Airbnb vs. Boston Hotels; Southie Restaurant Rigmarole
SOUTH BOSTON—The developers had to cut the number of restaurant seats by more than 100, however, and scratch the sidewalk dining, too: "Developers building a 30-unit apartment building at Dorchester and Dresser streets in South Boston got approval last week to put a restaurant called Republic on the ground level." [Eater Boston]
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BOSTON—
What You Get for Under $650K Right Now in South Boston
Some homes in Southie are commanding well over their asking prices, but there's also a mixed-bag of more affordable stock, suitable for any style. For instance, in the $650K to $525K range, you can still get top-notch quality in a single-family, brand-new construction, space in a converted church, or even a loft in the Seaport.
Report: Southie, Kendall Among Priciest for 1-BR Apartments
Our pals at real estate search engine Zumper are out with their latest map of median 1-BR apartment rents around the region based on listings active during June. As you can see the D Street-West Broadway corridor in South Boston leads the way with a median of $3,120, followed closely by MIT (a.k.a. the Kendall Square area) at $3,090 and downtown Boston at $3,065.
Last Boston Snow Melts; Development Changes Columbia Point
SOUTH BOSTON—This weekend's sweltering temperatures apparently finished off Boston's last snow farm: "'There is no snow left as far as I can tell,' Elise Musumano, an employee at ChoiceStream in Boston's Seaport district, told Boston.com. 'Based on my close proximity this morning, it's really just a pile of trash at this point.'" [Boston.com]
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DORCHESTER—Highlighting change in the Hub's Neighborhood of the Year: "What was once the dilapidated neighborhood of the feared 'Columbia Point Dawgs' gang is now Harbor Point on the Bay, an upscale-looking, mixed-income, gated residential community with a fitness center, tennis and beach volleyball courts, and a prime ocean view near Carson Beach on Dorchester Bay. Monthly rent in the complex begins at more than $2,000 ..." [Globe]
City Hall Plaza Will Soon Be Lit Ablaze--With Colorful Lights
Photo via wikipediaOh, City Hall, you brutalist, you. Such a structure that Bostonians love to hate, with its oppressive slabs of gray architecture. Well, Marty Walsh has a plan to lighten the mood, quite literally.
Once a planned $400,000 contract is signed, the hulking location will be awash in an oasis of color through permanent light fixtures.
Widett Circle Is Getting Redeveloped One Way or Another
[A rendering imagining Midtown Boston post-development]
Last week the private group trying to bring the 2024 Summer Olympics to Boston unveiled an ambitious plan to redevelop the Widett Circle area into a residential-retail-commercial wonderland directly related to the Games—one that would live on, however, after the athletes skip town. What if Boston—gasp!—doesn't land the Olympics? Will Widett Circle (a.k.a. Midtown) still get redeveloped?
Whimsical Court Square Press Loft Sells for $50K-Plus Over
The 2-BR, 2-BA Unit 606 in South Boston's Court Square Press building dropped on the sales market in late April for $1,599,000. It quickly found a buyer and a deal closed for the capacious 2,192-square-foot spread (with one garage parking space) this past Monday.
The Neighborhoods Dominating Boston's Record Construction
[Rendering of 6 New Street, approved in late April]
The Walsh administration announced that Boston approved a record $1.65 billion in housing construction during the first six months of 2015, nearly half of it for non-luxury units (though that depends on how you define non-luxury housing). All totaled, 2,461 apartments, condos and houses of varying sizes got the city's go-ahead from January through June.
North End Drone Tour; Parking Drives Southie Condo Fight
NORTH END—Take a bird's-eye tour of the classic neighborhood via drone. [NorthEndWaterfront via Biz Journal]
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SOUTH BOSTON—Parking concerns (what else?) appear to be driving residents' concerns re: a proposed residential project on Old Harbor Street: "About 30 people who live near the planned nine-unit condo complex attended a meeting held by the Cronin Group Tuesday night at Marian Manor. Not one person in the audience voiced support for construction of the condos, which need the approval of the Zoning Board of Appeals." [Globe]
POPULAR
The plan to turn the old Gate of Heaven School in Southie into 26 condos won key O.K.'s from the city's Zoning Board of Appeals. Some residents still object, saying the conversion harbingers yet more gentrification. The developer says that all that's left is a routine building permit and that construction could start in September. Stay tuned. [Globe]Charlestown's Starboard Place Again Hub's Top-Selling Condo
Charlestown's recently opened Starboard Place was Boston's best-selling condo building for the second consecutive month in May, according to statistics from our pals at PropertyShark. Recall that the 54-unit complex at 45 First Avenue, which was originally supposed to be apartments, led all other buildings in the city in April with 10 sales. It scored the same number in May. Other best-sellers for that month included the Peabody Square Lofts in Dorchester, Millennium Place in Downtown Crossing and 249 Marlborough Street in Back Bay, where two trades (including this one) were enough to land in the top 10.
Here's Where Hub Buyers Migrate When Condo Prices Rise
Here's the latest installment of Bates By the Numbers, a weekly feature by Boston real estate agent David Bates that drills down into the Hub's housing market to uncover those trends and people you would not otherwise notice. Follow him on Twitter and check out his ebook, CONTEXT 2015: 14 Hub Condo Markets
Through the first five months of 2012, the median sales price of a South Boston condo was $390,000. But in the first five months of 2015, South Boston's median condo sale was $555,000. That's a 42 percent increase. Incredible!
And, in the first five months of 2012, the median price of a condo in Somerville was $390,500, almost identical to the South Boston median. But three years and 40 percent later, Somerville's median condo sale price is $540,000.
Southie Sale Offers Proof of Cooling Boston Housing Market
There are multiple signs the scorching-hot Greater Boston housing market is cooling—not cliff-diving, just cooling. Wider trends such as declines in both trades over the asking price and condo sales year-over-year in certain markets prove the point. So, too, do individual events, such as the sale of Unit 1 at 772 East Fourth Street in South Boston. That 1,713-square-foot 2-BR, 2.5-BA spread with sauna and parking for two hit the sales market in mid-April for $895,000.
Pro Soccer Stadium in Southie; Big Changes to Center Plaza
DOWNTOWN BOSTON—Owner Shorenstein Properties can't change the outside but it wants to spend $20 million on sprucing up the outside of the square opposite City Hall: "Stuck with a challenging façade that would be prohibitively expensive to remove or to change substantially, Shorenstein is concentrating on fixing other problematic aspects of Center Plaza, namely its cavernous street-level arcade, a dark and dank space that feels more like a parking garage than an open-air pedestrian walkway." [Globe]
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SOUTH BOSTON—The Patriots' owners want a pro soccer stadium near Widett Circle and—surprise, surprise!—they'll help build a commuter-rail stop if that helps: "It also suggests that a new train station could be built at the stadium site—labeled on the map as 'Commuter Rail/DMU.' That could mean it would be related to the proposed Indigo Line ... which would transport trains powered by on-board diesel engines or diesel multiple units (DMU). According to the document, the new train would stop at the stadium site before circling Widett Circle and apparently returning to South Station." [Boston.com]
Giant Rabbits for Lawn on D; Kendall Square Food Trucks
[The rabbits in Australia last year]
SOUTH BOSTON—Of course it will: "Following up on the smashing success of Pentalum, an inflatable play space that graced the Lawn on D in May, the park will play host to Intrude in July – a set of five massive, inflatable rabbits intended to give visitors the feeling of being unusually small; not small in the insignificant sense, but in an Alice's Adventures in Wonderland kind of way." [BostInno]
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KENDALL SQUARE—A vending-machine hub also appears to have fallen by the wayside: "The shipping container marketplace envisioned for a small construction lot in Kendall Square never came to be, and the space may yet be reworked into a gathering place for food trucks to serve workers in the square's innovation industries." [Day]
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