Posts in Investing
BPDA's Housing Vision for the Next Decade

As we start a new decade, Mayor Walsh and the director of the Boston Planning and Development Agency, Brian Golden, are making big plans to continue to develop Boston’s housing stock. It is estimated that Boston’s population will grow to 760,000 in the next decade which means there is a need for more housing across all income levels. Through a community engagement process, the BPDA is focusing on working with Bostonians to create more appropriate housing in “East Boston, Mattapan, Glover’s Corner, Downtown, Newmarket, Allston-Brighton, and Charlestown,” which are neighborhoods the city has identified as areas that will shape future growth. Those neighborhoods are in addition to “Dorchester Avenue in South Boston, Nubian Square (formerly known as Dudley Square), and the Washington Street corridor in Jamaica Plain and Roxbury” where studies have already been completed. There are also initiatives to better connect Boston’s neighborhoods with improved transportation options which you can read more about here.

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What Do Millionaires Say About Building Wealth Through Real Estate Investing?

Some of the most well-known millionaires (think Barbara Corcoran or Grant Cardone) of our day have accumulated wealth through real estate investing. And even those who accumulated wealth through other means insist that real estate investing is a great way to build wealth. Read exactly what they had to say here.

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A New Type of Rental Investment

Roofstock, a California-based company founded in 2014, is offering people a new type of of investment opportunity in which accredited investors can buy partial ownership in single-family rental homes. Since the crash more than a decade ago, people have become more interested in owning rental properties, but that is often accompanied with many headaches being a landlord. Roofstock takes those headaches out of the equation by acting as the property manager and investors are able to enter the rental ownership market at a lower cost. To read more about this interesting idea, click here.

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Boston's Housing Crisis Is Attracting Investors

Boston is facing a major housing crisis due to the lack of housing supply. Rents are on the rise not just in Boston, but in the suburbs around Boston as well and vacancy rates are around 3%. While it is a bad situation for renters in the area, investors from all around the country are looking to take advantage of the market by purchasing multifamily properties. To read more, click here.

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The Low-Down on Pre-Fab Homes

With escalating costs associated with building on-site, we have decided to work with a modular home builder for our project in Chelsea, MA. But before making this decision, we spent a lot of time researching the pros and cons of shifting from on-site construction to this pre-fab option.

The US is far behind other countries in adopting this way of building, partly due to the stigma associated with “pre-fab” homes. However, the time and cost savings far outweigh this drawback. Take a look at this article to get the low-down on the various types of pre-fab homes and the benefits of each.

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Cap Rates on the Rise

For all of my fellow real estate investors out there, you have probably noticed the same frustrating trend that I have with properties being marketed over the last few years. Every day, properties have been offered to the market with incredibly low cap rates and no potential for upside except unpredictable, hypothetical appreciation. For the majority of these properties it is impossible to make the numbers work for anyone other than large institutional investors or UHNWI looking to park money. In March of this year, CBRE and other real estate advisory firms were predicting that in 2018 we would begin to see a rise in Cap Rates.

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Airbnb for Investors – Is it Better Than the Traditional Rental Model?

Airbnb is a remarkable success story, what started in 2007 with a few guys renting out air mattresses and serving breakfast to guests in their San Francisco apartment, has now grown into a $31 Billion tech company. Thanks to Airbnb, home sharing has become a widely accepted platform with many of its users opting to stay in an “Airbnb” over hotels when traveling. People enjoy the ability to have more space, a place to cook and maybe do laundry as well as gain a more local experience of being immersed in a neighborhood.

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Top 5 Podcasts all Real Estate Investors Should Listen To

One of the most important aspects that all real estate investors and entrepreneurs should focus on is consistent improvement. One of the most surefire ways to guarantee consistent improvement is to be constantly learning new things.  Believe it or not, some of the most accessible and in-depth knowledge on real estate investing can be consumed via podcasts. While you may find it difficult to find time to read, the beauty of podcasts is that they are versatile. You can easily turn on a podcast during your morning commute, while you’re on the treadmill at the gym or when you’re simply relaxing on the couch. Next time you have some free time to kill, consider listening to one of the podcasts below:

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5 Tips for Performing Due Diligence on a Small Scale Investment Property

Regardless of how you got started, congratulations on taking the giant leap into becoming a real estate investor! However, its critical not to get too excited yet as you are about to embark on the most important part of buying an investment property; performing the due diligence.  Due diligence can be easily summed up as “doing your homework” on the property. During this process, you’ll want to investigate and inspect all the vital information that pertains to the property.

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How To Evaluate a Market for Real Estate Investing

We’ve all heard that cliché saying in real estate, “location, location, location”. Despite it being over-used and often times written in all capitals on corny listing sheets, location is truly one of the most important components to real estate. Just as you would evaluate the numbers of an investment property, you must also evaluate the economics and demographics within the subject market itself. This blog article will outline some of the most important characteristics of choosing a market, and consider what makes a market desirable or undesirable for investors.

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Real Estate or the Stock Market? - 3 Things to Consider

In our recent blog article, we considered the differences between Active Vs. Passive real estate investing and how the strategies offered different options for investors. However, another question to ask; is investing in real estate better than investing in more traditional investments such as stocks, bonds, or mutual funds?

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