It was almost surreal to be in Nashville this week. After not having been there for the past nine years, it was hard to believe the growth and change. 82 people a day are moving to Nashville, and it seems as though everyone else in the country is visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame. The streets downtown are as crowded at night as Times Square, and it's the country's #1 destination for bachelorette parties--who knew?
Corporations are moving to Nashville, and bringing plenty of employees with them. Cranes and other signs of growth abound. Prices for homes in the tonier neighborhoods are very high, and new hot spots are appearing. Although they saw the same Great Recession as everywhere else, it certainly seems to be over! Our friends at Zeitlin Realtors are looking to have a booming year, and were busy right through their traditionally slow season. It wasn't springlike weather over the weekend, but the real estate market was.
Other companies also attending reported mixed growth in the first two months, but all are expecting a good year this year. Rates are still low (but on the bubble of going up), and the main problem is a lack of inventory in many price ranges. Fingers crossed!
Showing posts with label Great recession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great recession. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Sometimes It's Good to Lag the Market
In many parts of the country, real estate has fully recovered from the Great Recession, has increased in price, and is levelling off. Inventory is a problem, because demand in many areas has been greater than supply.
Not so for Connecticut. Our poor business climate and high taxes has caused us to underperform everywhere else. That means that we have yet to see any price increases, and our inventory remains higher than in other places. And what does that mean? It means that buying here makes more sense than it does in almost anyplace else in the country, because we share the same low interest rates, without the appreciation that would make housing prices higher than they were a few years ago. We are still recovering from the downturn, and our jobs did not return in the same categories nor at the same rate as in other states. That puts us in a different phase of the housing cycle, and makes us expect that this year will be strong.
Certainly the weather is helping! It's over 60 degrees today, and it already feels like spring. So what does spring mean to us? It's time to buy!
Not so for Connecticut. Our poor business climate and high taxes has caused us to underperform everywhere else. That means that we have yet to see any price increases, and our inventory remains higher than in other places. And what does that mean? It means that buying here makes more sense than it does in almost anyplace else in the country, because we share the same low interest rates, without the appreciation that would make housing prices higher than they were a few years ago. We are still recovering from the downturn, and our jobs did not return in the same categories nor at the same rate as in other states. That puts us in a different phase of the housing cycle, and makes us expect that this year will be strong.
Certainly the weather is helping! It's over 60 degrees today, and it already feels like spring. So what does spring mean to us? It's time to buy!
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Financial Times Article
Yesterday, I posted an article from Financial Times of London, comparing the New Haven market to the Cambridge, MA one. We lost. I thought it was not a fair comparison. New Haven is a very different place--it's a center city, with suburbs around it. Cambridge IS a suburb, of Boston. It seems to me that that makes them very different, with many more low-income areas in New Haven.
Having lived in both places, I don't find them as disparate as the article would make them appear. Harvard has always had a very good PR image, and has managed to weather bad news without making as many headlines. Most people would no more walk through Cambridge Common after dark than stroll across the New Haven Green. Yet, somehow, the national media has always presented New Haven as a dangerous place in which to live or attend school, while Cambridge comes across as a trendy, high-end metropolis. Granted, Yale has more high-crime areas within walking distance than Cambridge does, but the subway system in Boston has the potential to deliver crime there as well. My old dorm had an incident a few years ago, where someone was killed after a student opened the gate for a "townie" (yes, Harvard now locks its gates as well).
It is true that Cambridge has two major institutions--Harvard and MIT--compared to New Haven's Yale, and that the biotech spinoff effect is therefore twice as great. It's also true that dual-career couples have a somewhat easier time both finding jobs in the Boston area (although New Haven offers the possibility of NYC). Real estate values are indeed higher in Cambridge, especially since Massachusetts is undoubtedly further along in its recovery from the Great Recession. Yet I would argue that both are residential hubs, with lively nightlife, lots of educational institutions, and plenty to do. I would even give New Haven the edge in the arts, especially if you take Boston out of the equation. There may be statistical truth to the article, but it presents a very one-sided look at the numbers, in my opinion.
Having lived in both places, I don't find them as disparate as the article would make them appear. Harvard has always had a very good PR image, and has managed to weather bad news without making as many headlines. Most people would no more walk through Cambridge Common after dark than stroll across the New Haven Green. Yet, somehow, the national media has always presented New Haven as a dangerous place in which to live or attend school, while Cambridge comes across as a trendy, high-end metropolis. Granted, Yale has more high-crime areas within walking distance than Cambridge does, but the subway system in Boston has the potential to deliver crime there as well. My old dorm had an incident a few years ago, where someone was killed after a student opened the gate for a "townie" (yes, Harvard now locks its gates as well).
It is true that Cambridge has two major institutions--Harvard and MIT--compared to New Haven's Yale, and that the biotech spinoff effect is therefore twice as great. It's also true that dual-career couples have a somewhat easier time both finding jobs in the Boston area (although New Haven offers the possibility of NYC). Real estate values are indeed higher in Cambridge, especially since Massachusetts is undoubtedly further along in its recovery from the Great Recession. Yet I would argue that both are residential hubs, with lively nightlife, lots of educational institutions, and plenty to do. I would even give New Haven the edge in the arts, especially if you take Boston out of the equation. There may be statistical truth to the article, but it presents a very one-sided look at the numbers, in my opinion.
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