The Case-Shiller Report (CSR), which provides a glimpse into the housing market, is closely reported by all the major media outlets but there are some things about this report that aren’t revealed in a 45 second sound bite.

First off, their index for home sales in Boston is down 3.4% which in this market is great considering other area’s of the country are down double digits.

It’s hard for me to say this is an accurate forecast on the health of our Boston housing market. Here’s why:

1) Local Media Outlets lead people to believe that the report covers all of Massachusetts. It does not. The geographical region in which the data collected to compile the CSR for Boston is Boston-Cambridge-Quincy. So its not even an accurate report for the city of Boston’s health let alone the whole state

2) The CSR only takes into account single families. Even further it excludes New Construction Single Family homes. To qualify for the index the home must have two transactions on the title. In other words, the house must have turned over (sold) at least twice. This creates a huge whole in the report since Boston (as well as Cambridge and Quincy) has a very large supply of condos and even in this slow market new homes are being built.

If you want to try your luck at forecasting I would look no further than the Warren Group for local data. They take the concerns raised above into account in their reports.

That said both Professors Case and Shiller are very smart economists and are widely respected in their field - as they should be. I just wish they would fill in the gaps to provide a more accurate forecast of our Boston Market.

Filed under: Boston Real Estate Editorial | No Comments »

CNBC landed an exclusive interview with the worlds best golfer Tiger Woods. The beginning of this interview talks about his current investments which included a billion dollar real estate development in the Bahamas.

Check out it out for yourself.

Tiger Woods Interview

Filed under: Luxury apartments | No Comments »

We had a landlord call the office today asking why his apartments haven’t rented yet. That sparked me to look at the rental deals we had closed over the last 3 months to try and find any trends as to why some apartments rent and why some don’t.

I wanted to see if any of these deals had anything in common with each other. Going through the database I found a couple of trends that popped up. You might think that they had to do with certain areas of town and how much the rent was. You’d be mistaken.

Here are the 4 reasons why these units rented. (In order of importance)

1) The landlord gave us keys or put a lock box on the property.
2) The landlord gave us the current tenant’s phone numbers.
3) We had taken video of the unit
4) We had taken pictures of the unit.

After running all the closed deals through our database to check these points I found that 84% of these deals had met all 4 of the points above and that 95% of these deals had met points 1 and 2.

The moral of the story, make your unit easy to show and it will rent! It seems like every two months we are adding another shelf to the key closet. Currently we have over 1300 keys (not including master keys and luxury buildings), these landlords get it.

They make it easy for us to show or collect video/pictures which, in return, gets the unit rented a lot faster than trying to setup a time with the landlord.

Lesson: When you call to yell at us that your unit hasn’t rented – give us a set of keys and a week!

Filed under: Boston Home Buying Tips | No Comments »

Great article today on MSN Real Estate about the limits we as Realtors can go to when discussing the safety of a Neighborhood.

In Massachusetts the standard response of most Sale Agents will be “Under MA law we are not allowed to discuss the safety of a neighborhood. If you’d like, you can research crime statistics by contacting the local police department.” I know. I hate saying it as much as you do listening to it. Unfortunately under fair housing laws it can be seen as steering which is illegal if we promote certain neighborhoods over others.

Check out the link above to learn how to research neighborhoods. I will be adding the websites mentioned in the article to this blog so that you will have a quick reference point when it comes to Crime Statistics, School Systems, and Sex Offenders.

Filed under: Boston Home Buying Tips | No Comments »

I don’t normally ready the Auto section of the Globe but the headline TomTom appears to have met its match caught my eye.

I don’t want to rehash the article you can read it by clicking on the link above.

The only thing I would like to point out is that Google Maps has the same problem for inter-city locations as TomTom.

Example: 11 Knowlton Street, South Boston, MA will take you to South Street in the Ladder District of Boston instead of the actually address in Southie. You need to enter Boston, MA for everything and provide the accurate zip code. The globe staffer had the same problem with his TomTom.

Check it out. Of course a good broker doesn’t need either. We already know the streets!

Filed under: Boston Real Estate Blogging | No Comments »