What are real estate agents telling each other about home prices?
Take a peek into this meeting of a major real estate firm. The 10 minute mark is particularly amazing – you’ll see how different cities have grown at very different rates:
There are several reasons to believe that Boston’s housing price growth could explode soon:
- General Electric (you know, the company that Thomas Edison started – it’s gotten pretty big over the years) is moving its headquarters here. Not only that, but their CEO went on the record to describe how the city is critical to any company trying to catch the next wave of innovation.
- IBM just promised to create 500 new jobs in the area, and will get $2.5 million in tax breaks from the state to do so.
- Mortgage rates are low, and housing supplies are tight
However, as you can see, the growth is spread unevenly:
There are forces pushing down housing prices as well. Half of Boston residents earn less than $35,000 per year, highlighting the growing inequality that complicates descriptions of ‘Boston’ overall. When 40% of jobs require the applicant to have a college degree, that’s leaving a huge section of people out of the competitive job market, and therefore out of the competitive housing market. A study actually found that Boston has the highest economic gap by some measures, with the top 5 percent of residents making 18 times more per year than the lower 20 percent.
It’s hard to say for sure what the future holds. Comparisons to last year are still effected by the Snowpocalypse, which dramatically cut into home buying activity. Boston.com is saying that housing prices may actually be falling in some cases.
In any event, people will be anxiously awaiting the next round of data!