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Report shows poorer areas seeing most foreclosures
By Scott Van Voorhis
Boston Herald Business Reporter
Friday, December 15, 2006 - Updated: 02:38 AM EST
S
pare the tears over the downtown condo market.
Sales may be sluggish, but few owners of multimillion-dollar condos in Back Bay or downtown towers are losing their shirts. Prices are even up over last year, brokers say.
While everyone waits for the luxury condo market to implode, the real meltdown is happening at much less glamorous addresses in neighborhoods like Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan.
Even as these neighborhoods grapple with rising murder rates and gang violence, a silent plague of foreclosures is doing its own devastating work.
Foreclosures are soaring in Boston, but the lion s share are happening in Dorchester and Roxbury, according to neighborhood foreclosure guru John Anderson, who runs a data collection business called The Real Estate Analyst.
As banks lower the boom, more condos and homes pour onto a market already glutted with units for sale.
So far, Dorchester has seen nearly as many foreclosure filings this year - 412 - as Boston as a whole saw last year, he said.
How hard is it?
Just ask Chris Phelan, a restaurant manager with a two-bedroom condo he bought near Savin Hill in 2004 for $245,000.
Phelan, who has two children and wants a home now, not a condo, says he s ready to sell his unit for what he paid for it - or less - in order to move on.
So far, he s received only ridiculous offers - including one for $200,000.
It s tough, Phelan said, adding there are 400 condos for sale in the Dorchester area alone.
Condo prices in Dorchester peaked in April 2005 at $286,262 before sliding to $231,738 today, Anderson reports. Dorchester accounts for a large percentage of the 984 foreclosure filings in Boston so far this year, he adds.
Another hard-hit area is Ward 18, which covers sections of Mattapan and Hyde Park and has seen 190 foreclosure notices to date, up from 78 last year.
Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, they are feeling the hit. The sellers are feeling the pressure of foreclosures, said John Ford, head of Ford Realty
, a top downtown brokerage.
The foreclosures are a sign of the larger real estate crisis gripping the ZIP codes where most Bostonians live.
Builders found condo gold in humble Dorchester triple-deckers, and a host of rapacious, subprime lenders were only too eager to help make the unaffordable seem suddenly attainable, experts say.
But it s a different world downtown, where sales may slow but condo prices just somehow keep going up.
The average downtown condo price in October? A whopping $572,000 - up $60,000 from October 2005, according to The Warren Group.
When it comes to real estate market woes, it all comes down to location, location, location.
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, Boston townhouses, Boston condominiums, Massachusetts condos, Boston condos for sale
, Brookline real estate, Boston luxury condos, Boston real estate, Beacon Hill apartments, Boston midtown real estate, Boston back bay condos, Ford realty, Boston homes, Southend condos, Charlestown
Boston Real Estate
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