Understanding House Prices For The Next Year

Finally a smart article about housing prices and where the prices might go or not go. The article hit home. I was surprised to see that single family house prices in Weymouth, MA have not gone up yet based on sales figures from the local MLS. (Glad to send you the spreadsheet if you want to see it.) So much of what is published on house prices is media schlock.

Probably a lot of towns like Weymouth are just teasing an uptick in price. Yup, the market is faster and properties are selling well and the rate of price decline has slowed since the high water mark of 2005,  but the prices haven't turned the corner yet in Weymouth. Quincy and Chelsea and other border towns to Boston are doing better with rising prices.  Lexington prices went up. Groton down in the first quarter. (Glad to send you those spread sheets too). 

Will House Prices Be Constrained by Stagnant Incomes?

The Future of Zoning???? (From the WSJournal)

Liberalizing zoning. Now there's a concept as more people squeeze into the core metropolitan areas, another trend of the demographic variety!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324059704578470881055711540.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

Attorneys are not a protected class*.... and HCPTSS

For all the jokes (funny & not funny) about attorneys, you would think attorneys would be a protected class* just because of the jokes about them. I particularly like jokes that combine banjo players with attorneys,  but now I am wandering off the blog topic.

Anyway.

A real estate agent said I could not show an available apartment.

When he asked what my client did for a living I told him, "Attorney." He said, "the landlord does not rent to attorneys."  The agent said that  the landlord and a former tenant / law professor, were involved in a messy case in housing court. Since the protracted litigation in housing court, the property manager does not rent to attorneys.

This is where the HCPTSS comes in. Clearly the property manager is suffering from severe Housing Court Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  This kind of knee jerk reaction is one of the hallmarks of the disease. When a single housing court case causes you to ban a whole profession, you've got a severe case of HCPTSS.  With one traumatic event, the landlord simply deletes a whole profession from the applicant pool.  At the least, the property manager/landlord certainly cuts out a lot of wonderful tenants, as in the case of my current client who happens to be an attorney.  And, if the property manager or landlord extends the stereotyping to other professions, the pool of potential tenants begins shrinking exponentially.

I called a legal beagle at one of the realty associations.  The attorney with whom I spoke had the same experience when looking for apartments because of her profession. The legal counsel agreed that attorneys are not a protected class.

A dynamic and thorough application process is the best preventive medicine for bad tenants.  Screen tenants at the application stage and you won't be screaming later in housing court.  These days, besides the formal application, you get extended background checks with a simple internet search. Can't you easily Google and Facebook the  applicant to find out if the applicant is litigious, been evicted......  and everything else these days???

Okay, you asked for it... an attorney/banjo player joke: You're driving down the street and you see an attorney and a banjo player on the side of the road. which one do you hit first? The banjo player...business before pleasure.

Gerry Garcia is still alive and playing banjo badly these days. At least he is still not trying to play guitar.

*Protected class groups are groups of people legally protected from discrimination and harassment.