I’m just here for the ride, man.
Dodging traffic somedays and blowing by Sunday drivers on the others.
Time to be a little self-indulgent here and send you my mid-year note. First off, I hope you’re all enjoying your summer. Temps this year are finally hot (where I thrive) so I’m lovin’ it. Business is great, we’re all cranking- all my rental agents are up year over year and we’ve already smashed our home & condo sales goals for 2023 which I’m really happy about!
What’s hot: The Sales Market…STILL
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Those of you reading this who are buyers agents, this will sound all too familiar so…
**TRIGGER WARNING**
This is a real text I got just last week.
“Please thank your client for me- we had 37 (THIRTY-F&*^ING-SEVEN) offers and we decided to go back to the highest 6. Unfortunately your client’s offer (aka $70k over ask with zero contingencies and a 3 week close) wasn’t one of those.”
Even with ~7% interest rates being what some are calling “the new norm”, there is still a lack of inventory driving sales in the Metro Boston market. Particularly the I-95 belt line single family market which continues to be ridiculously competitive. This has and will continue to drive prices and load sellers inboxes with offers. Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know (you’re welcome for the ear worm).
What’s not: Unresponsive Listing Agents & Lousy Closing Attorneys
This sort of speaks for itself. It’s discouraging in any market when it’s busy and there’s money to be made, the quality just seems to go to shit. Don’t be that person, please. Be respectful of your colleague and do an earnest job.
If you’re looking to work with an agent, be sure they’re surrounded by good people too. My firm proudly partners with quality people like Christina Longo and her team with Guaranteed Rate and Attorney Shannon Hyle with Gilmartin Magence in Boston. They’re known around here as “The Dream Team” because they make it all happen. Love those two and we’re better people for knowing them!
What’s lukewarm: The Rental Market, Surprisingly
Bidding wars for apartments too? Yep, it’s happening. Or should I say it happened. See, the fun thing about markets is that to understand them, you must collect the data, then run the reporting, then it hits the newswire and people get all excited. Realistically, it could a different story altogether by then.
Take the Globe’s recent article about the apartment bidding wars (shout out to our buds at Spot Easy for getting some well-deserved press coverage here as well!). This most certainty WAS happening in Feb, March and into April as well. We’ve seen a pretty dramatic drop in rentals in May & June from years past. Is Y-O-Y business down? No- apartments are simply getting rented earlier than in the past.
It’s a trend we’ve been following for 10 years or so. It’s one of the reason’s we beg our landlord clients to get renewals out EARLY. 90-day notice is hardly enough these days for a landlord to find a qualified renter for an average apartment. Peeps are out early nowadays- and that’s probably our collective faults harping on renters to get out early so as to not miss out on the good stuff. They come, we get the stuff out early and the magic happens. After a while, the inventory dries up and so do the renters. Late summer is when things start to lag- we’re coming up on that now.
Good news//bad news is that there’s not a ton of non-luxe inventory left but also not a ton of qualified renters either!
Here’s another thing we’re tracking- vacancy rates at the luxury properties. Thankfully, mostly in part to the straight up hustle of the #KREMCrew, we were successful in the full lease up of two luxury properties this year- Prospect Place in Brighton and Babcock Place in Brookline. That totaled around 75 units rented for 6/1-8/1 occupancy and a great jump start to our rental season.
From what I’m hearing, it’s great we got out of the gates early with them- I’m hearing and seeing rent concessions and fee concessions coming down the pipes for many of the full-service properties in the Brighton, Brookline and Fenway areas. Inventory is growing due in part to more new units being added- the new Avalon property on Washington St. in Brighton and the Brookliner in Washington Sq., to name a couple- and it seems as though the appetite may be running a little low for that inventory. We shall see but *rubs crystal ball* I see some good deals coming in late Summer//early Fall in these buildings.
Also worth noting is our incredible new website! Check it out when you have a min and give it a quick run through. I’m really proud of this iteration- turned out excellent, IMO!
Anyway, it’s late and I have to figure out a way to get Ice Ice Baby out of my head.
‘Til next time,
