Housing developers getting nervous| Another boneheaded Gannett move | Wu shines light on City Hall’s real estate empire | Foul-mouthed and broke |About Contrarian Boston
Controversial MassGOP candidate previously filed for bankruptcy
Rayla Campbell, who gained notoriety with her foul-mouthed speech at the state Republican convention, is apparently broke in more ways than one.
The Republican nominee for secretary of state, who outlandishly claimed that schools are teaching five-year-old boys to perform oral sex on each other, has just a few thousand dollars in her campaign account.
But Campbell’s personal finances aren’t in much better shape.
Campbell filed for federal bankruptcy court protection in 2019, having fallen behind on the mortgage payments on her now former home in Randolph, and on her student loans and other bills, court records show.
Campbell wound up selling her home in Randolph for $420,000 last fall, and her bankruptcy court case closed last November.
Even as she has struggled financially, Campbell, an ardent Trump fan in deep blue Massachusetts, has found time to run for statewide and even federal office as a Republican.
Campbell launched her campaign for secretary of state in March 2021 in the midst of her bankruptcy proceedings and coming off an unsuccessful run for Congress in 2020.
Campbell challenged Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley through a write-in campaign in the fall of 2020, raising more than $60,000 in that effort. (Her expenditures included nearly $1,100 at bridal boutique Grandasia during a clearance sale, with the purpose stated as office supplies, nearly six weeks after she failed miserably in her bid to unseat Pressley.)
Go figure.
Slowdown ahead in new apartment, condo development?
That’s the word from Kyle Warwick, a founding principal of one of the fastest growing development firms around, Redgate.
The Boston-based developer and investment advisory firm has been on roll, building new, upscale apartment projects in up-and-coming areas, from downtown Quincy to Chelsea and East Boston.
In its latest venture, Redgate is accelerating its expansion beyond New England, having just recently opened two new offices, one in Bethesda and the other in Raleigh, where the firm is pushing forward with a $100 million apartment project.
While upbeat about Redgate’s prospects, Warwick contends interest rates – check out the Fed’s big hike today - and other economic turmoil are likely to have a chilling effect on residential developers as they weigh whether to push ahead with plans for new condos and apartments.
In fact, the development side of the market could very well be slowing now. But we may not see signs of it for another six months or so, given real estate is a lagging indicator.
“You will see the pipeline slow down, there is no question about it,” Warwick said.
If so, that could be a rude awakening for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and other local and state leaders, who are weighing plans for rent control and fees on luxury home and condo sales, among other things.
Amid housing crisis, a huge opportunity
Critics of City Hall have grumbled for literally decades about the massive real estate empire owned by the Boston Planning and Development Agency and other city departments.
And, as it turns out, the critics were on to something.
A range of city agencies - from the BPDA to the transportation department to city schools - control 9.5 million square feet of vacant or underutilized parcels, according to a new report issued Wednesday by the Wu administration.
The most comprehensive survey of its type in decades, the report zeroes in on dozens, if not hundreds, of potential development opportunities of various size, from small lots suitable for a townhome or two, to parking lots that could be the launch pad for sizeable new affordable apartment projects.
Kudos to Mayor Michelle Wu, who took the bull by the horns, hired the needed experts, and commissioned a report that should have been done long ago.
Last dance for surging home prices, sales?
Could be, given the Fed’s decision Wednesday to do the biggest rate hike in three decades.
And home buyers appear to be rushing to get in under the wire and land properties – and mortgages – before rates go any higher, if the latest real estate numbers are any indication.
Despite what it calls a “shrinking pool of buyers,” home sales across the Boston area rose 1.4 percent in May over the same month last year, while the median price jumped 15 percent to $875,000, according to the Greater Boston Assocation of Realtors.
“We’ve seen an increased sense of urgency and a greater a desire among many buyers to be more aggressive in making offers since mortgage rates started to rise above 3 ½ percent in January,” said GBAR President Melvin Vieira, an agent at RE/MAX Destiny.
Another dumb move by one of America’s biggest local newspaper chains
If you haven’t guessed already, we are talking about Gannett again, which owns a large share of the local newspaper market, though one that is steadily shrinking as it slashes and trashes venerable local weeklies.
Claiming its opinion pages are driving away readers, Gannett is now moving ahead with plans to scale back editorial pages at its papers across the country.
Of course, the company claims that cost cutting has nothing to do with it.
“Readers don’t want us to tell them what to think,” wrote a committee of Gannett editors who were appointed to weigh the future of opinion pages at the chain’s newspapers.
Sure, no one would want that – only a complete dolt of an editorial writer or opinion columnist would attempt to force feed readers their views, as opposed to using the arts of persuasion.
Opinion columns are a bigger draw than have ever been before – one needs to look no further than the Washington Post and The New York Times, where the opinion columnists are prominently displayed right near the top.
Sorry, but along with dumbed down and increasingly nonexistent local news coverage, slashing the editorial and opinion pages will simply give readers who care about local news and issues one less reason to subscribe.
If your goal is to produce stories and content that never offends or angers anyone, you shouldn’t be in journalism.
Quick hits:
Who knew? Communities are spending marijuana establishment impact fees on schools, police, fire and other unrelated things. “Do marijuana community impact fees really address impacts? Industry report finds lack of transparency in municipal spending” CommonWealth Magazine
Mini Trump is back: “Mills, LePage look ahead to November in Maine governor race” Boston Globe
Uh-oh! “MBTA nearing its day of reckoning: As federal funds dry up, spending far exceeding revenue”
What is Contrarian Boston?
I have fielded emails over the past couple of months 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.