Beantown Blues, Greens, Reds…
By: Jeff Somers, Director, Agent Services | October 7, 2006
Given our real estate focus, you might think the title on this post refers to the current state of the housing industry in Boston (or perhaps the disappointing end to the Red Sox season- don’t get me started), but in fact it’s about my feelings on living away from the city where I grew up.
Certainly Seattle has a lot to offer, but there’s really no replacing the North End, Fenway, Newbury Street, the Public Garden or enjoying a Guiness at O’Hara’s tavern in Newton while watching the Pats. This melancholy feeling hits me particularly hard at this time of year when Boston is still awash in color and Seattle is drifting into its winter coat of grey. Looking at our heat map you can see that from the red hot urban areas of Beacon Hill, Back Bay and the South End to the deep green Fenway-Kenmore area (Sox-related?), Boston is indeed showing its fall colors. And what do these colors tell us? Overall, our data shows that the Zindex for Boston as a whole has inched up just shy of two percent on a year over year basis. This would indicate that home values are still trending up in certain areas of the city, while they may be stabilizing or declining in others.
In looking at the various neighborhoods in more detail, valuations remain very high in, no surprise, the corridors of old money in Back Bay and Beacon Hill (3.3% increase year over year) and in the ultra-trendy South End (7.9% increase). What did surprise me a bit was the nearly 16% jump in the Zindex for Central Boston; which propelled that area from the eighth most expensive in Boston to the third (vaulting past both Jamaica Plain and Charlestown among others). I’d appreciate any thoughts or comments from our readers on what may be causing this increase.
Don’t feel too badly for the homeowners in Jamaica Plain (which was #2 last year on our zindex chart), Charlestown, or South Dorchester, as all three neighborhoods showed annual increases in the 1%-3% range. The next six neighborhoods in Zindex value- S. Boston, E. Boston, W. Roxbury, Roxbury, Roslindale, Mattapan - all remained essentially stable year over year. A really interesting statistic is that Hyde Park (where my grandmother lived), Allston-Brighton, and Fenway-Kenmore - which are the most affordable neighborhoods in Boston - all saw their Zindex increase by 1.5%-3.5%. There is possibly a lesson here: the more affordable parts of a city may not be that way for long.
So enjoy the color, and let me know what your thoughts are. As for me, I’m going to drift off into a showing of Scorsese’s "The Departed" to get a little Boston fix (who knows, maybe the film will give the South End a little bump in their Zindex as well).
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Real Estate, Real Estate Analytics, Zillow
Comments
5 Comments so far
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teapartier on October 6, 2006 9:32 pm
Guys,
I came across this post here from http://bostonreb.com/blog/?p=1762 who had an interesting perspective. Not sure I agree, but anyway…
I like the estimated value of my house - cool, useful service. Nice job.
But I can’t help think that you are now copying Trulia’s website with this post and where you seem to be going. They have a very cool interactive heatmap thing here: http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Massachusetts/Boston-heat_map/
Come on Zillow you should do better than this.
David G from Zillow.com on October 6, 2006 10:09 pm
TEAPARTIER -
Hey, it’s just a blog post
We do random analysis and stories like this on the blog from time to time - check out the archives.
There are actually live heatmaps on Zillow - more granular than this one, driven by each home’s Zestimate value - use the checkbox at the top of the large map page to activate the heatmap above city level. Enjoy!
Thanks for the feedback.
Jeff -
Don’t take it personally, — me, I really enjoyed this post!
Jon Ernest on October 7, 2006 9:23 am
Thanks for the Boston Blurb!!
Mr. Keith kind of did rip you a new one there, I think ripping on Zillow is fashionable to us agents nowadays (I did it myself with the whole owner pricing thing, I still agree with my comments).
I assume that you were going with the Green Monsta (monstER to non locals) with the green red sox comment..
Comments for the increase in “Central Boston”…
You’re completely seeing the direct effects of the new projects and money brought to the area by the big dig speculation.
As far as my two cents, you guys are FAR from perfection, but constantly striving for perfection is what makes something great. Keep up the good work.
John K on October 7, 2006 8:41 pm
I stand by my post! Well, it’s heavily edited, now, but I still stand by it!
Keep up the good work, Zillow!
eben on October 13, 2006 1:42 pm
The reason why Central Boston* is becoming a hot piece is because the light is at the end of the tunnel for that area of the Big Dig. The Rose Kennedy greenway is coming… instead of the swath of 93 that used to tear through the city.
Plus there’s tons of real estate projects going on there. Brand new developments, old North End conversions, etc.
*Really an amalgam of the North End, Downtown Crossing, Financial District, and Leather District.