Prices Slashed at Meads of Commonwealth

October 13, 2007 By

All eight of the remaining units at the ultra luxury Meads of Commonwealth have undergone a price reduction over the past month, the most recent move saw 6 of the 8 units cut in price by as much as $200,000.

Remaining 2-bedroom 2.5-bathroom units are approximately 1,800 square feet, and range in price from $1,699,000 to $1,950,000. 3-bedroom 2.5-bathroom units are approximately 2,400 to 3,100 square feet, and are priced from $2,550,00 to $2,615,000. The 3,800 square foot 3-bedroom 3.5-bathroom grand penthouse with vast outdoor space is priced at $5,500,000.

For more information, or to setup a showing, feel free to contact us.

Meads of Commonwealth

Filed Under: Back Bay Condos Tagged With: ,

D4 Condos Receive Certificate of Occupancy

October 12, 2007 By

It was scheduled for June 2007, but the D4 Police Station Condo Development has recently received its Certificate of Occupancy. As of 4:30pm today, both Titan and Ryder moving vans were out front, the newly appointed concierge was standing at attention, and the furniture at the base of the Winter Garden was in place.

An open house will take place from 12-4pm on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Stop by the units, and if you need Buyer representation for a purchase, don’t hesitate to contact Boston Condo Guy.

8 units are still active, 2 units are under agreement, and 7 units show sold (all based on MLS data). Residents will begin moving in immediately. A good selection of units still remain, contact us for more details.

D4 Condos

Filed Under: South End Condos Tagged With: , , ,

Boston banQ Restaurant Seeks New Chef

October 12, 2007 By

As we reported back in July, the boutique luxury Penny Savings Bank condo development in the South End will house a new restaurant called banQ – what an appropriate play on words. The restaurant is moving towards a grand opening, and they are on the lookout for a new chef.

Boston Chefs recently reported the following:

banQ Restaurant is currently seeking a dynamic, creative and energetic sous chef for a start up restaurant team. The ideal candidate will be actively involved in menu development, training and staff education. The qualified applicant will have five years restaurant experience, understanding of food and labor costs. They seek someone who is as passionate about food and service as they are. They offer a competitive salary, benefits and the opportunity to grow with a new company.

The banQ Restaurant, along with a new Citibank branch will round out the commercial ground floor spaces below the 23 luxury condos at the Penny Savings Bank.

Filed Under: Boston Restaurants Tagged With: ,

I was Evicted, But It's Not My Fault

October 12, 2007 By

There is a large, and growing group of people who are crying foul, that is, renters. It was only a matter of time before the economic tsunami of the “credit crunch” overwhelmed innocent victims, and we give Kelly Evans of the Wall Street Journal kudos for breaking the story.

Our Caution: We are highlighting, and commenting upon, a very well written piece of work by the Journal, however, we maintain that Boston city-center foreclosure rates are extremely low, and that the Boston downtown real estate market is strong, there are statistics to prove this. This piece is more a look at a pan-US situation (major downtown city-center areas excluded), and should not be looked at as speaking specifically to the Boston market itself.

Essentially, we’re dealing with two main threads that combine to be a potent force that is impacting renters in a housing and mortgage market that they chose (or rather attempted) to avoid.

  1. Many single- and multi-family homes held by investors that were rented out are being foreclosed,
  2. Homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments are returning to the rental market, increasing competition for units.

What we end up with is a situation where renters are being evicted because the apartment or homes that they are renting are foreclosed because owner investors cannot keep up with the mortgage payments.

Often, the tenants’ first inkling of trouble occurs when they get a letter from the bank directing them to leave the premises.

“They just don’t know what to do — they leave town, move in with their mothers, end up in shelters,” says Janet Merrill, an attorney with the Massachusetts Justice Project, a Worcester legal-services agency that runs a hotline for low-income people.

Ms. Merrill’s group gets four to five calls a day from renters facing eviction resulting from foreclosure. One caller recently received a letter from a bank saying her six-unit apartment building had gone into foreclosure and ordering her to vacate her unit by October 31st.

In many cases, the homes and apartments entering foreclosure are owned by investors who got low-rate teaser mortgages and intended to hold the buildings for a few years and then sell them at a profit — before their mortgage rates rose. Now, with the housing market badly depressed in many markets, the owners can’t sell the homes or afford the higher mortgage payments. Many are defaulting.

In an ideal world, you’d like to see the market correct the situation on its own, but what we have here is a situation where rents that are needed to sustain a mortgage (one with terms that an owner investor cannot support) cannot economically be absorbed by the renter market. Pure economic supply and demand cannot properly adjust, at least in the short term, for such mistakes caused by the lack of foresight on the owner investor’s part, and the carelessness of a lender to finance such a situation where too much is dependent on the future, which is by nature, uncertain (i.e. the lender, nor the owner investor, could have accurately predicted that markets would soften, days on market would increase, and it would be difficult to sell a home with no loss.).

Much of the recoiling and tightening of mortgage standards, essentially the hoops that you have to jump through in order to get home financing at present, will continue to be adjusted as lenders recognize their carelessness and implement systems and mechanisms that should have been in place from the beginning.

Filed Under: Mortgage Information

Beacon Halls Boston Cleaning Service

October 11, 2007 By

We had the chance to sit down with the Founder of Beacon Halls Cleaning Service, a locally owned and operated condominium cleaning company based out of Beacon Hill. We speak with Developers, Sellers, and Buyers every day, and it’s clear that the cleanliness of common areas is high on the priority list. Here’s how our conversation went with Beacon Halls:

The Boston Condo Blog: Tell us a little bit about Beacon Halls Cleaning Service?

Beacon Halls Cleaning Service: When we started Beacon Halls, we really saw a need for a conscientious full-service cleaning company in the metro Boston area. With a property management background, we were often disappointed with the reliability and customer service from other cleaning services. We apply our business and management skills and provide a truly reliable professional cleaning staff with guaranteed results.

The Boston Condo Blog: When did you start cleaning your first common area and what part of town was it in?

Beacon Halls Cleaning Service: While Beacon Halls is a new company, we have years of management experience. We started on Beacon Hill and are growing the business throughout Metro Boston.

The Boston Condo Blog: What do you think separates you from other cleaning services in Boston?

Beacon Halls Cleaning Service: At the end of the day, our clients want to unwind and enjoy their lives. It is amazing how much a clean home helps you to relax and de-stress. Since many Bostonians live in condo developments and apartment buildings, the common area is the first impression of their home for visitors and guests. We take pride in our work. We make sure that when our clients walk through their sparkling lobby after a tough day they are even happier to be home.

The Boston Condo Blog: How are you going about gaining new customers?

Beacon Halls Cleaning Service: While we do advertise on the net and around local businesses, we’ve found our best advertising to be word of mouth from our current clients. We work with various Property Managers who prefer working with us as we provide competitive pricing and do a reliable job. Our clients love that we are reliable and hassle-free and surprisingly that is difficult for them to find, so they pass the word along.

The Boston Condo Blog: What are some of the things that you have done in order to grow and meet the demands of new customers?

Beacon Halls Cleaning Service: Beacon Halls tailors a cleaning program for each individual building or home. Each building has its own care program. For example, while most of our buildings are cleaned weekly, some of our buildings contain mainly second homes, so they can afford to be more economical and clean every other week. On the other hand, some of our buildings experience heavy foot traffic and they may be cleaned more than once a week. We keep the building’s needs in mind when designing a program so the end result is a consistently beautiful building.

The Boston Condo Blog: Do you specialize in a particular size of condo complex?

Beacon Halls Cleaning Service: We service buildings that range from single-family homes to double digit condo associations. We have the man power to really tackle any sized cleaning project in the city. So, we really do it all.

The Boston Condo Blog: All this sounds good, we’d like to try out Beacon Halls, how do we contact you?

Beacon Halls Cleaning Service: We will happily come to your building for a complimentary consultation. You can call us at 617-888-1173 to learn more or setup an appointment. We look forward to working with you.

Filed Under: Boston Condos

Luxury Boston Condos

October 9, 2007 By

There has been a swath of luxury Boston condos that hit the market over the Holiday weekend. These units are trend-setters as we move into the final quarter of 2007. The numbers don’t lie, high-end million dollar + properties in Boston are selling in force this year, and with a selection like the below, there’s no question as to why.

Starting at just under a million dollars, there is a new Boston Ritz Carlton condo at 1 Avery Street that hit the market for $995,000. The unit is a two-bedroom two-bathroom 1,085 square foot high-end full-service living experience. This is a corner unit with multiple-exposures, and a 270 degree view of the Financial District.

In the exclusive Folio Boston development, an 1,880 square foot three-bedroom two-bathroom penthouse unit is now available. With 12-foot floor-to-ceiling windows and multiple exposures of the Harbor and the Greenway. Valet parking included for $2,120,000. The Folio is located on Broad Street, which is turning into a very hot niche of the Financial District, with the recently sold out 65 Broad Street development, and the upcoming completion of the delayed Broadluxe project.

Folio Boston Penthouse

Folio Boston Penthouse

And perhaps the grand-daddy of them all is the recently announced 2,589 square foot developer’s (yes, Pappas himself) unit at Court Square Press in South Boston. The unit features two deeded garage parking spaces, four bedrooms and four bathrooms, and is listed at $2,495,000, including a $200,000 home theater system. This home was featured in Metropolitan Home magazine.

Court Square Press Penthouse

Court Square Press Penthouse

Court Square Press Penthouse

For further information on any of these condos, or any of the other million dollar Boston condo listings, please contact us.

Filed Under: Boston Condos Tagged With: , ,

More Boston Mandarin Oriental Photos

October 8, 2007 By

We captured the below exclusive photos of the continued progress on the Boston Mandarin Oriental, the ultra high-end hotel-condo development slated for a July 1, 2008 opening. As we stated earlier last week, there is one unit that remains at the development, and it is priced at $5.25 million, and includes outdoor space, and a single garage parking space.

Boston Mandarin Oriental

Boston Mandarin Oriental

Boston Mandarin Oriental

Filed Under: Back Bay Condos Tagged With: , ,

79 Chandler Street Brooke House – Open House

October 7, 2007 By

Three units remain at the Brooke House, located at 79 Chandler Street in Boston’s South End. Serving as our Featured Open House this week, the Brook House is a 9-unit luxury condo rehabilitation project that features high-end technologies, a common roof deck with a kitchen, and one off-site garage parking space with each unit.

The three direct-elevator access units remaining are between 1,625 and 3,232 square feet, and priced between $1,339,999 and $1,899,000.

The Open House, located at 79 Chandler Street in between Clarendon Street and Berkeley Street will take place Sunday, October 7, 2007 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Please let the Listing Agent know that Boston Condo Guy sent you. If you would like Buyer representation on the purchase of one of the units, please contact us.

Boston Brooke House

Filed Under: South End Condos Tagged With: , ,

Green Mortgage Incentives Match Green Condos

October 6, 2007 By

With the recent launch of the Macallen Building in South Boston, the first LEED Certified Green Building in all of Boston, and rumors of more green buildings to come, the mortgage industry is following suit with their own green mortgage incentives.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that lenders are the latest group to jump on the environmental-marketing bandwagon by pitching mortgage products that offer homebuyers bigger loans or discounts if they are making energy-efficient improvements — or if their new home meets certain efficiency standards. Last month, Citigroup Inc.’s mortgage division launched a program that offers $1,000 off closing costs with its energy-efficient mortgage through the end of the year. Also last month, Bank of America Corp. launched an Energy Credit mortgage, which offers a $1,000 credit toward closing fees for mortgages on new homes that meet efficiency requirements set by the government’s Energy Star program. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s mortgage division recently began offering Expanded Energy Conservation Mortgages in some markets that give borrowers more credit, as well as $500 off closing costs, if they find a builder who will use a specific type of spray-foam insulation.

While energy-efficient mortgages have been available from many lenders for some time, they are receiving renewed attention. They allow borrowers to qualify for bigger loans because lenders permit the estimated savings on utility bills to be added to the borrower’s qualifying income. For example, energy-efficient improvements could save a homeowner $50 a month. The $600 extra a year could allow a person to borrow about $10,000 more on a 30-year mortgage, depending on the interest rate.

The new products and incentives are aimed at a market worried about increasingly high energy prices. And amid the turmoil in subprime lending, analysts say, energy-efficient mortgages can be a more secure way to qualify marginal borrowers, since these homeowners are saving money on utility bills.

Based on our recent conversations with Pappas Properties, the developer behind much of the green building trends in Boston real estate, there are almost 30 units still for sale at the 140-unit green Macallen Building. Some of these units are teed up and ready for purchase by Buyers who are awaiting the sale of their existing homes. Important to note, as we’ve stated before, the absorption rate for a green building (let alone the first of its kind in Boston) is going to be somewhat slower than normal as Buyers hold an environmentally conscious debate in their heads on green versus non-green living, and pony up for slightly higher prices per square foot that accompany LEED certified condo developments.

Boston Macallen Building

Filed Under: Mortgage Information Tagged With:

65 Broad Street Lofts SOLD OUT

October 5, 2007 By

The redevelopment of the small six-story five-unit Financial District condo development at 65 Broad Street is now sold out. Unit 5, which was the model unit in the direct elevator access boutique development, received an Offer and is progressing through the purchase process. The lofts at 65 Broad Street went down a rather rocky road in closing out all of the available units, from being listed with multiple real estate brokerages, to even trying to take the units to auction. Some would say that none of the tactics really worked, however, originally pricing the units up in the $500K range did not get things started on the right foot.

Once all remaining units were knocked down to $399,000 each, traffic and showings picked up, and the last unit had multiple pursuers. Not surprising, given that the least expensive property on the market in the Financial District is $603,000 (a large one-bedroom at the Richmond Lofts development). The 65 Broad Street lofts were a relief in a neighborhood with little to no inventory under $600K, especially units with solid craftsmanship.

The five units at 65 Broad Street are very well done, with gleaming hardwoods, exposed brick and beams, luxury bathrooms, stainless steel kitchens with granite countertops, and high-end video-enabled intercom systems. Property inspections on the units have been quite clean. With Folio Boston and Broadluxe right down the street, 65 Broad Street is positioned well for gains in equity.

The only hope at the moment of getting into the development any time in the near future would be to go after Unit 4, which is being held by the Developer as a short term rental unit. The unit is not on the market for sale, but strong offers would more than likely be considered. For more information, please contact us.

Filed Under: Financial District Condos Tagged With: , , , ,
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