Real Estate Bubble Debate

Boston bubble bloggers begin meeting OFFLINE

Fellow Boston bubble bloggers,

Over the past few months, a number of us have corresponded about getting together OFFLINE with other bubble bloggers in Boston / New England.  If getting together for one or both of the proposed events below make sense to you and your blog readers, feel free to pass this on or link to it.

1st Boston bubble blogger meeting:  Exploratory meeting for "citizen journalists"

Several Boston bubble bloggers have confirmed their participation in the following.  If your schedule permits, join us for any of these three:

1.  Starbucks (Mass. Ave & Wendell St. in Cambridge) from 6:30-6:55pm;
2.  Berkman Center (see link for location) from 7:00pm to 8:00 or 8:30pm.
3. Optional discussion over coffee / dinner afterwards, (Maybe Darwin's, JohnnyDs, or another location.  Call cell phone 617-388-5818 to confirm.)

Berkman's guest speaker from Newsvine should help all of us get more visibility for our individual blogs and enhance our mutual goal, as independent citizen journalists, of informing consumers about real estate market trends in Greater Boston / Massachusetts.

2nd Bubble Blogger meeting:  Reviewing & analyzing MAR stats

The Mass. Association of Realtors (MAR) will be releasing their data on January sales on Tuesday, Febuary 28th.  Should we get together the same day or the day after to review and analyze their statement and what some are now commonly calling their "spin"?

I think we should invite the public to participate in this meeting, and even extend an open invitation to MAR, real estate professionals, and sellers who do NOT think there is a real estate bubble.  (FYI - MAR released a statement yesterday entitled, "Bay State housing market shows signs of returning to normal."

Ideally, we could meet somewhere with a wifi connection for laptops.  Better still would be a venue with a wall-sized projection screen.  I have a projector and screen, any suggestions for venues?

1.  Cambridge:  Darwin's, wifi but no projection screen room;
2. A hotel near MAR, easily accessible from Route 128 & Mass Pike (would require fee of about $150, but we might be able to get a sponsor or ask participants to share the cost);
3.  Other possible locations?  Please post in comments below, or send to [email protected].

As always, you can call our reader line at 617-876-2117 to record a comment for potential use in a future podcast. 

Lessons Learned From Riding Two Real Estate Cycles

Following the Massachusetts Association of Buyer Agents panel at Suffolk University Thursday morning, Sooz and I went to a nearby Starbucks to go over the conversations we recorded with some leading buyers agents in Boston.  As we were getting settled, a woman overheard our discussion and jumped in.  She described lessons learned over last two real estate cycles:  first losing money (at least on paper) on a starter condo purchased at the top of the bubble in Philadelphia in the mid-1980's; then purchasing another home at the bottom of the last cycle; and utimately hitting the real estate jackpot in Altantic City.  She and her husband are once again timing the market before making their next move.  When asked what advice to she would give to buyers thinking about buying now, she drew from her experience of loss in the mid-1980's.  It's a perspective some real estate bubble observers say is too seldom heard in the press today.  We invite you to listen in to our conversation at Starbucks.

Stay tuned for podcasts from the MABA panel on "Consumer Protection & Home Buying"

Listen: Real Estate Bubble Audio Time Capsule #2 (MP3, 7 minutes, 3.2M)
Date Recorded: 2 June 2005
Subject:  Lessons learned from riding two real estate cycles
Featuring: Bill Wendel (Real Estate Cafe) and guest Judy, a homeowner from Atlantic City, NJ
Location: Starbucks on School Street in downtown Boston