Boston is a college town. In June and July, I get calls from parents who are thinking about buying a condo here, so that their college-aged child can save on rent. This is known as a “kiddie condo.” Sometimes, it makes sense. Most of the time, it does not. Condo Pros: If the mortgage is
A tried and true Somerville, MA political move is to publish something damning on the weekend before the election, so that the target of the slander doesn’t have time to get a rebuttal out. It’s tried and true, and it was tried again this year. But.It.Didn’t.Work. The current City Council was reelected in its entirety.
From a buyer’s perspective, the Somerville Condo Ordinance changes are a win. For renters, it is a major victory. I discussed these changes in last week’s blog post. The ink wasn’t dry on the Ordinance when the backlash began. Owners in Somerville received calls and letters urging them to sell now, before the new ordinance
Two-family house Condos for sale Everyone knows what condo conversion is, right? It’s when an owner changes a multi-unit building from a one-owner property to condominiums deeded by multiple owners. Typically, this would be taking an apartment building and selling off each unit, separately, as condos. In Somerville -- the land
Private mortgage insurance (PMI) is an additional fee that borrowers who don’t have a 20 percent down payment must pay. It insures the lender, not the borrower. The lender’s costs to foreclose and resell the property could be more than the amount the borrower put down, initially, unless the lender has 20 percent up front.
About five years after I moved into my house, I was working from home. I spent the morning writing and had a lunch date with a former client. At about 11:30, I heard water running in my basement. Home inspectors will warn you. New home owners don’t listen, including me. I went down to investigate
Here’s more about sound-proofing and housing grand pianos. When I first published my blog about musicians in 2012, I was writing for Boston.com/RealEstateNow (which has since been taken off the web.) I got some great feedback that I share now about what musicians need to know to live happily in eastern Massachusetts: Part I: Building
It gets complicated when you want to use a condo roof to harness solar power. Who pays for it? Who gets the power? Who gets the rebate when you sell power to the grid? Newly built condos have the advantage of having the solar (PV) system as part of the initial purchase. Adding it later
When our clients consider buying into a condo association, we remind them to check the association rules. The rules are binding and affect daily life. Some of the rules that irk our clients actually make some sense, when you remember that condos are owned by people. People will be people. Bigger buildings often have rules about
Are you looking at buying a condo in a building that’s still being built? Here are the tell-tale signs that you are being given the hard sell: You are brought into a showroom. You are offered a drink, and sometimes food. You are shown the materials that will be used. You are shown a chart