I was recently at my office when our sales manger was interviewed by Curt Nickisch of WBUR. He also spoke with me about the sort of story he was interested in doing and asked if I had any clients with a specific sort of experience right now. I ended up putting him in touch with several clients – all with very different stories and very different experiences in the current real estate market and he interviewed two of them to write a fairly editorial piece on the Boston market.

The Media Spin

This is the paragraph Nickisch led with, “This Friday is the first day of spring when – to mangle a phrase from Tennyson — one’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of the…housing market. Spring is the start of the traditional home-selling season, but this spring is not looking so sunny. The recession is making buyers nervous about taking the plunge.” The article is titled, “Spring Home Sales Not Looking Sunny”.

Au contraire mon frere. Jamaica Plain real estate is on fire. The Realtors in my market have been pinching themselves asking, “is this really happening?” There seems to be a solid base of folks who want to buy and a real lack of good inventory. This is helping us maintain a solid foothold and values have stabilized. We are quite aware that this is a regional phenomenon. as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, other parts of the country are clearly not experiencing the market movement we are. Some sellers outside of our market aren’t looking at a small loss or break even, but rather no option to sell. No one buying. Nada.

I think the recent Boston Magazine article by Katherine Bowers referencing the comment about the New England real estate market, “it could be worse” put it quite well, “Not to imply that’s an unfair assessment. Today’s economy is precarious, to say the least, and the housing free-fall deserves a lion’s share of the blame. The problem is, the swath of reality under discussion is usually so wide, it doesn’t give individual homeowners much of a sense of what’s happening with values in their town. No matter how many assistants these experts have got scouring macro-level sales and foreclosure data, you can bet your renovated mudroom they haven’t checked the latest figures for single-family homes in Rockport.” The same goes for Jamaica Plain and the handful of towns that made the “Best Places to Live 2009” in the recent issue.

Bowers made some other valid points, “What’s more, there were 64 towns that outperformed last year’s average. From that list, we singled out 20 communities that have been resilient over a longer haul, with none of them down more than 9 percent since 2005; seven of the towns have in fact gained in value since the market peak. (Thank you to the Warren Group for the data and to the Realtors who shared insights on the ground game.)

More bright spots: Skilled real estate agents in key markets are staying busy. Small local banks are still lending. Where prices have dipped, opportunities abound. And for those hunkering down till the all-clear, prices for home-improvement projects couldn’t be better.” I couldn’t agree more. I feel like she interviewed me for the article.

JP has a lot to offer the buyer in today’s market. Buckle up for an awesome spring.