Municipalities Will Not Lead on Housing
As passions around the MBTA Communities law rise, it’s time to take a fact-based look at the law, put it in context with what other states are doing and plan accordingly.
As passions around the MBTA Communities law rise, it’s time to take a fact-based look at the law, put it in context with what other states are doing and plan accordingly.
Buyer’s agent compensation offers seem set to disappear from your local multiple listings service by this summer. And the effects will be wide-ranging.
Firms where employees battle against each other for rank, bonuses and promotions are common in law and finance. But while, on its face, they are gender-neutral, they actually worsen gender inequality.
Can downtown Boston escape the so-called urban doom loop? Probably. But it’s going to take a lot more than new “skyline” zoning for taller towers to bring it back.
High mortgage rates, soaring house prices and rising construction costs have driven many flippers out of the market. And with their exit comes a great opportunity for people eager to buy a fixer-upper of their own.
The city sought to remove barriers to affordable housing construction by cutting permitting times and costs. And while funding shortfalls will hurt its full potential, it already appears to be working.
Rather than viewing development as a zero-sum game, in which every win represents someone else’s loss, the conversation needs to shift to collaboration.
NIMBY local pols and naysayers wrecked the housing market in Massachusetts. Now, they’re threatening to do the same thing with the state’s new clean energy industry unless Beacon Hill can stop them.
If you have a fixed-rate mortgage, your payments will always stay the same, right? Wrong. Taxes and insurance premiums invariably rise – which means your house payment does, too.
The scale of Mayor Michelle Wu’s planned massive hike to tax rates on office, lab and retail buildings comes at a terrible time. And she seems to be ignoring an important alternative strategy.
The reporting on the recent $418 million settlement with the National Association of Realtors and several large national brokerage companies has been so atrocious that I must jump in.
Research shows when employees don’t have control over their work schedules, it’s not just morale that suffers – mental health takes a hit too.
The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority has a chance to make a dent in several problems problem by rethinking what it does with its 6.5 acres of empty D Street and E Street lots.
Money for a sewer and water connection isn’t headline news – unless it means unlocking 6,000 long-anticipated housing units near a commuter rail station.
The attorney general’s lawsuit suggests that she will not wait to find out whether the loss of access to specific state funding programs will eventually persuade Milton to adopt compliant zoning.
Massachusetts residents send billions of dollars every year using money transmission platforms like Venmo, PayPal and CashApp – but with zero state consumer protections.
Beneath a facade of inclusivity and progressivism lies an ugly truth: Cambridge is not open to everyone. But the City Council should not settle for a surface-level fix.
Recent hoopla about soft landings aside, the Federal Reserve’s drive to bring down prices has made immeasurably worse what was already the most expensive item in Americans’ budgets: the cost of housing.
Nothing turns up buyers’ noses faster than a smelly house. They walk in, stop, take a whiff and are ready to turn around and leave. Some won’t even go beyond the front door.
As banks experiment with new uses for AI, it’s showing up in some surprisingly old-fashioned ways in familiar places.