Affordability - that is if you have the cash
Condo prices have fallen to rock bottom levels in Dorchester and Mattapan.
Back during the boom, sales of triple-decker units for more than $300,000 were routine.
Today, the media condo price has plunged in Dorchester to $110,000, with Mattapan even lower, at $55,900, according to the Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
Pushing down prices has been a flood of foreclosures, with banks and other lenders having seized more than 928 condos and homes, the vast majority in Dorchester, East Boston, Mattapan and Roxbury.
So after years of soaring prices, is there a small affordability silver lining to this grim picture?
Forget it. Unless you have cash stashed in the bank, you can’t get these deals.
Banks won’t lend to buyers trying to snap up foreclosed triple-decker condos, in part because the condo associations are defunct, among any other problems, notes Tim Deihl of At Home Realty in Dorchester.
Deihl, who also happens to be marketing units at the Carruth as well as at other Dorchester properties, clearly has an interest in buyers looking there.
Still, what he says matches up pretty closely to what other observers are reporting about how the real estate bust has played out in neighborhoods like Dorchester.
That does not mean these units are not getting scooped up. Small-time investors and speculators, with the ability to put down $50,000 in cash, are getting these deals.
The typical game plan is fix them up, rent them out, and then sell them down the line in two or three years.
Of course, at that point, the $50,000 unit will be back on the market for $150,000.
