Roxbury revival is taking hold
A diverse group of first-time buyers are drawn by low prices, but the run-up in home values worries some longtime residents
Chuck Gray, a merger-and-acquisition specialist for a financial services firm, has put down a deposit on a three-bedroom town house in Roxbury now under construction. With a $400,000 house-hunting budget, he looked in many parts of Boston before choosing Roxbury's Fort Hill neighborhood, partly because it's close to downtown.
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''I rent in the South End now, but I knew I couldn't afford it," said Gray, 31, an African-American who grew up in Memphis. ''Roxbury is both close and affordable."
Two years ago, another South End renter made the same choice. Steve O'Brien, 40, an information technology specialist who is white, paid $230,000 for a two-bedroom ''mini-brownstone" in Lower Roxbury, near the South End border, where he lives with his partner, Triet Nguyen, 27, an accountant. One advantage of Roxbury was that O'Brien was able to buy a single-family home instead of a condo.
''I wanted to own something and not have to pay condo fees, and have my own yard and my own roof in case I wanted to do a roof deck," he said.
Roxbury is on the cusp of a revival, real estate agents say. With housing costs soaring, many first-time buyers are seeing Roxbury as an affordable alternative to other neighborhoods.
Among Roxbury's selling points is its proximity to the city's business districts -- the new Silver Line makes the daily 2.3-mile commute from Dudley Square to Downtown Crossing in under 20 minutes. In addition, Roxbury has both new housing stock and charming old homes. And the City of Boston and community development corporations have invested in revitalizing commercial parts of Roxbury such as Dudley Square. Besides building affordable housing, these efforts aim to attract more retailers to make the neighborhood more vibrant.
''Roxbury has turned the corner," said Elisa Daley, a real estate agent at Gibson Domain/Domain.
Between 1990 and 1999, the number of condos sold in Roxbury averaged 320 a year; since 2000, the annual average is 517, according to the Warren Group, which tracks real estate sales.
But if Roxbury has much to recommend it, past perceptions of it as a crime-ridden neighborhood can linger, especially when 2004 was one of the most violent years in recent memory for Boston. According to police figures, city homicides rose from 41 in 2003 to 64 last year, including 20 in Roxbury.
Three years ago, Kate Phelps, a suburban empty-nester, bought a condo in Roxbury's Highland Park after she and her husband could find nothing they liked for under $200,000 in Cambridge. She still sometimes thinks about a basketball coach who was shot to death in a Roxbury park last summer.
''I have moments when I think, 'Yikes! What did I do?' " she said of her move. ''But I have other moments when I think I'm very lucky."
Among the many things she loves about her new address is being close to Northeastern University and the Museum of Fine Arts.
''I've discovered parts of the city I never knew about," she said. ''I can play tennis on courts near Northeastern. I can walk a mile to the MFA. Fort Hill is one of the most beautiful parks in Boston with free jazz concerts in the summer. There's a bike path outside my door that goes all the way up to Massachusetts Avenue or down to Forest Hills or the Arboretum."
Being close to cultural attractions is important to many Roxbury buyers, who often started their house-hunting search elsewhere, usually in the South End.
''They say, 'I need two bedrooms,' " said Daley, the real estate agent. ''And they get so frustrated because their budgets will buy only a one-bedroom condo in the South End. So I say, 'Let me show you something.' And I don't tell them it's in Roxbury until I get them there."
In many cases, they like what they see enough to buy it.
Gregory Burton, principal broker at Burton Associates Real Estate, also sees the demand.
''We have a number of people specifically asking for Roxbury, individuals who are white," he said. ''Ten years ago, that was unheard of. Many people priced out of the South End are looking at Roxbury."
According to the 2000 US Census, the latest data available from the city, Roxbury's population was 47,517. About 65 percent of that number were African-American; 24 percent were Latino; and 10 percent were white. One reason newcomers are looking at Roxbury is because of its housing stock.
''There's quite a few brownstones and Victorians," Burton said. ''And there's a lot of revitalization in Dudley Square. That's certainly lending itself to the desirability of Roxbury."
Just last month in Dudley Square, Nuestra Comunidad, a community development corporation, joined with such partners as the City of Boston, the Commonwealth, and
Not only are there old homes in Roxbury, there's new construction. According to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, nearly 1,000 housing units, many of them condos, have just been completed, are under construction or renovation, or are in the planning pipeline. About 40 percent of those units are designated as affordable.
Price, of course, is a big part of Roxbury's draw. The 2004 median sale prices in Boston's downtown neighborhoods were $1.26 million for a single-family and $463,000 for a condo, according to the Warren Group. For Roxbury, the medians were $370,000 for a single-family and $399,000 for a condo.
A $300,000 budget that didn't go very far elsewhere will purchase a three-bedroom condo near Fort Hill for Eric Nelson, a white medical student from California who's renting in the Back Bay. Nelson, 29, has African-American stepbrothers and is thrilled at the chance to live in a diverse neighborhood. But given his limited finances, Nelson said he didn't so much choose Roxbury as ''Roxbury picked me."
Roxbury prices may be attractive to outsiders but seem sky-high to the neighborhood's longtime residents, said Joyce Ferriabough Bolling, a political and media strategist who lives in Roxbury.
''The fact that new people are coming to the area is very much a positive," she said. ''But a lot of people who live here feel they're being priced out of the market. Gentrification is a concern."
And any talk of a Roxbury resurgence should be judged largely by how it benefits longtime residents, added Mark Maloney, director of the BRA.
''I don't like to measure success just by counting the number of people moving into Roxbury from outside," he said.
Providing new housing opportunities to longtime residents is particularly important, said Michael Miles, president of a neighborhood group that represents an area roughly defined by Mayfair, Elmore, and Kensington streets.
''In the past, the balance of development has tipped heavily to affordable housing, and that's certainly needed," he said. But what's also needed is the development of market-rate housing that's attractive to longtime Roxbury residents who otherwise might have to move out of the neighborhood if they want to trade up, he said.
One development that Miles is excited about is called Washington Commons. The first of its 22 market-rate single-family homes and condos should be ready for occupancy later this year, said Sharif Abdal-Khallaq, principal of Saak Realty, the broker for the market-rate units, which range in asking price from $250,000 to $345,000. Ten of the 16 homes under agreement are to buyers from the neighborhood, Abdal-Khallaq said.
''I've lost a lot of customers to the suburbs because people can't find what they want here," Abdal-Khallaq said. ''People want to stay here, but they need a product to keep them here."
Perhaps nobody is more bullish on Roxbury than Dennis Bynum, 41, an ambulance supervisor. In a neighborhood near Dudley Square, he's acting as his own agent as he seeks to sell the three-family home where he lived for 15 years. His price: $1.3 million.
The home's roof deck certainly has million-dollar views of Boston. But according to MLS Property Information Network, the record selling price for a Roxbury three-family listed with its service was set in May 2004. It was $850,000.
Bynum is undeterred by realtors telling him his price is too high. As he sees it, values in Roxbury are going nowhere but up.
''I'm basically going to wait for my price," he said.
Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com.
