Boston Real Estate: Most In Jeopardy of Busting
Or so says this article. They give it a 52% chance of declining in the next two years...how much? the little Yahoo! article does not say. This quote shocked me:The city is at risk despite falling home prices between 1992 and 2001
Are you kidding? I've never seen that. Since the last housing bust in the late 80's, it's just been up, up, up. It's been crazy since about 1997-98 timeframe. I had also not known of this statistic which is causing another part of the problem:
The problem, says Lawrence Yun, regional economist for the National Association of Realtors (NAR), is that the Boston area has lost 200,000 jobs since 2000 and that housing prices remain high, with a median home selling for $398,000
This stat seems to jibe slightly with my impressions, at least recently - for example, biotech is primed for a boom in hiring with all the new infrastructure being built in the area. The other things, of course, are that wages are not keeping up with expenses and mortgage lenders are making ever riskier loans. Lastly, people are house poor here in the greaer Boston area; I cannot tell you how many people that I know that are about 50% invested, which is WAY above the historical 'rule of thumb' I learned that you want to be between 25-33% invested. If they lose their jobs, they lose their houses pretty quickly, I'd imagine.
posted by jimboses @ 12:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home