More Than a Feeling: A Boston Travelogue

Boston dates back to the 1630 purchase of what is now Boston Common from William Blaxton by Puritan colonists from England. It started out as a peninsula with three hills (the Trimount), but developers in the 18th and 19th centuries excavated the hills to fill in the back bay (an estuary of the Charles River) and increase the city's land area (only Beacon Hill remains partially intact).

All in all, Boston proper is home to six hundred thousand people on 130 square kilometres (50 square miles), for a population density of 4,600 people per square kilometre (12,000 per square mile). Only New York, Chicago and San Francisco in the US are denser. Between its density, its beautiful architecture and its wide sidewalks with shade trees, Boston is tremendously walkable.

Property auctions: where the action is

With home sales and prices dropping, it may seem like an odd time to be launching a residential real estate company.

But Jon Gollinger, a veteran Boston-area real estate executive, believes he has found a sweet spot in a down market with his newly launched Accelerated Marketing Partners.

The firm, in keeping with its title, will offer a sales method steadily gaining popularity in the weak market - auctions.

Lenders balk at Patrick foreclosure program

Governor Deval Patrick's foreclosure-prevention program, which he unveiled yesterday, has so far failed to win broad support from mortgage lenders.
The plan would help homeowners who cannot afford their mortgage payments to keep their houses or, failing that, prevent foreclosure by letting them sell their properties before a lender seizes them. Under the plan, the state would provide counseling or financial assistance to homeowners and recruit neighborhood organizations to work with homeowners and lenders to resolve delinquent mortgages in danger of foreclosure.

Everett land sought for River's Edge

The Everett land, until recently owned by General Electric, falls within the boundaries of River's Edge, a decade-old joint venture among the three cities to revitalize a 200-acre industrial area on both sides of the Malden River.

Medford Mayor Michael J. McGlynn, who chairs the Mystic Valley Development Commission, said the agency will seek to acquire the property by eminent domain or straight purchase, noting that it had previously made clear it would do so even if GE sold the land.

Arlington is hottest place in Eastern Mass.

His modest two-bedroom home in Arlington Heights was listed on a Friday for $459,000. By Saturday it had had several private showings. The next day, after an open house, he received eight offers at or above asking price, so he asked the four highest bidders for their best offers. On Monday the house sold for $480,000, more than a 50 percent profit on what he had paid for it three years earlier. "We were expecting, in an ideal world, to get our asking price, and we would have been very satisfied with that," said Stewart, a software engineer who moved to a bigger house in Bedford with his wife and two young children. The final price and quick sale, he added, "blew us away."

Grubb & Ellis Boston orchestrates $116 million sale

NEMC Real Estate Co. has completed the sale of the Biewend and Tupper buildings in Boston, Mass., for $116 million to Santa Ana, Calif.-based Triple Net Properties LLC.
Philip G. Giunta of Grubb & Ellis' Boston office represented the seller while Triple Net was self represented. The Tufts-New England Medical Center executed a 10-year triple net lease for 100 percent of both of the buildings, which sold for $460 per square foot. The 14-story Biewend building is a medical office building located at 260 Tremont St. and contains 154,500 square feet. It was built in 1924 and renovated in 1992.

South Boston keeping chic company these days

South Boston ranks right behind the chic Back Bay and South End neighborhoods in a new report on Boston's "hottest" real estate markets by Trulia.com, which lists properties for sale. Trulia listed the neighborhoods most searched by visitors to its own website. It featured Boston this month, because it's back-to-school for the city's college students. Boston didn't rank nationally, however, in Trulia's Top 10, which was led by Chicago, Manhattan and Brooklyn. It's tough to draw any conclusions. But here's the full list of Boston's most popular searches...