David Cahill

While the recent negative headlines talk about home sales still being flat and going down in some places, Dorchester has always been one of the areas to come back first! The numbers from 2010 vs. 2009 prove it!

The average selling price for a three-family in Dorchester for 2010 was $298,810, compared to $249,860, a 20% increase! The numbers for the change in a median sales price were a little bit higher as well.

Another great sign that prices are on the way back up is the number of homes sold above $400,000. There were 22 in 2010 vs. only 12 in 2009, an 83% increase! Available listings are also very low, averaging under 30 for last few months. This will only increase the demand!

Please let me know if you would like more information about local prices or are interested in the value of your home or are in the market for a three-family for sale in Dorchester.

South End Condos For Sale!  On Sunday, I was out visiting open houses in the South End and came across this condo at 187 West Canton Street #2.  The tall brick wall was what caught my attention as soon as I walked in the door of this parlor-level home.  Since I'm a huge fan of exposed brick, I had to take a quick video to share (see below). 

Walkscore.com gave this a rating of 97, a "Walker's Paradise"!  It's super-close to Copley Place, Prudential Center, Tremont Street and the Back Bay train station.  A lot of South End condos for sale are close to some of these attractions, but this one is close to all of them!  This home also has an updated kitchen with granite counter tops, large windows and hardwood floors. 

Particulars:

Living Area: 600 s.f.

Condo Fee: $139/month

Owner Occupancy: 100%

Bedrooms: 1

Bathrooms: 1

Price: $449,000

Please let me know if you would like more information or would like to schedule a showing for one of the nicest South End condos for sale.

I've just spent the last half hour reading all the blogs about real estate movies and the consensus seems to be that the play adaptation of "Glengarry Glen Ross" is the best one out there. While I've seen this a couple times and thoroughly enjoy it, these guys are NOT real estate agents! They are more like those sleazy salesmen who push times share places on you.

While these characters are certainly deep and wildly entertaining, they do not come close to doing what we as true real estate professionals do. They go on "sits", which are almost like listing presentations, but once they coax someone to sign on the dotted line, they're done! No showings. No open houses. No walk-throughs. No inspections. No crying on shoulders and hand holding. No stopping by on moving day with pizzas and soda. Nothing!

There seems to be NO movies out there that show real estate agents in a thoroughly positive light! The agents in "American Beauty" are unfaithful and do an unreasonable amount of cleaning before an open house at a vacant home. Pacific Heights just showed how a professional renter and criminal can use the system to his advantage. Richard Pryor in "Moving" gets hosed by a FSBO who rips out out the pool after he jokingly said that he was taking it with them and has the whole conversation recorded as proof that he was really serious. Even the agents in "Panic Room" and "Wall Street" had lines that just seemed like they were for pushy stereotypical salespeople.

I cannot think of any role is any real estate movie (and I feel I've seen most of them) where the real estate agent is portrayed at the hero or even the good guy. We need a movie where kids walk out of the theatre saying they want to be real estate agents when they grow up and their parents want to call up their agent and thank them again for all the great work they did for them. Will it ever happen?

Three families for sale in Dorchester vs. those available in Brockton. A client recently asked me about the three-family opportunities that were on the market in both Dorchester (and all of Boston for that matter) and in Brockton. I told him that there were pros and cons to each. The biggest one is the distance. He is a Boston guy and if he wanted to manage these properties himself, I told him, he would have to take travel into consideration.

There's also the numbers factor. The prices are generally lower in Brockton than in Dorchester, but the rents are lower as well. There are more jobs in Boston, better access to public transportation and schools. I decided to create a spreadsheet for him to crunch the numbers and decide for himself. The first version was an "as-is" look based solely on what MLS gave us. I did make adjustments for incorrect or missing real estate taxes. I did not take into consideration any work that needed to be done to get the home into rent-able condition, if needed. I took 15% off total rents for expenses (not including taxes, which I factored in first).

As you can see there are a couple in Brockton that crack 20% in ROI compared to the 5 in Boston. The second spreadsheet shows where I have plugged in estimated rents for homes that had vacancies (seen in blue).

As you can see, the potential is much greater after this exercise, with 24 three-families returning 20% or higher. Nine are from Brockton and the rest are from Boston. More analysis will need to be done in order to accurately predict which homes have the best potential, but this is a reasonable starting point. Let me know if you would like the full spreadsheet that shows the number of rooms, bedrooms and rents for each unit. I'm always happy to assist any investors out there who prefer like-minded real estate professionals working with them.

In today's Boston Globe, there's an article about banks not approving short sales where they perhaps should have and even highlighting some stories about how after the short sale were not approved, the properties sold for less that the short sale contract price after it was foreclosed on.

I have unfortunately seen this a lot the last year or so and it even happened to one of my listings. Earlier in the year, I had a condo that I was trying to short sell in Lowell and we even had a buyer and a purchase and sale contract signed. The lender denied it because they thought it was not an arms length transaction. Why? Because the buyer happened to live in the same association as the unit that that was for sale (it's a large association, too!). Even though the owner of the unit had never lived there and they did not know each other, they denied it and it was foreclosed on. The buyer we had was ready to pay $114,000 and after it was denied, it sold for $99,900. A $14,100 loss, which does not even count the costs to foreclose, winterize, etc.

There are loads of stories out there where the short sale department is not talking to the foreclosure department and becuase of this, the home goes to auction while a great offer is just waiting to be accepted. It's not always like this, or even most of the time, but it happens enough where it raises some red flags and real concern.

You can read the whole Boston Globe article here: Wary Lenders Denying Short Sales