year, to $790,000, according to the real estate data firm LINK. The median price for a unit in a high-end, full-service building climbed almost twice that fast, to more than $2 million.

The luxury market was driven, in part, by a few big new buildings, such as Millennium Tower, which opened last year downtown. Millennium’s Grand Penthouse is now home to the globe-hopping private equity billionaire Jonathan Grayken, who spent $35 million on the place in August.

The broader market is being powered by a combination of young professionals, suburban empty-nesters, and some international buyers, all of whom are drawn to Boston’s growing job base and urban life, said LINK’s president, Debra Taylor Blair.

She noted that prices on very small units — 450 square feet or less — are climbing especially fast, because younger and first-time buyers want to live close to their jobs. Sales were also strong in many older luxury buildings. Both, she said, are signs of solid demand across the whole market.

“It’s not just the rich getting richer,” Taylor Blair said. “This is a tide that’s rising across the board.”






But a wave of new units could test the strength of the city’s condo market in the next few years. To date, much of the housing built in the city during the current boom has been apartments, enough to cause rents at the high end of the market to plateau.

Data released in early January showed that apartment rental prices fell slightly at the end of 2016 — the first drop since 2010 — amid a surge of new buildings that have opened in Boston and neighboring cities such as Cambridge, Chelsea, and Somerville.

The decline was modest, just 1.7 percent — or $36 a month on the average lease of $2,038, according to the rental-tracking firm Reis Inc. But it was the latest and clearest sign that the flood of construction in Boston is putting a lid on rents, at least at the upper end of the market.

Yet in central Boston, buyers are finding that condo prices are climbing much faster than prices for single-family homes, or the market generally.

And now the apartment-condo mix is changing.

Thousands of new condominium units are set to open this year and next, from stand-out towers such as One Dalton in the Back Bay and the Pierce in the Fenway, to more modest buildings in South Boston and the South End.

Thousands more are planned or already being built, including Cottonwood Management Group’s so-called M Block project in the Seaport, where more than half of the 733 units will be condos.

Taylor Blair has heard some fears that there could soon be a glut. But, she said, the steady price growth, along with a historically fast pace of sales, suggest a lot of customers are still looking to buy.

“Oversupply is the big fear,” she said. “But what these numbers say to us is that there’s a lot of pent-up demand out there to live in Boston.”

And Boston’s residential real estate market is often seen as one with little downside risk. Standard & Poors, for example, recently estimated that if another recession hits — even one of the magnitude of the economic downturn that began in 2007 — Boston-area home prices would dip less than 2 percent.

Even under the worst-case scenario envisioned by S&P, values in Greater Boston would slip 6 percent, compared to a 27 percent plunge nationally.

Tim Logan can be reached at tim.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bytimlogan.
 
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Suffolk 83 said:
I live there so I do understand.... there's no "transition zone" between the four seasons tower and the brownstones literally next door.

I personally like height and I personally like lower housing costs in the city. In my opinion the Mayor needs to come out and say whatever the zoning is anywhere in the city, go ahead and increase that number by 20%. I dont know how feasible that would be but we need the housing units to relieve the costs and maybe a blanket move like that would encounter arguments that are have less teeth if you dont restrict it to one site or one neighborhood
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Given that we really are in a crisis both with purchasing price as well as rents (globe article yesterday), before it's too late the city should consider calling it an emergency and using emergency powers to override opposition. This is an extreme proposal that sadly won't happen, but I really think it's the only way to prevent the whole city from being utterly hollowed out. We HAVE to build higher and we HAVE to make some painful sacrifices. Not all neighborhoods will get to stay the way they are. If they do, they'll wind up museums for rich people. And the only way to override public opposition is to use an emergency measure. Walsh is too brain dead to do this but perhaps in four years...
 
#1 The bailouts to the bankers/ which have kept asset prices high--
#2 Record low interest rates--Keep real estate values high
#3 Boston is a very desirable town: Colleges/biotechs have also been buying around the area which have limited the supply.
#4 Jobs boom in Biotech in and around Cambridge have also created demand for the area.
#5 The local & state govt regulations/policies which have depressed building in and around the state
 
Bailouts and low interest rates would effect everywhere equally. Boston is one of the most expensive in the country so neither of those are accurate reasons. I think it's probably a) economy and b) chronic limited supply.

I think it's beginning to be a real crisis, as others have noted. While anecdotal, I know a bunch of people who have left Boston/Massachusetts, even with jobs that put them in top 5-10% of income earners.
 
We also cannot ignore how unequal pay is across industries. At my company, we start undergrads at 120k and it goes up from there. In other industries, starting pay is in the 30s. Given how there is a large concentration of companies with inflated compensation packages compared to other cities, it makes sense that there is a market for these high priced condos.
 
Reznor said:
Bailouts and low interest rates would effect everywhere equally. Boston is one of the most expensive in the country so neither of those are accurate reasons. I think it's probably a) economy and b) chronic limited supply.

I think it's beginning to be a real crisis, as others have noted. While anecdotal, I know a bunch of people who have left Boston/Massachusetts, even with jobs that put them in top 5-10% of income earners.
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Ding! Ding! Ding!

This isn't overly complicated. Boston has a lot of high paying jobs. Even the people who don't make a lot of money but already own - those people aren't selling they are just watching their home value skyrocket. I know, I've been home shopping for months now. Nothing stays on the market for more than one weekend unless it is a total dump and absolutely everything in Camberville goes over asking.
 
It's because developers are focusing too much on high-end residential market or high profit niche residential market. The average family can't find affordable housing because developers are building micro-units that doesn't have room to support a family of four or are building luxury condos that a family of four can't afford. An average family of four aren't looking for a condo in a tower that has a gym, a swimming pool, and a lounge which ups the cost per unit. They are just looking for a regular apartment.
 
KentXie said:
It's because developers are focusing too much on high-end residential market or high profit niche residential market. The average family can't find affordable housing because developers are building micro-units that doesn't have room to support a family of four or are building luxury condos that a family of four can't afford. An average family of four aren't looking for a condo in a tower that has a gym, a swimming pool, and a lounge which ups the cost per unit. They are just looking for a regular apartment.
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This statement is ludicrous. Its all supply & demand. High end, Middle end, low end. For Christ sake the section 8 people in East Boston have the best views in the city.
Pump in more supply to meet the demand and housing costs will start to level off. You need to give incentives for these developers to build.

It also doesn't help that the colleges continue to buy-up as much land as possible around their surroundings.
 
fattony said:
This isn't overly complicated. Boston has a lot of high paying jobs. Even the people who don't make a lot of money but already own - those people aren't selling they are just watching their home value skyrocket.
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Exactly - this is Economics 101.

Demand to live in Boston is high. It's an attractive city at the forefront of the knowledge economy with a whole lot of very high paying jobs. People are willing to pay a lot to live here.

Supply of housing in Boston is (relatively) low. Growth in our housing stock has not kept up with growth in our economy over the last (few) decade(s). Even as Boston and its abutting cities have added residential developments post-Recession, the suburbs (which make up the majority of total housing stock) are adding little-to-nothing.

When demand outstrips supply, prices rise. This is especially the case when a market has unconstrained demand but constrained supply (i.e., nobody needs to get regulatory approval to take a job in Boston or move here but everybody needs regulatory approval before building a housing unit). In any market economy, price is set by willingness to pay. When resources are scarce, those with the highest willingness to pay are the ones that get the resources; prices rise to reflect this.

Public opinion, in general, holds the following positions:
  1. job creation is a good thing
  2. high-paying jobs are a good thing
  3. increasing home values are a good thing
  4. real estate developers are untrustworthy and greedy
  5. our (suburban) towns (and schools) are good the way they are and shouldn't change
Unsurprisingly, when you put all of these positions together and institute public policy to further these interests, housing gets really freaking expensive. Entrenched land and property owners see their asset values rise and those on the outside of land ownership trying to get in are the ones that pay for it.
 
Old people who own homes are much more likely to vote. Therefore their voice is heard more than young people who vote in lower numbers. Young people want affordable housing, old people want to be able to cash out on their home that they bought for 1/20th of the price in the 80s. NIMBY's just vote in higher numbers so their voice is stronger.
 
tysmith95 said:
Old people who own homes are much more likely to vote. Therefore their voice is heard more than young people who vote in lower numbers. Young people want affordable housing, old people want to be able to cash out on their home that they bought for 1/20th of the price in the 80s. NIMBY's just vote in higher numbers so their voice is stronger.
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Right, and it's not just voting at the polls on election day. It's showing up to community meetings and writing letters during review periods and calling up the offices of city councilors / town selectmen and etc. It doesn't help that community meetings are frequently held at times and places that make it hard for people with "normal" work schedules to attend.

There is also a bias that put the interests of "longtime residents" ahead of "outsiders", the "longtime residents" being the ones who already own property.
 
You want to see Boston rents drop? Soften regulatory oversight!

Include provisions in 'Imagine Boston 2030' Master Plan that enable development height to increase our 20th-century-era 'triple decker' standard (40 feet) to a 75 feet allowance citywide. The Article 80 process defines large projects as greater than 50,000 square feet and small projects as greater than 20,000 square feet. Article 80 was adopted 21 years ago, and a lot of things have changed in the city since 1996 (see 'Internet').

I would propose rewriting the Article 80 guidelines for this review process to:
Small Projects = <40,000 sq. ft.
Medium Projects = 40,001 sq. ft. to 100,000 sq. ft., and 15-day maximum public comment period
Large Projects = 100,000+ sq. ft , 30-day maximum public comment period
Planned Development Area = sites larger than 2.5 acres (instead of 1 acre), and public comment period of 30-day maximum (instead of 45 days).
Institutional Master Plans = (after participating in a few of these, I don't actually think I would change anything about the IMP process)

I honestly believe that if these conditions change, we will be able to add supply fast enough to keep pace with demand.
 
TheRifleman said:
This statement is ludicrous. Its all supply & demand. High end, Middle end, low end. For Christ sake the section 8 people in East Boston have the best views in the city.
Pump in more supply to meet the demand and housing costs will start to level off. You need to give incentives for these developers to build.

It also doesn't help that the colleges continue to buy-up as much land as possible around their surroundings.
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Ok. When and if you ever have a family, good luck squeezing them into a micro-unit in the Seaport. I'll wait until developers build 1 million luxury condos so that even section 8 residents can live in one of them because all it matters is just simple supply and demand right?
 
KentXie said:
Ok. When and if you ever have a family, good luck squeezing them into a micro-unit in the Seaport. I'll wait until developers build 1 million luxury condos so that even section 8 residents can live in one of them because all it matters is just simple supply and demand right?
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Micro units in the Seaport are such a tiny fraction of overall supply. We're talking fractions of one percent. For every micro unit there are hundreds of family-sized apartments being taken up by unrelated roommates.

I agree that $2k micro-units are are silly gimmick. But I also agree with Rifleman (as much as it pains me to admit that) that supply is supply. Building "family-sized units" will give families a new place to live, but building studios will pull singles out of roommate situations, also giving families a new place to live.

The high willingness to pay for housing in Greater Boston is a product of our red hot economy, but it's also a product of demographics. Back in the day people married earlier, had more kids, and fewer women worked outside of the house. This meant that large families with a single source of income was the norm, and housing was built to accommodate that. Now, we have way more lucratively employed single people and way more families with double income and few (or zero) children. It is logical that the housing stock we are building today reflects this demographic change. It also means that in the past--when most of Greater Boston's housing stock was built--a family of four with two children looking for a three-bedroom apartment was largely competing with other families with children. Now, that same family is competing with more groups of twenty-something roommates, all of whom have their own incomes. Even if both parents have good paying jobs, the childless young people, pooling their incomes as a group, will typically be willing and able to outbid the family with kids. Building studios that divide those employed roommates into their own apartments helps the family afford their three-bedroom.
 
KentXie said:
It's because developers are focusing too much on making money
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I fixed that for you. Nobody is in business to do favors. They are making the decisions that are best for their business.

Now, if you want something that the private sector is unwilling to provide (because it isn't profitable) then you either need incentives or subsidies or direct public spending to make up the difference. I understand your complaint that the existing incentives are all wrong, but that isn't the developers' fault. They don't make the rules and they'll play by whatever rules there are. Obviously businesses influences the rules, but they don't directly make them. That is, allegedly, our job as voters.
 
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