"Boston’s new luxury towers appear to house few Bostonians" by Tim Logan Globe Staff September 11, 2018
What an inauspicious date for publication, and I'm sure the proper evacuations would take place in any event.
Many buyers of condominiums in the new luxury towers sprouting around Boston are either part-time residents or investors — sometimes with no clear connections to Boston — according to a study published Monday that argues the city’s high-end building boom is doing little to help local residents.
Researchers with the Institute for Policy Studies, the Washington, D.C., think tank that produced the report, found that more than one-third of the units are owned by limited liability companies, trusts, and other business entities that allow buyers to obscure their identities. Just 36 percent of owners requested the property tax exemption the city offers homeowners — a sign that the owners may live elsewhere most of the time.
The report is the latest example of the growing concern among housing advocates that Boston’s development boom is producing little that most locals can afford. In this case, study author Chuck Collins said, it appears whole buildings are being constructed for global elites who are looking to park some cash.
Oh.
“I wouldn’t even call these buildings a housing market. It’s just another asset class for a segment of investors looking for an alternative to the stock market,” Collins said. “It’s not a home. It’s a wealth-storage unit,” but developers and real estate agents in the luxury market rebut that charge, saying they have little interest in selling condos that sit empty most of the time. Global demand for housing in Boston is a sign of the city’s vibrant culture and economy, and many new buildings limit the number of units they sell to investors, they say.
Yeah, right, they are going to turn down a buyer because he might just be whatever.
The study found that more than half of the 51 condos at the Mandarin Oriental on Boylston Street are owned by trusts — a mechanism sometimes used by investors but also sometimes used by owner-occupants for legal or liability reasons.
Meanwhile, barely one in five residents at Millennium Tower claim the residential exemption — suggesting those units may be either second homes or rental properties.
Many units in these buildings were bought with cash, property records show, and the institute said the average sale price across all 12 developments topped $3 million per unit.
Wouldn't that raise a red flag?
Thousands more condos priced in the seven figures are under construction or are being planned in and around downtown — extreme examples, advocates say, of so much of the housing cropping up in city neighborhoods, properties priced beyond the reach of most middle-class residents.
“We have these glaring wealth gaps in our city, and we’re adding thousands of units for uber-rich people,” Collins said. “The question becomes, who is Boston for?”
I think the que$tion has been an$wered, don't you?
That question is also reverberating in other high-cost cities, from New York to San Francisco to Vancouver, which last year levied a new tax on thousands of so-called empty homes of 1 percent of taxable assessed value. The city said the tax has so far raised $30 million for affordable housing programs.
The institute, a left-leaning organization that advocates on economic and social issues, recommended that Boston consider following Vancouver with its own empty-home tax, as well as a surcharge on home sales above $2.5 million.
So they sell and buy somewhere else, right?
Not that it matters when you see the building boom is built on a foundation of $and.
And what is their answer?
Tax!
Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards held a hearing in April to consider taxes on speculative or vacant high-end housing and is planning more discussions on the topic this fall. She said it’s clear the flood of high-end housing isn’t helping the many residents who can’t afford rents, which can easily top $2,000 for a one-bedroom unit.
Yeah, it “is not your father’s housing market,” they are just “building portfolios for the super-rich, rather than places for Bostonians to live” because builders such as Richard Friedman have more global aims.
There are many reasons buyers might use shell companies to make their purchases: privacy, for one, or to hold the property in trust for tax or liability reasons. Truly anonymous buyers, represented only by brokers or lawyers, surface occasionally, said Sue Hawkes, managing director of Collaborative Cos., which markets luxury properties, but not often.
EXCUSE ME?
Still, the number of cash transactions and anonymous deals, Collins said, raises the specter of shady foreign buyers using US real estate to hide or launder illicit money. Two years ago, the Treasury Department launched an investigation of money laundering by foreign buyers in a half-dozen US cities, closely examining all-cash, shell-company purchases. The government oversight has chilled parts of Miami’s foreign-money-fueled condo market, and US Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, has filed legislation to extend the Treasury investigation nationwide.
You mean, like organized crime or drug gangs?
Earlier this year, Mayor Martin J. Walsh asked the Treasury Department to add transactions in Boston to its investigation. That process is ongoing, a Walsh spokeswoman said. A Treasury spokesman did not respond to a message on Monday.
In 2015, the Walsh administration forced developers of high-end condos to contribute more to city programs that finance affordable housing. And Boston passed an ordinance to sharply limit short-term rentals, in the hopes that more apartments are rented yearly to residents, instead of nightly to tourists at much higher rates.
The city’s housing chief, Sheila Dillon, declined to comment on the institute’s report, because she hadn’t seen it, but she said Walsh’s housing plan “was created to address the housing needs of the city’s growing population for a range of incomes and demographics.”
“It should go without saying, however, that every unit of housing being built should be occupied to help ease Boston’s housing shortage,” Dillon said.....
But they gotta say it anyway, meaning you can't take anything they say seriously!
--more--"
Related: Pier 4 Penthouse
Think of it as your $anctuary.
Now $weet Dreams.
"Five years ago, the development next door to the Burlington Mall had all the hallmarks of the 1980s suburban office complex — anonymous facades of brick, concrete, and glass, unlimited parking, and an anodyne corporate name: New England Executive Park. Today, the property at the edge of Route 128 has bike-rental stations, hip eateries that stay open after the sun goes down, and an “OMMM Space” for yoga and meditation. Oh, and they call it “the District” now. The place used to be “your typical old suburban grandfather’s office park,” said Leah Harsfield, a vice president at National Development, which bought the site in 2013. Now, she said, “it’s more like a college campus,” and it’s designed to help lure a 21st-century workforce that has been spurning the suburbs for the city....."
They still want more parks (the dogs have to have some place to, you know) and a parking garage would be a big change.
