OK, this is pretty silly, but Halloween is tomorrow.

If you have young children as I do, it’s practically national holiday over the next two days between parades at school and parties and trick or treating tomorrow.

I just got back from my five-year-old son’s kindergarten parade – my wife is headed over to preschool to watch our two daughters show off their fairy costumes.

If you are looking to optimize your haul of Halloween candy, Zillow.com has just come up with an index on the best towns and neighborhoods in each metro market to trick-or-treat in.

I know, just what you were looking for.

Anyway, the index, Zillow insists, is not just based on the rather crass and faulty assumption that neighborhoods with big and expensive homes will dole out more treats.

Home values are just one of four factors measures, the Seattle-based real estate site contends.

Disclaimers aside, the top five all happen to be high up on the scale when it comes to real estate values.

Now here’s a chance for a little reflection.

When Rona’s post goes up this afternoon, it will be No. 1000th entry on the blog since it was launched just over two years ago.

Rona’s been here from they start –congrats and cheers – I came on last fall. We marked the milestone in true blogger fashion, with a good dose of caffeine at the Keltic Krust in West Newton.

We never planned it this way, but there’s been a natural division of labor here on the blog.

Yesterday, the Boston Globe brought up an off-beat use of the internet for home-town searching. Find out who is trash-talking the town on line. That seems like fun, but there are readers who are looking for real information.

I ran the “Living Well is the Best Revenge” series from January through May this year. Then I ran out of reporters who would tell you all about their towns. My problem is two-fold. First, I know where I work and I don’t know about other towns. Second, the people I can call are agents. Most of them supply me with sales-talk, which I decline to pass on to you.

So, I still get questions I can’t answer. N.P. asked me about East Boston and Winthrop, but I came up blank of good information. T.M. wants to know about Waltham, Watertown, Westwood, Melrose and Malden.

Finally, here’s a magazine listing that appears roughly on target.

Frankly, I am still in shock over Forbes listing Cambridge as No. 11 on its list of “America’s best bargain cities.’’

It’s hard to dress up that one.

But I’d have a hard time arguing with the decision by Men’s Journal to feature J.P. as one of the country’s best neighborhoods.

The magazine cites the neighborhood’s mix of tradition with its increasingly eclectic mix of yuppies and immigrants and thriving, independent restaurants and shops.

In a doctor’s office waiting room, the conversation turned to how overpriced a certain supermarket was.

“Oh! You mean the one in town A, but the same store in town B is pretty competitive. When I first moved here I went to the one in town A, and I thought I’d starve in Massachusetts. “

The same store chain? So, chains do not all price the same. That was a revelation to some in the waiting room. Some chains are individually owned and operated; some just price differently depending on demand.

I knew this. I used to live in Winter Hill, Somerville. The nearest grocery store was the Star Market there. The prices were outrageous. Once we figured this out, we only shopped there for fill-in items. It sort of became our extended convenience store. We grocery shopped elsewhere; it was worth the gas.

Why was it so overpriced? One theory was that it was walking distance to Mystic Housing project, so it had a captive audience of shoppers without cars. If that theory is true, they were intentionally inflating the prices on a poor population…evil. Time went by. We moved away. A Stop and Shop opened up on McGrath Highway. That Winter Hill Star went out of business. Good riddance.

Forbes has come out with its annual real estate section.

It is chock full of all sorts of enlightening categories, from America’s most “lustful’’ and “greediest cities’’ to “America’s Best Bargain Cities.’’

Of course, what do you know, Cambridge weighs in at No. 11 in the bargain category, tied with Denver and I think Nashville. (For what it’s worth, Detroit is ranked No. 15 – sign me up!)

Yes, prices are certainly falling now here in Massachusetts, the land of perpetually overpriced homes.

But don’t get the idea that it’s a picnic out there for buyers, especially first time buyers.

The fact is, even during the boom not a whole lot of new housing was getting built. And what did get built too often turned out to be either retirement communities, deluxe condo developments, or ugly and obscenely overpriced McMansions.

A recent conversation I had with a banker on the South Shore got me riled up on this subject.

He was clearly surprised after spotting a trend that seems very out of place for our beloved state, especially the eastern half.

Builders are starting to snap up cheap lots and taking out $250,000 to $300,000 loans to put up starter homes, such as raised ranches.

Starter homes in Massachusetts? Who knew.

Sam Schneiderman, Broker-owner of Greater Boston Home Team
continues his Monday series with the first part of a discussion about property rights and restrictions. This is a must read for anyone thinking about buying, building, renovating or adding onto their property.

Many people feel that when they buy property, they should have the right to do what they want with it. Sooner or later, most homeowners that try to modify their property discover that the use and possibly the design of their property is subject to municipal rules that can restrict their plans. This applies when building a new home on a vacant lot and even to simple modifications of existing property, like adding a deck, shed, or widening a driveway.

Over the years, communities have developed their visions of what their cities or towns should look like.
Municipalities designate areas for businesses and other areas are designated for residential uses, like single families, two families and larger multi-family property. Some communities have designated industrial areas, adult entertainment areas, hospital districts, historical districts, etc.

I got this comment on Wednesday in regard to landlord-tenant relations:

... If the landlord has some kind of landscaping that needs maintenance/gardening/watering he has to do it or be resigned to it not surviving. For your average single family the renter will be taking care of that sort of stuff...

Last week, I took a walk with one of my former clients. She is an avid gardener. She knows her plants. She wanted to walk around to see what was popping up in gardens around town. Since it was early in the year, there wasn’t much. So, we popped into a local municipal park to see if the turtles were sunning themselves. They were! Nice afternoon. All-in-all, this was a pleasant afternoon. It cost us less than a dollar in gas and shoe leather.

Do you participate in any of these “living well” activities:
1. Gardening
2. Walking with friends
3. Using local parks

If you rent, does your landlord let you garden? Who pays for the seeds and plants? At my property, I do the gardening, but I would share it if my tenants wanted to express themselves horticulturally.

Walking with friends can be done by anyone with friends as long as both can walk or travel in a wheelchair or scooter. Have you spent an afternoon on foot this spring?

Local parks are sometimes easy to find, and sometimes not. How do you find them? My favorite activity, before I was a broker, was to go on guided tours of neighborhoods and parks. There are lots of them in the city of Boston. Look for them along the Emerald Necklace and in the North End. Now I have my off-time in the middle of the week, so I explore with friends or on my own.

Why is spring the typical busy season in real estate? People will argue that the spring buyers come out because the weather has turned. This theory doesn’t hold water with me. First, spring weather here is not uniformly pleasant. Second, for when it is pleasant, I can think of a hundred outdoor activities to do that don’t involve going into strangers houses. I think that people house-hunt in the spring in order to close at the end of the school year. That gets them into a new home before the school year starts again. This scheduling is further reinforced by the large number of rental leases that end during the summer months.

Whenever we talk about living well, schools almost always become part of the discussion. There has been a lot of opinion stated about schools that are “bad” or “good.” What makes a good school?

Today’s Living Well column is brought to you by Mike Berry. He’s an exclusive buyer’s agent in the area west of Boston bounded by these roads: West of 128, East of 495, South of 2, North of 9 and the Mass Pike.

Looking for a single family house with 6 rooms, 3 bedrooms, and 1.5 baths for around $350,000? Check out these cities & towns west of Boston in Middlesex County. Maynard, Acton, Hudson, Marlborough, Framingham and Ashland are located inside route 495 and are 30-50 minutes from Boston as the crow flies.

I guess it’s inevitable that the benefits of homeownership are now coming under scrutiny given the historic housing market bust we are living through now.

An essay in the Globe’s Ideas section this past Sunday, “Rethinking rent,’’ makes some great points.

During the boom, too many people who were just not cut out for homeownership wound up with big mortgages on single family homes and condos they simply couldn’t handle.

They clearly would have been better off renting.

The article also looks at the growth of the cult of homeownership in our country, the idea that owning a home allegedly bestows a range of quasi mystical benefits, from civic engagement to better all around happiness.

It certainly got me thinking about the pressure, if mainly internal, my wife Karen and I felt to make the jump into homeownership before having our first child.

Last month, WES asked a great question. We were talking about Living Well in Chelmsford. WES commented:

Yeah but how are the taxes compared to surrounding towns, I hear that they are much much higher. Where do you check? Posted by WES February 14, 09 03:10 PM

First of all, I want to set the record straight about “Taxachusetts.” We are in the middle when it comes to taxes in America. We only look bad because of the low-tax lands to our north.

To answer WES’s question, I went looking around for a comprehensive list of taxes by town. There are lots of partial lists by county or region. Lots of out-of-date information. The best one I found is this. It’s a couple of years old, but it works for the purpose of comparison. Once I know the comparative levels, I can look up the current rates.

So what took them so long?

That’s my reaction to the rollout Monday by state official and nonprofit executives of an initiative to buy up foreclosed homes in New Bedford and other hard-hit cities and towns across the state.

Citizens Housing and Planning Association will run what’s described as a “clearing house’’ for foreclosed properties. Community development groups will then buy up these distressed homes and condos, fix them up, and resell them at affordable prices to low and moderate income buyers.

Of course, the only problem is that the small-time real estate speculators who helped make a mess of inner-city neighborhoods across the state are already at work, snapping up foreclosed properties at dirt-cheap prices.

Here’s the next shoe to drop with the collapse of the real estate market: rising local taxes.

For most homeowners the plunge in values, which has left a significant portion of the market under water, is bad enough.

But the real estate crash is now poised to devastate local cities and towns across the country, many of which are now faced with tax bases that have shrunk dramatically overnight.

So while the assessment on your home may be going down, your local tax assessor will have to boost the tax rate to make up for all those home values that have vanished over the past two years. Roughly $3.3 trillion in property values disappeared last year amid the downturn, Zillow.com has reported.

Bloomberg offers a pair of interesting stats that get to the heart of this budding crisis

If your town is a Living Well town, write me!. Today, I invited Deb to tell you about a town she works in, that is today's Living Well spot.

I love the idea of Rona’s “Living Well is the Best Revenge” series. Yes, there are nice places to live around Boston where you don’t need to eat macaroni and cheese each night because you’re spending every dime you make on your house.

Malden is 8 miles north of Boston. There are two MBTA stops in the city. The Oak Grove T stop is one end of the Orange Line (so you can find a seat in the morning) and is located on the border of Melrose. The Malden Center T stop is, well it’s in the center of the city itself.

I got an email on Wednesday. Tim asked a good question for the "Living Well" topic. He asks:

… I have a question that hopefully you can answer [at Boston.com/news/blogs/renow]. I am new to the home buying market and I want to know why similar sized homes cost so much more in the Massachusetts market compared to say Cincinnati, Nashville or anywhere in Texas to name a few? Am I that naive is it really that much better living here then other states?

The article I sited Wednesday answers this question. If you want to read it yourself, the discussion of how talent-attracting regions are economically robust begins on page two, paragraph two.

In short, Boston and other places like it are “brain Meccas.” For Boston, the reason cited is the colleges. We have a lot of middle class, wealthy, and/or smart young people who come here for their college education. They think fondly of this place and many try to stay. Some come back. Some college educated people from elsewhere come here based on the buzz of their friends who went to school here or for a job.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. But after visiting an old college buddy who now lives in a sleep rural suburb of Harrisburg, I have come away a little envious.

Not of his house, a tidy and relatively spacious ranch. Let’s just call it a lifestyle thing.

Mike, who teaches political science at Penn State, and his wife, a former academic how is now a stay-at-home home, bought their house at a price that wouldn’t even get your own parking spot at a downtown Boston condo tower.

We didn’t get into the details, but I doubt if he paid half of what my wife and I shelled out for our Natick fixer-upper, which cost us $280,000 in 2002.

The “Living well is the best revenge” series depends on readers who can tell me why their town is a “living well” town. I fear that the nay-sayers have scared you all alway. Are there no nice places to live for $350,000 or less anywhere near Boston? Are Maynard, South Lawrence and Dedham all there is?

My best friend Amy moved to Fairhaven. She and her husband bought a 3 bedroom, 2 bath Colonial in the historic district. I thought she moved to the end of the earth. Since then, the place has grown on me. There is a bus to South Station. It’s a 45-minute commute to Providence.

I enjoyed the New Bedford folk festival on Labor Day weekend, I have walked the beaches and in the historic neighborhoods. Fairhaven Village, the retail area near the water, has a small but good cluster of shops and restaurants. Margaret’s is a favorite of mine. There are also shops there where boating supplies, clothes and gifts can be bought.

In Amy’s neighborhood is a young family with two children. The grandparents live nearby and see the grandchildren every day. One aunt lives there, too. This, apparently, is not uncommon. Fairhaven seems to be a town where people stay put.

According to Pat Magnell, there is a lot to like in Chelmsford.

Chelmsford is located north of Boston at the junction of Routes 3 and 495. Housing is varied in style and price ranges. Moderate priced single family homes and condominiums are readily available. In the past 6 months, 41 homes have sold within the “living well” limit.

In 2007 Money Magazine named Chelmsford one of the 100 best places to live in America. Why? A great combination of historical preservation and new growth.

This week, Sally tells us about Maynard. It is an affordable choice in the middle of more expensive towns.

I am a real estate agent, not based in Maynard, so I have no professional stake in trumpeting the virtues of this town. I did live in Maynard for a couple of years. Many of my friends have excellent incomes and could live in any neighboring town such as Lincoln or Concord, but they choose Maynard for it's small town atmosphere. The schools are about in the middle in terms of MCAS averages, for what it's worth. The parents I know have been satisfied with their kid’s education and some of them went on to excellent, selective colleges.

Maynard is the quintessential New England mill town with a population of about 10,000.
From just about anywhere in Maynard you can walk to the downtown area where you'll find restaurants, gift shops, a CVS, 3 banks, salons, a liquor store, hardware store and more. There is a lively art scene anchored by the artists building, ArtSpace. The library is newly renovated. And there’s a movie theater. The Mill Building houses many business including Monster, Inc and Curt Schilling's 38 Studios. One can drive to a commuter rail stop in either Acton or West Concord in 10 minutes. There are nature trails and other green space in the town.

This is the second entry in the series “Living Well is the Best Revenge,” which aims to highlight happy homeowners in towns that you don’t need a jumbo loan to live in. (I will chime in again below, in italics.)

Here is B.H.R’s entry on her move:

Hello,
I sold my more expensive house in a more affluent North-of-Boston town last year. I took a hit, but bought another much less expensive. My taxes are much lower, too, as are my heating and maintenance.

I bought for 180K in South Lawrence. The convenience is incredible. I'm about 2 minutes to either I-495 or 93. Lawrence is an interesting and diverse city, with a lot going on. It’s a short drive to the nice new train station. Big bonus, I can walk to work in the good weather, or drive in about 5 minutes.

Dedham is the first town in the series I call “Living Well is the Best Revenge.” Thank you to Matt for being the first volunteer to write here about where you can live well for less than the jumbo loan limit. Here's Matt, in his own words:

The first thing that comes to mind about Dedham is the access to Rt.128. Traffic is light and manageable. In three minutes we can be at Readville station or Hyde Park commuter rail locations and on our way to downtown. I have driven to Lake Winnipesaukee in 2 hours (without a ticket) and the Cape is an easy jaunt.

I drive around East Dedham and everyone has big yards, lots of space, fenced in yard, kids riding bikes around, tree lined streets and I am transported to all the features that I miss about former home in New Hampshire. With average rents of $1300/month, why wouldn't you pay $400 more to be living in a spacious ranch without anyone on top, below, or either side of you?

You can actually see Blue Hills (night skiing) illuminated in the winter months. The Stoneybrook reservation with 400 acres of trails abuts Dedham on the West Roxbury/Hyde Park borders. Wilson Mountain is another large recreational outlet for dog walkers and people staying in shape for ascents of higher peaks to the North. In January you can obtain a burn permit and have toasty marshmallow fires in your backyard and really capture the essence of New England. I have friends that are able to have them and even have built an ice skating rink in their large yard! It is an absolute blast and a great cure for cabin fever.

Everyone hates detours. We lived through the mother-of-all-detours, the Big Dig. That’s history. Now we have the garden-variety daily local detours that make the day interesting. What detours are you following these days?
Detours can make residential living hell. If you live on a quiet street that becomes a detour route, you now live on a main street. Not only can it wreck your quiet enjoyment, it is also the kiss of death if you happen to be selling. Have you lived on a detour? For how long? Where?

One of my clients owned a florist shop. She had a great location down the block from a hospital. She had a regular walk-in business in addition to phone orders. She was “Best of” a number of times. Then the city dug up the street. She called it, “the year I wanted to kill myself.” And it was a year.

I drove over the Walden Street Bridge on Friday afternoon. It was the first time since 2006. The owners of the little convenience store at the base of the bridge, The Shamrock and Thistle, had two years of dirt, noise and blocked traffic. I am glad that their life in a construction zone is over.

Some Cape Cod towns have come up with an ingenious way of raising revenue during the downturn.

They want to extend hotel and motel room taxes to rentals of private homes and condos.

That’s bound to hit vacationers in the wallet, for sure.

But think again before you dismiss this as some colorful and irrelevant Cape dispute. For if you are a homeowner in the Bay State, this is just a taste of things to come.

I like driving around at night in December. I see Christmas lighting wherever I go. In most towns, no one can tell you that your lights are too much. It is one of the perks of home ownership; like decorating. If you can pay the bill, you are free to light your home anyway you want. It is an activity where people express themselves, for better or for worse.

Today’s entry is for people who like Christmas lighting. (Tomorrow’s entry is for those who question the practice.)

When I first moved to Massachusetts, I heard that Revere was the Christmas lights capital of the area. However, Revere has a lot of competition. Where are the best (or the worst) lighted homes?

The New Republic column, “Firm Grasp on the Obvious,” cites this headline:

'Light' Meals are Lower in Fat, Calories
Huntington Herald-Dispatch

Equally obvious is this:

Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation study that found Suffolk County residents with the least access to fresh produce, safe parks, and affordable places to exercise were the least healthy.

Cities like Boston, Somerville, and Holyoke have been part of an effort to change this.

My question today is about home-town identity. I would like to hear from some of the small-town readers, those who went to regional schools, those who went to small local schools. How does home-town identity shape you?

In tough times, should towns that have been sharing facilities merge? Is it worth the change in identity to streamline the services paid for by municipal tax? Wenham and Hamilton are discussing just that. They already share a library and a regional high school, so why not get married? Two can live as cheaply as one, my grandmother used to say.

Across the country, sales of existing homes edged up 1.4 percent in September when compared with the same month last year, according to a report issued today by the National Association of Realtors. (From August to September, the increase was much larger, 5.5 percent.)

Staff at the NAR cite several possible reasons for this uptick in sales, including recent declines in sales prices and lower mortgage interest rates. But the real estate organization’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, definitely doesn’t seem ready to declare this a major market turnaround.

“The credit markets are not settled yet, although the mortgage market stabilized with the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Inventory remains high, and price declines are pressuring owners,” he said in an NAR press release. “Additional housing stimulus would stabilize prices more quickly, which in turn would bring faster stability to Wall Street. Removing the repayment feature on the first-time buyer tax credit and permanently raising loan limits would bring more buyers into the market and further reduce inventory.”

Yun also noted that 35 to 40 percent of the sales for the month were “distressed sales.” Those sales, he said, pulled down the national median sale price in September to $191,600, from $210,500 in the same month last year.

Here’s how the regions tracked by the NAR did on sales and median sale prices in September compared with September 2007:

West: Sales up 34.4%; price down 18.5%, to $253,600
Midwest: Sales down 2.5%; price down 7.9%, to $152,500
South: Sales down 7.8%; price down 4.1%, to $167,200
Northeast: Sales down 7.7%; price down 5.4%, to $246,800

At first blush on the wires today, these numbers seemed like possibly good news, if you are someone trying to sell a home or make a living selling homes. But it seems Yun struck the right tone, a cautious, not overly optimistic tone. What, if any, thoughts do you have on these numbers?

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