Hey, there! Log in / Register

Condos are back

The Boston Business Journal has a couple of reports on impending condomania, well, condominimania, at least. Ground gets broken today on a new phase of the Ink Block project in the South End, a building in which postage-stamp-sized studios will go for $500,000. And a Brookline developer has purchased a Suffolk University building at Derne and Hancock streets on Beacon Hill with plans to turn it into luxury condos.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

I'm curious to see how these sell. Sounds like it will be a great complex when completed, but it will still be wedged between a homeless shelter and an elevated highway. Not sure I'd be dropping half a million for a studio there.

up
Voting closed 0

But I thought all the trust-fund hipsters loved living in edgy neighborhoods rubbing elbows with street people?

up
Voting closed 1

Trust Fund kiddies would never consider Boston.

The REAL Yuppies buy places in LA, NYC, Hong Kong, Singapore, Zurich, London...etc.

Of course most townies around Boston think anyone with a college degree and uses an adult vocabulary is a Trust Fund Kid.

You people need to explore west of 128.

- The Original SoBo Yuppie

up
Voting closed 0

MANY 'townies' have both. MANY townies have traveled well beyond 128 or 495.

As an aside, I've met my share of ignorant, provincal 'college educated' people, mostly from small towns and suburbs across America, usually place people try to escape from when they 'grow up'. Boston is full of them. So isn't NYC for that matter.

up
Voting closed 0

You people need to explore west of 128

Heard of me?

up
Voting closed 0

A Yuppie to a Bostonian is anyone not originally from here. And yes most people who decide to move here are well educated, as a min-wage job would never cover the rent.

PS a lot of Bostonians are extremely well educated, its not just you outsiders who have a degree.

up
Voting closed 0

Perhaps transplants that move to the best educated part of the country and are simply embarrassed by wherever they came from, so they decide to ignorantly denigrate locals.

up
Voting closed 0

It's a given that you are posting to get a rise out of people, that is your thing. However, it should be said Massachusetts is the most well educated state in the country by a number of metrics. Our "townies" are doing quite fine compared to a lot of other places.

up
Voting closed 0


Wouldn't be caught up in stereotypical archetypes now, would we?

up
Voting closed 0

Have you seen all the high end condos along the "greenway" going fast, that is right near a highway with on and off ramps every couple hundred feet. Or Charlestown, right near 93 and 1. The wealthy drive everywhere so highways are a welcome site to the 1%.

up
Voting closed 0

Tell me, who are these billionaires (the actual "1%" boogiemen the "kill the rich" folk love to bring up) that are flocking to the city to live in $500,000 condos and not multimillion dollar real estate?

up
Voting closed 0

Is not the same as looking out your window and being eye to eye with a highway.

up
Voting closed 0

If you'd read the article, you'd see that they've already presold 60% of them.

up
Voting closed 0

Reports are they are at 60% sold. With everything going on in that area (development-wise), I think it's probably a wise investment in the long run.

Now, I'm sure they'll command close to $3,000 for a studio or "junior" 1-BD apartment when they open. I certainly wouldn't put down that kind of money for the area as it stands now.

up
Voting closed 0

We've had several pop up in the last couple years. Right now there are more being built on Somerville Ave, they bought out an active auto body shop to do it. A couple weeks ago the sign on the fence advertised them as starting at $460k, now it says $490k. They only have a foundation poured so far.

up
Voting closed 0

Is this next door to the Park Sales bicycle shop that just closed down? And across the street from a huge empty lot (formerly John Solomon Inc. textile factory) that has sat vacant for years because nobody considers it to be worth developing on?

up
Voting closed 0

Across from Woody's next to where Living the Team briefly was. Cattycorner to the ice rink.

up
Voting closed 0

The bike shop folks told me that someone had bought both their building and the now-vacant auto repair place next door, with the intent to tear both down and build more housing (probably condos).

up
Voting closed 0

It's a couple blocks away, across the street from Woody's Liqour and the Brazilian club.

up
Voting closed 0

Condomania / Condominimania. Made my morning.

up
Voting closed 0

Condomonium!

As for the prices, well, lets see what the market and the mortgage lenders have to say.

up
Voting closed 0

is an appropriate name for any "postage-stamp" sized unit.

up
Voting closed 0

Npr had a good piece on real estate a few weeks ago. Seems foreign born criminals are using expensive condo purchases to turn illegally obtained cash into legit dollars. I wonder how many buyers are purchasing using llc set ups?

up
Voting closed 0

In the blocks around me two-families are getting flipped and turned to condos pretty rapidly. And since we're zoned for two units all the single family buildings are getting torn down and replaced with townhouse style buildings.

up
Voting closed 0

Rezone a lot of dense single family to two family (parts of Allston/Brighton, Dot and more). City should charge a "conversion fee" to do this - city gets money for capital projects or to pay down debt or OPEB - owner can make a bundle tearing down old, single family stock and converting to two family if they want. Do this to about 10-15% of housing stock and you will see prices come down pretty quick. Can be rental or condo. If they want, family can live on one side, rent out the other. Might be a nice option for many on both landlord and tenant side.

up
Voting closed 0

The main problem in my part of Arlington is everything that isn't a two family is getting turned into these cookie-cutter townhouse things. They're tearing down cool farmhouses to make this pre-fab dreck that all look the same. And these new houses aren't more affordable - they're tearing down a $450k Cape and selling two $600k+ units. They're geared to the professional class while the old houses were affordable to the middle class. Same with the older two-family stock - they rip the kitchen out and add it back with granite, paint all the woodwork white, install forced air and sell it a premium over what was there. Perhaps it's just an inevitable side-effect of housing demand in this town.

up
Voting closed 0