Entries Tagged 'Boston' ↓

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When the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston became embroiled in their clergy sex scandal, the restitution payments to their victims stressed the treasury of the church. Now as a way to raise money to pay the families of the victims the Diocese has sold off their former headquarters buildings and land for nearly 400 million dollars.

The sale of properties are occurring across the country by the Catholic Church as they make restitution to families who were devastated after clergy were caught molesting their children. The only good that will come of it is that Boston College will get a great property to help educate children in the future.

For nearly six years, Boston-area Catholics have asked what good, if any, could come of the devastating clergy sexual abuse crisis that began there. Today, Boston College announced its $400 million answer.
That’s how much the school intends to spend to develop 65 acres and 14 buildings acquired in deals with a cash-strapped and scandal-weary Archdiocese of Boston. The archdiocese got $172 million from the sale, more than enough cash to finance its $84 million settlement with abuse victims; the college got a key parcel for advancing a $1.6 billion, 10-year strategic plan to be announced Wednesday.  via  USATODAY.com.

With the Massachusetts Institute of Technology occupying prime real estate on the Charles River you would think that the housing department would have an easy time with on campus housing, but this article from The Tech shows that housing concerns plague all of us.

The increased utility and maintenance expenses are putting pressure on the housing costs for students at MIT. And one of the big concerns for the housing department is that students will live off campus and refuse to pay the housing fees for the university leaving on campus housing empty.

The problem is that all of the on campus housing I have seen tends to be so institutional and restrictive that when costs are out of line with the local market and students are allowed to make their own housing choices, the school’s housing is the least favorite alternative.

So Boston, which has a housing slowdown, now is putting pressure on housing inventory for the students. The nice thing is that competition will pressure the university to keep housing costs reasonable and force them to make the improvements needed to keep the students renting from them. And in this scenario students end up being the winners.

Deciding housing rates for graduate students is a bit more complicated. Cummings said that the graduate students’ stipends need to cover the rent increases. If the rent is increased, stipends must also increase. Housing also faces the external pressure of off-campus rates. If off-campus housing is cheaper than MIT housing, graduate students move off-campus, Housing receives less revenue, and the vacant rooms become rather costly. According to Cummings, Housing has initiated policies that make it easier for graduate students to live here and to choose their rooms. Cummings said, “Keeping rooms occupied is not a simple task.” via The Tech

If you have the cash, the Penthouse unit at Trinity Place overlooking Copley Square might be your new Boston crash pad. As real estate price for super deluxe properties soar, the timing of this 15 million dollar duplex offering a 360 degree view of Boston is perfect.

This 8 bedroom, 8 bath penthouse is the product of the original two units being combined to create the most expensive apartment in Boston. The elevator is privately keyed and you have a view of the whole city. One drawback, condo fees top 10 thousand dollars.

“If it sold at asking price, it would break a record,” Ford said. “It would raise the bar for Boston and really compete with Manhattan.”

Along with views, the condo offers the kind of sprawling space hard to find in Boston: 7,100 square feet of living space, including a 1,439-square-foot “gallery” connecting the two units. The gallery alone is as large as many single-family homes. via the BostonHerald.com.

It looks like the governor of Massachusetts is going to put a moratorium on the ability for banks and lending institutions to foreclose on homes in Massachusetts for at least 2 months. While I appreciate his populist notions in an abstract way, Deval Patrick and Massachusetts is going to suffer from the law of unitended consequences for his interference in the free market.

Lenders in the state are already looking at high priced homes that are not appreciating. Now they are looking at a hostile government that will be interfering with their ability to collect? To me that looks like a recipe for disaster as the better companies will determine that the enviroment of Massachusetts is not a place they will want to do business and pull out.

Like the insurance companies, mortgage companies are not forced to do business in a state. And if that state makes borrowing so onerous it does not make sense to do business there. You could see a liquidity crisis that would make the subprime meltdown seem like nothing if lenders determine that Massachusetts is a hostile enviroment and borrowers would see higher rates that the nation to subsidize the governments actions.

Patrick ordered state banking regulators to seek delays of up to two months in foreclosure proceedings against homeowners who have filed complaints with the Division of Banks.

The governor’s move should halt the foreclosure clock now ticking for thousands of Bay State homeowners, said national housing activist Bruce Marks, head of the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America.

Marks predicted that as many as 1,000 struggling homeowners working with his organization alone would soon be filing complaints with state regulators. There were roughly 20,000 foreclosure filings in the state last year amid an explosion in high-risk - and high interest rate - subprime mortgages.

“It is effectively a moratorium on foreclosures in Massachusetts,” said Marks, whose Jamaica Plain-based nonprofit has a nationwide network of offices. “It is a very big deal. We will bring the Massachusetts standard nationwide.”  via BostonHerald.com.

Click here to for a  Free Foreclosure search in your area..

Earlier this week we discussed that Thomas Flatley was thinking about selling his retail portfolio of 10 properties in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Not a man to take a long time to make a decision, word from the Boston Business Journal is that an agreement to sell has been reached with Wilder Cos. And O’Connor Capital Partners.

The portfolio of 10 properties will sell for about $500 million, Jeremiah W. O’Connor Jr., managing partner of O’Connor Capital Partners, confirmed.

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The high use of Adjustable Rate Loans and subprime borrowing in Massachusetts is leading to a very high default rate in the state, and with that record foreclosures. The high appreciation of homes in the past few years let people think of their properties as a bank to get money out of for living expenses and luxury items.

Now these transgressions are coming back to bite these borrowers hard. In 2004 cash out equity from Massachusetts homes was 14 percent of residents disposable income, now it is time to pay the piper.

Subprime mortgages were lauded for helping more Americans than ever buy homes during the housing boom earlier in the decade. But four years after their popularity took off, the loans are backfiring. More homeowners are no longer able to afford their payments, which typically rise sharply two years into the loan. In 2006, lenders filed 19,487 foreclosure notices against Massachusetts homeowners, surpassing the record high of 17,000 filings in 1991, during the state’s severe recession.
New research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on the rising tide of foreclosure filings in the state found that subprime loans are a major culprit. While subprime loans make up 12 percent of all mortgages in the state, they accounted for more than two-thirds of foreclosure filings in the third quarter of 2006, the most recent data available . Most delinquencies were high-interest subprime loans with adjustable rates, which increase payments as interest rates rise. Homeowners hit the hardest were in the working-class cities of Brockton, Springfield, Lawrence, Fitchburg, and Lowell, the Fed said. via The Boston Globe

Not completely, but Boston’s famous Hancock Tower was sold to a New York company, Broadway Real Estate Partners, as part of a 1.3 billion dollar deal. If I was a Boston native, and a Red Sox fan, I would be less than thrilled to have New Yorkers owning their landmark building.

Beacon Capital Partners selling to Broadway Real Estate Partners. What next, Stienbrenner buying the Red Sox? The Horror, The Horror…

Broadway Real Estate Partners has purchased the John Hancock Tower from Beacon Capital Partners.
The 790-foot-tall, 60-story glass tower in the Back Bay was designed by architect I.M. Pei and completed in 1976.
The reported one-point-three (b) billion dollar deal also included two smaller properties: The old Hancock tower at 200 Berkeley Street and a building a 197 Clarendon Street. Broadway Partners then re-sold those properties to Manulife Financial — the parent company of John Hancock Financial Services — for 454 (m) million dollars. via Eyewitness News

The housing market in Massachusetts  has been a little different than the rest of the country as the high cost of living and taxation has created the  environment where many people  were taking extraordinary amounts of cash out of their  homes. We wrote this last year on  the subject.

If this is the case, we are looking at a potential bloodbath in Massachusetts as there will be panic selling when the income is not there that had previously come from equity. I have downplayed many of the bubble bloggers who are looking for a bloodbath, but if there is panic selling due to income concerns, they may be correct.

Now a report from ForclosureMass.com shows that this analysis was fairly on target. Foreclosures have doubled, and the cycle is really just beginning. Add this to an environment that has many mortgage lenders doing everything not to foreclose on houses, the market may be much weaker than we have seen.

Highlights of the ForeclosuresMass.com August Market Analysis Report, which examines data through the month of July 2006, include:
1,348 foreclosures were started in July 2006. On average, nearly 70 foreclosures were filed every business day in July.
– July 2006 had 55.66% more foreclosures than July 2005 (866)
– July 2006 had 120.62% more foreclosures than July 2004 (611)
When comparing the 12-month period from August 1, 2004 to July 31, 2005 with August 1, 2005 to July 31, 2006:
– Foreclosures increased statewide 43.48% (14,552 v. 10,142)
– Counties with the largest increases were Barnstable with a 71.53% increase (693 v. 404), Bristol (64.33%, 1,382 v. 841) and Suffolk (57.82%, 1,534 v. 972)
via Foreclosure Mass

Face it, if you are reading this site you have a passion for real estate. Now, with the internet making so much information available, you can find out all of the information on what is happening in your neighborhood by doing a property search online. Many newspapers and real estate agents also put this information out there.

So when you are looking to see who bought the Jone’s house up the block, it is there on the internet. Check the local property tax web site. Check the towns newspapers site. Typically they will have all the information on the sale. Nancy Shohert West of the Boston Globe has an interesting article on her own voyeuristic habits online. Funny article as it is very true. I have been caught in this trap before.

‘So your next-door neighbors moved across town, and a couple from Westford bought their house!” I say to my friend Lisa, having not seen her for a few weeks. “How great for them that they received their asking price. Have you met the new people yet?”

Lisa looks understandably confused. “I didn’t know you knew my next-door neighbors.”Oops, busted again. Here’s my dirty little secret: I compulsively read real estate transfers.

When people catch me at this — any time I accidentally let comments like the one above slip out — they look appalled. The assumption is that I’m just a busybody who wants to know how much everyone has paid for their house. But it’s really not about the dollar amount. Reading the real estate transfers gives me all kinds of intriguing information about the people around me. I find out that a retired couple my parents used to play tennis with have bought a condo in Acton, and the brother of my best friend’s seventh-grade boyfriend just moved with his wife to Littleton. via The Boston Globe.

I found this article on a local Massachusetts newspaper, the South Shore Insider, that has an interesting take on the real estate market south of Boston. It captures the true essence by a broker that has served as the  president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

David Wluka has a brilliant line that is probably the most hones thing said in this whole process. And expectations are different too. People up until 2000 were looking at houses as an investment (where they would) retire and pay off the mortgage. The cycle of appreciation started and they started looking at it as a source of income.

Outstanding.

Why did the housing market cool down this year?

Well, you just can’t maintain an overheated market forever. There were three or four years of double-digit appreciation and it just couldn’t be maintained. It’s a natural thing, (housing) markets go up and they go down.

When you talk to people about their perception about the (housing) market, they have a short horizon. They look back three months, they look back six months. But you have to look back three to five years to understand what’s happening in the market.

And expectations are different too. People up until 2000 were looking at houses as an investment (where they would) retire and pay off the mortgage. The cycle of appreciation started and they started looking at it as a source of income.

For example, the cumulative appreciation from 1990 to 2000 was 6 percent in Massachusetts. From 2000 to 2005 it was 84 percent. The expectations of people are really up there. So (the housing market) is cooling down, but the plane is not crashing. It’s going to land. Maybe a bump or two on the way down, but the plane is going to land. via the SOUTH SHORE INSIDER