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The Beacon Hill unit in Downtown Crossing: Never search listings by neighborhood

Boston neighborhoods are subjective

Jack Gately discusses Boston real-estate listings by neighborhood.

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welp, had some thoughts. let me just jump into my car and mount a black and white camera on my rearview and get to vloggin'!

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is when broker's list a house as a single family, but it is actually a condo or "single family alternative".

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The OP video author is far too forgiving. He acts like its some sort of subjective judgement or mistake on the part of the realtors. There is a better word for what they are doing. Fraudulence. Realtors are scum. Just look at any map based real estate listing site and you will find in one block alone dozens of fraudulent addresses or listings that are blatantly obvious, but sadly only to someone intimately familiar with the block in question. Most of those sites have buttons you can use to report such listings, but the response is often delayed or non-existent. And the sheer number of such bad listings makes reporting them a futile effort. The only solution is to eliminate all realtors by sending them to camps in Montana or some American equivalent of Siberia.

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Check out what they now call Broadway Station in South Boston...........the Seaport District. That is about as far from the ocean as you can get in Southie. They should call it the Rail Yard District or the Methadone Clinic District.

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..is do a search query like "cambridge' in craigslist, where people generally look and you'll see key word manipulation that could be attempting to lipstick a bit of Cambridge Cachet on impossibly and improbably far away pigs.

To be fair, the property rental world has a fairly complex player mix from certified pros to Grandma So and So with a one bedroom in an attic.

The general rule seems to be All is fair in love and marketing.

It's dregslist, I know, but it is what people mainly use.

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You leave Montana alone! That is one of the most picturesque states in the country. An influx of realtors would certainly lead to Bozeman becoming Phoenix-North. Billings could use the help, I suppose.

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You know - the one with the official neighborhood maps and boundaries for Boston that one can refer to when deciding which neighborhood to claim???

Surely you must have it at your fingertips if you are claiming that there is fraud involved.

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Like this one?
http://www.cityofboston.gov/neighborhoods/default.asp

Neighborhood borders are for the most part pretty firmly entrenched.
Even looking at multiple sources for boundaries that example in the video of Winter Pl vs. Beacon Hill is fairly off. We know the exact boundaries of locations like Beacon Hill for example. Or what is Brighton vs. Allston.

It goes well beyond nebulous neighborhood borders. Realtors will list and deliberately use incorrect addresses just so a property will show in a specific location, for example in a more favorable looking building or complex, on the map. Or use pictures from one location on another location. Sometimes not even their own pictures.

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Neighborhood borders are for the most part pretty firmly entrenched.

This reminds me of the old statement about standards: Standards are great, that's why we have so many of them. People in the computer industry and those working with bicycles are well familiar with this (BB's for example).

I don't even live in Boston, but from what I've seen just here on UHub, there are a lot of opinions about where the neighborhood borders are - it's fuzzy. That website is just one interpretation, even if it is on a city website. There are voting precincts, zip codes, what is in people's minds, etc. And I'm sure as time goes on and places change, that neighborhoods change.

I agree with you on regarding RE agents. Ever since the first RE agent got their license, agents have been pushing the boundaries when it comes to listing their properties, even creating their own neighborhood names just to sound good - North Trendy Neighborhood to list a property in some wasteland that may border Trendy Neighborhood, but certainly isn't part of it.

Just 2 cents worth from an outsider.

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Vermont? It's really cold and full of old closeted communists.

We stayed in a hotel one night in Montpelier that reminded me of a gulag.

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Well, yeah, what'd you expect?

We stayed in a hotel on the same street as the State House. Most charming little place and a cute little state capitol district, all two blocks of it.

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Maybe 60 second drive to the State House. Just looked online and as best as I can tell the place may be gone. The room was more like a semi-attached cabin than a room. As I recall it was a franchise so trusted it would be OK - but VERY mistaken. Place was gross.

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If you look at housing in the W on Stuart St. (for example, to laugh at them) they are listed as being in the South End. Every indication says this is not correct.

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What's wrong with Downtown Crossing or even the Ladder Blocks (assuming the building is in that location)?

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Both worse than Hyde Park.

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Well, we can't all live in Hyde Park, can we?

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Note to self: move to Downtown Crossing to avoid MarKK.

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Never heard the name of Mid Dorchester. Savin Hill - Columbia, Ashmont, Fields Corner certainly. But I always thought they were simply parts of Dorchester.

The business of cardinal Ends with a couple of cardinal Bostons is strangely cute where place names are concerned. But then New England's propensity for recycling a given towns name by attaching North or South, Old or New is cute as well.

Another interesting identification with locale is the use of neighborhood names as the city name. I've noticed many companies use names such as Dorchester and Jamaica Plain in place of Boston.

I prefer the names of smaller areas though. In Baltimore neighborhoods generally encompass much smaller areas than the acreage identified with Boston neighborhood names. I prefer that style to one that uses only a few names to describe much larger areas.

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you mean Allston Village's nearest T stop isn't C-Coolidge Corner?

I once looked at an apartment in Brighton that was listed as "B-Washington Street" and the realtor's directions to us were " get off at Washington and walk to Euston because it's right there." So we get off the T at Washington and walk up Euston...and keep walking...and walking...and walking until we found the apartment, on the corner of Euston and Colborne, a half block up from the Sutherland Road T stop, a full quarter mile from the Washington Street T stop.

Unbeknownst to the idiot realtor, I'd actually lived a block west of that apartment a few years earlier and recognized the intersection the minute it came into view. Idiot.

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Real estate agents are like used car salesmen, but selling something more expensive.

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Not all Realtors need to be sent to Montana:

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Well, ok. I will try a more reasoned response instead of a blanket statement condemning an entire profession. Bear in mind hyperbole is an important aspect of internet communication.

Here is a listing by Proper Realty on an online RE database.

http://hotpads.com/building/1413-Commonwealth-Avenue-Brighton-MA-02135--...

I do not know if they posted it at hotpads.com directly, or it was mined from another site. But regardless there are some conflicts in the information displayed.

There is no such building as 1413 Commonwealth Ave. There is a 1411 and a 1415 adjacent to each other and both part of the Commonwealth Park complex of buildings. The listing is not related to any building in that complex, and the images shown seem to depict a building across the street instead. There is some differentiation, so someone did seem to take the effort to take pictures specific to each unit listed, but perhaps mixed them up as some same images appear on different units listed. And perhaps the address was a mistaken entry not deliberate. This is hardly the worst sort of example one sees - some people pirate other realtor's photos for example. But it does show a lack of attention to detail at least.

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Thank you Adam for posting the video, I never expected such distribution.

I'm sure Montana is lovely this time of year, but as a native Bostonian I'd prefer to stay right here.

I always believe that if you have an issue with a real estate agent or any business, the best first step is to attempt to resolve the issue in good faith directly. It works very well.

In this time we live in, unlike any before, if need be individual consumers have a voice via technology that can compete with the biggest brands and institutions of our time.

Sending just a few people to Siberia will send the message.

Jack

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The developers of 45 Province, the 145-unit luxury condo building, advertises that it "sits at the foot of Beacon Hill." That's a stretch - since it's across Tremont Street in Downtown Crossing. For marketing purposes, the developer likes a Beacon Hill address better than DX.

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The only thing they share is the same zip code.

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If you look at the topo bars, the hill extends towards Province Street more than in any other direction. That puts 45 Province at a slightly higher elevation than say, Frog Pond, which you could easily call "at the foot of Beacon Hill".

http://mapserver.mytopo.com/homepage/index.cfm?lat=42.35833&lon=-71.0602...

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