I have been blogging for the newly revamped (still ongoing) Boston Magazine site about real estate, music, and whatever crosses my mind. The collected links are here. Here is one about the tenor of “the market”:
“How’s the market, Bill?”
This is the question I hear most when I tell people I am a broker. It is usually accompanied by a pained, wincing look from the questioner, as if they are expecting me to ask them if they know of any job openings in another line of work. And the answer is, well, it all depends on where you live. I am not talking about Phoenix versus Boston; I am talking town to town within the Boston area. And I am not even talking about distinctions between a gritty city like Lawrence or Chelsea versus the leafy suburbs of Wellesley or Weston.
No, there are huge differences between how the market is doing across short periods of time and relatively short distances of space along Route 128. So you will have towns often grouped together in, say, Boston Magazine’s annual rankings of public school districts, or on a list of median incomes in communities (here in the Boston area, we know these two examples almost always mirror one another) with very different market tempos. Case in point: Lexington area compared to Dover.