A starter home comeback here in Massachusetts?
Home prices have certainly fallen from their 2005 peak here in the Bay State.
But have their fallen far enough to make a starter home, that mythical launching pad into the real estate market for young families and the like, affordable again around here?
A Globe article on Sunday suggests that lower prices are certainly helping. In fact, some first-time buyers are encouraged enough to shift their sites from condos, which have become for many the first-time buy, to single family homes, the story notes.
Still, it all depends on where you are trying to buy, especially in the Boston area.
Some of the best deals can be had, of course, in areas the hardest hit by the downturn and foreclosures.
Worcester, Framingham, Hyannis and Brockton have all seen median condo prices fall below $100,000.
And you can find some single family homes for $150,000 on some parts of the Cape and North shore, the article notes.
Yet I find the evidence less compelling when it comes to still relatively hot areas like the western suburbs.
There’s an example of a buyer who is happy over only having to spend
$810,000 for a four-bedroom home in Wellesley.
Still sounds pretty steep to me.
The other issue is distance from greater Boston and its suburbs, where the vast majority of jobs in the region are located.
Even during the boom housing prices fell pretty rapidly once you got outside of Interstate 495.
That’s even more the case now.
For example, Cape prices, if you are not on the water, look pretty good.
But fighting traffic to commute from the Cape to the Boston area is a daunting prospect, to say the least.
