wimsey wrote:
scorpio516 wrote:
wimsey wrote:
Brownie28 wrote:
scorpio516 wrote:
I was curious so I looked at a crazy market nearby 195 Erie, Cambridge, MA sold for $82,375 in 95. It's currently listed at $3.2M. That's a 3884% increase in 24 years
Cambridge has been expensive for a while now. The more recent booms around Boston are Southie, Charlestown, Roxbury - all the blue collar working class neighborhoods where people could buy affordable homes within 15 minute commutes from downtown. Just pulled up a listing on Zillow that's a perfect example: house sold for $390K in 2009 (yeah, at the bottom of the crash but still), listed recently for $1.7MM. Another I just pulled up: sold for $1.2MM recently, was sold in 2015 for $560K - 200+% in four years! Or my home growing up, low-middle class neighborhood, big homes built at the turn of the 20th century that went for $140k in the 90's. They're all fetching right around a million now, and just recently I was talking to my father-in-law about the boom and Medford and he said 'yeah that's where the young families are going'. I have two friends who moved there a few years ago, $900K for their homes...only way they could afford them (again, in one of the shittier Boston suburbs)? They sold homes in Southie that appreciated 200+% in five years.
Boston real estate is INSANE - not Silicone Valley for sure, but good luck making $100K or less and finding a home unless you want to live in a shack in Dorchester.
I rent a not-quite-a-shack but still pretty small house in Dorchester and I'd probably have trouble affording it if I wanted to buy it.
Question for you, which is really the question for my wife and me - what towns in Eastern MA would you look at to buy in if you were trying to solve the trifecta of reasonable housing price, decent public school system and workable commute into the city? I'm despairing of finding that particular unicorn.
What's a workable commute? ;) . Reasonable price?
Franklin in the south.
I don't know if your going to Cambridge/North station though, but somewhere on 495 :(
My last office in Seaport, most of the people lived in central Mass - Worcester, Millbury, Shrewsbury, Oxford all had people that drove/train-ed there, and the office only had 20 people!
You can still get a nice house for $350-500 in Shrewsbury with a great school and cheap taxes (town won't say no to retail on route 9), but it's an hour on the train to South Station...
Thanks. Work in Kendall Sq right now so north station could probably work. I also don’t need to be in the office every day if I don’t want to, so it could be a 3 day a week thing.
And yah, 495 seems like the answer which is just insane to me. Been considering Acton area but don’t know what the commuter rail connection looks like (if there even is one). Franklin at least has a commuter line.
Basically I think we are screwed.
The Fitchburg line stops in Acton and twice in Concord. Littleton is a nice town too, with a station at 495 & route 2.
The one time I drove 2 and parked at Alewife, it took 3 hours to get to work! The roundabout in Concord gets backed up, and 2 inside 128 can be a parking lot...
people were saying Acton was the place to move for young families a couple years ago