MA Real Estate is CRAZY (Boston, Brookline: sales, renters, home sales)

[btownboss4]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

Yep. Splitting SFO and San Jose into two areas makes sense. At 2am, you can get from just about any Bay Area tech company to Menlo Park where the VCs live in 20 minutes. It's kind of like saying Nagog Park isn't Boston VC.



The way I always read it is that California 10x more VC than Boston or NYC which are #2a and #2b. The next tier like Seattle, Austin, and Raleigh/Durham is much smaller amounts of VC money.

Important to note since Boston has lots of BioTech tons of investment is NHS/NSF funding not private VC.

[MikePRU]

Originally Posted by semiurbanite

Do you really think a 5% increase in more than a year is a big jump? I have neighbors who sold for double in 5-6 years.

There's no arguing that the rise in values over the last 6 years or so has been historic (especially in Somerville). I'm very much in the middle of all of it being a real estate agent. So, I don't always get to stop and really take it all in every day. When you deal with it on a daily basis and you're living and breathing this stuff it doesn't always soak in. When you see a short term hold like this, it really makes it hit home what's happening. Most of the time, I'm working the current value of a house. What it was worth when the seller bought it is not relevant to my task. So, most of the time I'm looking at value at a finite point in time rather than over a longer period of time until I stop to look like this.

My own home in Needham hasn't doubled in value since I bought it about 6 years ago. However, it's increased in value at least 50%. That's crazy too when I think about it.

[Shrewsburried]

Originally Posted by semiurbanite

Do you really think a 5% increase in more than a year is a big jump? I have neighbors who sold for double in 5-6 years.

It is when employers are doling out 2-3% raises which don't even compensate for current inflation. The current market isn't just driving out the middle class and poor - it's also driving out highly qualified workers seeking greener (cheaper) pastures else where in the country.

[bjimmy24]

5% in a single year is huge. Totally sustainable!

[Vanderbiltgrad]

I do agree even thou I do not believe American K-12 schools are that great overall, in the case of MA their public schools are better than the vast majority of the US states and that is a key is driving up your home values especially in the wealthier towns like Wellesley, Dover, Weston and Newton.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by MikePRU

There's no arguing that the rise in values over the last 6 years or so has been historic (especially in Somerville). I'm very much in the middle of all of it being a real estate agent. So, I don't always get to stop and really take it all in every day. When you deal with it on a daily basis and you're living and breathing this stuff it doesn't always soak in. When you see a short term hold like this, it really makes it hit home what's happening. Most of the time, I'm working the current value of a house. What it was worth when the seller bought it is not relevant to my task. So, most of the time I'm looking at value at a finite point in time rather than over a longer period of time until I stop to look like this.

My own home in Needham hasn't doubled in value since I bought it about 6 years ago. However, it's increased in value at least 50%. That's crazy too when I think about it.

Down here in the economic wasteland of the SouthCoast/FarmCoast, the only people seeing Boston levels of appreciation have oceanfront or are behind gated summer communities that have oceanfront. The middle class housing stock is still being bought by the local middle class and there's enough land to build lots more single family home housing stock if the market warranted it. It might be 1.4x the bottom of the market.

[mdovell]

In all due respects treating the US educational system as one system is a joke at best.

States have their own standards for teachers so what might qualify one person in one state isn't in another. Moreover what is taught also varies. Standardized testing has existed for generations. Death of a Salesman mentioned the NY state regents and that was the 1920's!

Even within a large school districts there can be a huge range of the qualities of schools. Some act as if there's no choices if it is just pubic schools. That's not true as at least in Mass there can be school choice and programs like Metco. I've seen level 1,2,3 and 4 schools in the same district. Forget about buying in the right town or city, then you have to buy in the right part of that town. or city.

Furthermore the idea that education is only dependent on the school isn't that good either. You could have the best district on the planet but if there's a bad home life well that's it. Parents influence far more than teachers can.

Is it true that Mass doesn't mandate economics classes? Yes. But who says that it is limited to a classroom? Most education will go online because frankly much of it is online already. The only real exceptions would be special ed and vocational. No one at least on a higher school level manually hand writes papers. You type and submit online. Do you think people in higher ed still pour over microfilm ? Heck no. You just get the academic publication online and reference it with a citation generator. Tablets replaced books in many districts along with chromebooks.

Again like higher ed most content is standardized. There's no special editions of Shakespeare that are only in certain schools, there's no secret additional elements on the periodic table in some districts, there's no different forms of math, yes you can make the argument for languages but with software most major ones are covered (Rosetta Stone for starters). Standardized testing is the same per district because there's no "special" version of the MCAS (which is why wealthy districts hate it).

These days if by nature you want to learn there's nothing to stop you. That's not really up to the school district, that's up to the home life. How hard is it to give some form of a laptop/tablet/chromebook and wifi?

[sawyer2]

Another example of how nuts the market has gone

My wife bought a condo in Brookline soon after graduation in the late 90's and we keep it as a rental. Paid just under 180K for it (10% down) which represented about 3X her full comp. (salary + bonus) at the time. We had someone approach us recently with an all cash offer of $850K.....its not on the market but recent comps support it.

The same 3X comp. would need to be ~$280K today for comparison ..... but somebody in the same field with the same qualifications and experience today would have a comp. of around $100K.

I'm oversimplifying, but in this example your buying power is almost 3X less over that timeframe.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by mdovell

In all due respects treating the US educational system as one system is a joke at best.

There isn't one person in this thread claiming that. We're off-topic nit-picking exactly how disparate it is. Massachusetts does school systems by town. Towns use zoning to socioeconomically segregate themselves from the unwashed masses. In the south, school districts are often county-based so you don't have as much disparity. You can't have a Weston or a Lexington in the Atlanta 'burbs, for instance.


If you put 25 children with college educated professional parents in the same classroom, they're going to have a good outcome no matter where you locate the school, no matter how much you pay the teachers, and no matter what kind of training/skill the teachers have. If you put 25 housing project kids in a classroom who come from barely literate single parent households, it takes a massive amount of special needs assistance to end up with even an average outcome. That leafy affluent suburban classroom of 25 might have a few special needs children. The housing project classroom will have pretty much all 25 who need a ton of 1-on-1. Massachusetts does a better job of that than most places but it's still woefully inadequate. On a world-wide scale, the United States is very diverse compared to most countries. It's challenging politics to get people to spend their tax money on people who are not from their tribe.

[btownboss4]

Originally Posted by mdovell

In all due respects treating the US educational system as one system is a joke at best.

States have their own standards for teachers so what might qualify one person in one state isn't in another. Moreover what is taught also varies. Standardized testing has existed for generations. Death of a Salesman mentioned the NY state regents and that was the 1920's!

Even within a large school districts there can be a huge range of the qualities of schools. Some act as if there's no choices if it is just pubic schools. That's not true as at least in Mass there can be school choice and programs like Metco. I've seen level 1,2,3 and 4 schools in the same district. Forget about buying in the right town or city, then you have to buy in the right part of that town. or city.

Furthermore the idea that education is only dependent on the school isn't that good either. You could have the best district on the planet but if there's a bad home life well that's it. Parents influence far more than teachers can.

Is it true that Mass doesn't mandate economics classes? Yes. But who says that it is limited to a classroom? Most education will go online because frankly much of it is online already. The only real exceptions would be special ed and vocational. No one at least on a higher school level manually hand writes papers. You type and submit online. Do you think people in higher ed still pour over microfilm ? Heck no. You just get the academic publication online and reference it with a citation generator. Tablets replaced books in many districts along with chromebooks.

Again like higher ed most content is standardized. There's no special editions of Shakespeare that are only in certain schools, there's no secret additional elements on the periodic table in some districts, there's no different forms of math, yes you can make the argument for languages but with software most major ones are covered (Rosetta Stone for starters). Standardized testing is the same per district because there's no "special" version of the MCAS (which is why wealthy districts hate it).

These days if by nature you want to learn there's nothing to stop you. That's not really up to the school district, that's up to the home life. How hard is it to give some form of a laptop/tablet/chromebook and wifi?

The vast majority of education will not be online because at least half the point of school between k-8 is daycare and socialization. You lose one of the best aspects of public schooling if you put it all online.

and while an individual can stand out the quality of schools absolutely vary based off how much a state values education. For example I had a science teacher in high school that commuted from Maine because MA pays way better than Maine, and a bunch from NH, that's because MA provides teachers a competitive wage that attracts and retains talent, something many states don't do.