02.07.2022

Urban exodus | Receivership talk? | More on Santander

Urban exodus: Prices surge in Boston suburbs, sputter in cities

Guess there really was something to all that talk of home buyers fleeing to the suburbs.

The books have closed on the 2021 real estate market, and more than thirty different communities, from small towns to posh ‘burbs, saw median home prices jump by 20 percent or more, according to stats from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

These range from Cohasset and Hingham on the South Shore, to Concord, Wayland and Hopkinton to the west, to North Shore towns like Manchester and Ipswich.

A number of towns saw their median price cross the $1 million mark, including Sudbury and Westwood, while Wayland, at $950,000, wasn’t far behind.

It wasn’t just the upscale towns that saw the big increases, with Shirley’s median price increasing more than 22 percent to $450,000 while Millis is now up to $580,000 after a nearly 24 percent jump.

By contrast, median home prices in Brookline and Cambridge edged down, while a number of other Boston neighborhoods saw only modest single-digit gains in both home and condo prices, including South Boston, Charlestown, East Boston and Jamaica Plain.

Bye, bye, Brenda: With yet another Boston schools’ chief headed out, can receivership talk be far behind?

Brenda Cassellius, who will now be leaving her BPS superintendent’s post at the end of the school year, is part of a long and dreary line of Boston schools chiefs stretching back many years who have largely failed to right the city’s struggling school system.

And Cassellius’s impending departure is likely to throw fuel on debate over whether Boston schools should be placed under state receivership, the educational system’s version of bankruptcy.

To judge by the stories and op-eds over the past few months that have raised the dreaded possibility of a state takeover, there’s already blood in the water.

“The stakes are high for Boston and its more than 51,000 students: Failure to improve could result in state receivership and further erode the faith of families,” a Globe story noted last fall.

Cassellius compounded matters by letting her superintendent’s license expire, generating months of unflattering stories, and failing to win over enough internal support among principals before unveiling a school restructuring plan, among other snafus.

Despite all the woes facing BPS, it’s hard to see the state Department of Education lowering the boom with a new mayor having just taken over.

So Michelle Wu will likely get her shot to fix the city’s schools. But if that doesn’t work …

Fears of hit to minority homeownership as Santander exits mortgage market

Back to the subject of residential real estate: A push to boost the number of home buyers of color in Boston could face much tougher sledding with the Spanish banking giant’s decision to stop taking new mortgage applications after Friday.

Santander wrote more than 40 percent of the 160 mortgages issued under ONE+ Boston mortgage during its two years in operation.

In turn, 70 percent of these new homebuyers were from “households of color,” said Sheila Dillon, Boston’s housing chief, in a statement, who called Santander, “a major partner” in the program.

However, the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, which helps run the program with Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development, is in talks with two banks seeking to join the ONE+ Boston mortgage program.

Here’s our story that ran Friday afternoon on the impact on state and city affordable housing programs from Santander’s decision to shut down residential lending in the U.S.

“We will just have to call other banks in the area to step up and fill that gap,” said Symone Crawford, executive director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance.

Quick Hits:

Now if they can only find a more eco-friendly, non-polymer version of this: “Revolutionary material as strong as steel yet as light as plastic developed by MIT scientists" (Study Finds).

More reasons not to watch the Olympics: “Olympians in tears over poor living conditions, lack of food at Winter Games” (New York Post) and “What China won’t let you see amid the glitzy coverage of the Olympics” (WP)

Jettisoning another piece of Build Back Better: “Free Community College Is Off the Table, Jill Biden Says” (NYT)

“UMass alumni couple give $15M to Chan Med School for ALS, neuroscience research” (Worcester Telegram)

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.

Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.

For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.

An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.

Our focus is:

·      Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;

·      Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;

·      The media and why it does what it does;

·      Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;

·      And whatever else catches our fancy.

Contrarian Boston seeks contributors

Have a news tip? Is there an issue you would like to see explored? Interested in writing up a news item or short opinion piece? As Contrarian Boston gets on its feet, I would like to add more news and a wider range of commentary as well.

Intrigued? Drop me a line at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.

Thanks for reading and see you Wednesday.