Tue, July 08, 2008
It wasn't that long ago that mortgage lenders were eager to extend credit lines to anyone with a pulse and a property title. Alas, the industry's mood has turned with the swooning of housing prices: frugal caution has displaced wild abandon. Many homeowners, unaware that their lines of credit could be curtailed summarily, have been unpleasantly surprised. Read the full article
Thu, June 26, 2008
Over the last fifty years, suburban neighborhoods outside of cities grew for a variety of reasons: families wanted more space than city homes provided, urban crime rates were higher than now (peaking in the 1960's and 70's), and the idealized vision of suburban life grew in popular imagination to become a mark of prestige. Less consciously, perhaps, suburban living was enabled by cheap gas and good roads; the "driveable suburb" within striking distance of city jobs became the ideal place in which to build a home. In the 1948 film, "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," Cary Grant played an advertising executive whose family flees its cramped New York apartment for a country home in Connecticut. For Jim Blandings, trains enabled the commute; that wasn't the case for most workers who decamped from the cities. The ability to drive to and from work relatively cheaply made the suburban "dream house" possible. Read the full article
Mon, June 23, 2008
One of the consequences of the subprime debacle is a sharp rise in foreclosed properties. Some areas are especially bad off; in May, the majority of homes sold in the Sacramento area were foreclosures. Foreclosures nationwide were up 48% in May vs.the previous year (RealtyTrac.com), and in Massachusetts they were up 32% (ForeclosuresMass.com) over the same period. The rate in MA would have been higher but for a new law that went into effect May 1st, forcing lenders to delay foreclosure proceedings by an additional 60 days. There seem to be quite a few ads claiming that great deals are available through foreclosure sales. Is buying foreclosed property a "can't-fail" way to make money? Read the full article
Tue, June 10, 2008
In the Boston area – and probably elsewhere – residential contractors are looking for work. For most of the last 20 years, and especially in the last decade, it’s been hard to find contractors willing to do small renovation jobs, but with the slump in residential construction, there appears to be window of opportunity. Read the full article
Tue, May 27, 2008
Mark Twain is credited with saying a great many things that he may or may not have actually said. Among these is the observation that "People commonly use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support rather than illumination." If Twain did say it, he might have had housing statistics in mind. If you pay attention to news reports, you're likely to hear widely-varying assessments of the state of the housing market. Who's right? Read the full article
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