Budding Industry Faces Local Objections
Pot smokers and budding weed entrepreneurs are clearly still high as a kite over their big victory last November when voters passed a statewide referendum legalizing marijuana.
Financial Firms Receding From Downtown Office Market
Financial services giants like State Street, Fidelity and Putnam have been mainstays of the downtown office market for years now.
Suburbs Slack In Housing Starts
The blame for Greater Boston’s never-ending housing crisis, which has jacked up sale prices and rents to obscene levels, can’t be blamed on any one city or town. Decades of onerous zoning policies and NIMBY attitudes have left buyers tearing out their hair a market starved for new homes and new listings.
New Luxury Units Contribute To Rent Drops
Boston still has some of the highest, most crushing apartment rents in the nation. But there are signs that years of efforts by City Hall to boost construction of new housing may finally be paying off. While the cost of living in one of the city’s newest towers continues to soar, rents in older buildings across Boston fell 4 percent in 2016, according to a new report due out soon from the Department of Neighborhood Development.
Can The Financial District Be Saved?
All the hand-wringing over whether Millennium Partners proposed $1 billion tower will cast a few shadows over Boston Common from its Financial District perch a quarter mile away is just a classic NIMBY tempest in a teapot.
Mohegan’s Long Shot Lawsuit Pays Off
Las Vegas casino tycoon Steve Wynn is certainly learning the hard way about the perils of developing a mega project in Massachusetts. The latest lesson? Old lawsuits are like zombies
Eyeing The RE Market Boom’s Expiration Date
As we head into the spring market, all signs would appear to be point up, up and away, with home sales hitting new records and Wall Street turbo-charged by fanciful visions of massive Trumpian tax cuts, a military spending spree and a trillion dollars pumped into roads, bridges and airports.
We’re Number One! We’re Number One!
Massachusetts is the best state in the country? You’ve got to be kidding me. In a prime example of some first-class hogwash, good old U.S. News & World Report – or as the wags have long called it, U.S. News & World Distort – is promoting yet another ridiculous list, this one of the nation’s best states, if such a thing can really be ranked.
Chasm Grows Between Tower Purchase Prices And Rents
Boston’s skyline is attracting record sums as real estate investors from around the world throw around massive amounts of money to snap up the city’s top office towers.
Speculation Abounds On Suffolk Downs
After years of barely hanging on, some of New England’s oldest and largest racetracks are hurtling towards a date with development destiny.
A World Without OSHA
Workplace safety watchdog OSHA has long been the federal agency that businesspeople have loved to gripe about, especially in the construction business.
Housing Not A Priority, According To Pols – But Polls Find Otherwise
There only thing that Massachusetts voters are more fed up about than soaring home prices and rents is the rising cost of health care – and not by much.
Millennium’s Shadow Problem
It’s time to say good riddance to the state’s silly shadow law.
The aim of a pair of arcane and quixotic 1990 statutes – technically two separate laws, one for Boston Common, the other for the Public Garden – are to protect the crown jewels of the city’s park system from the shadows that would be cast by new towers.
Area Colleges’ Credit Ratings Downgraded
What with all the opulent new dorms and hefty presidential pay packages, the ivory towers of Massachusetts’ higher education world would seem to be doing just dandy. But in fact, while they are hardly in danger of going broke, these are actually challenging times for the area’s colleges and universities.
N2 District Raises Funds To Continue Development
With construction cranes lining the highway and office rents headed up, Route 128 is on the rise again as we head into 2017. But if it ever hopes to recapture its glory days as “America’s Technology Highway” and be mentioned as
Brookline Bucks Apartment Towers
You’d think Las Vegas billionaire Steve Wynn wanted to level Coolidge Corner and install a giant casino from the overwrought letters and comments that have lately poured into the local papers from some of Brookline’s leading citizens.
Boston’s Luxury Apartment Market Could Unravel In 2017
The real estate market in Greater Boston may be on a record roll when it comes to home and condominium prices, but there’s trouble brewing on the horizon.
Outer Suburbs Yet To Reach 2005 Peak Prices
If you bought a house in the outer suburbs along I-495 and beyond during the peak of the real estate bubble, you could very well still be underwater.
Lessons Learned From Foreclosure Crisis
Economic inequality is one of President Barack Obama’s favorite subjects to opine about. But the Obama Administration’s lame and limp-as-wilted-lettuce approach to righting the wrongs of a messed-up housing market
Too Many High-End Homes
Fresh off the presses, here’s more evidence of just how screwed up Greater Boston’s housing market has become.
While middle-class buyers battle it out over $400,000 “starter homes,” some of Boston’s area’s toniest suburbs are suddenly awash with a surfeit of $2 million-and-up listings.
