How Boston's Housing Boom Impacts Property Management Services

In this article, we will examine the causes of the Boston housing boom from our latest research and answer the essential questions asked recently about the state of tenants and landlords in the Boston area who are running for shelter (no pun intended).

According to Redfin, the median price of a Boston-area home rose to approximately $360,000, which is a 6.1 percent increase since April this year and considered the biggest month-over-month price hike since April 2012.

What Will The Rise in Boston Real Estate Mean For Property Management?

If you've watched or read the local Boston news, or even walked around to see the city overall lately, the city's real estate market is experiencing an all-time high for residential and commercial developments.

For many of the Hub's longtime residents, this has been painstaking as the prices of living in the Boston area are going from relatively high to insurmountably bank-breaking to their wallets.

It's hard to find affordable housing anymore and landlords are feeling the crunch financially. The increase of property taxes will continue to rise with profits or break-even points on their property investments more difficult to clear.

How Much Can The Greater Boston Area Afford For Affordable Housing?

So what does this mean for the local property management industry? Will landlords of privately-owned properties who once had affordable housing have to leverage the rising costs of property taxes by cutting back on property management services?

Mayor Marty Walsh and his administration have quite a tall order to overcome finding places for people who are being pushed out of the city limits. Many of the city's longtime residents who have lived in Boston proper areas like Allston, Brighton, Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury, Somerville, South Boston, Watertown and surrounding cities of Cambridge and Quincy area seeing new condo developments.

With the shortage of apartments for those who can't afford to buy homes, there has been a series of housing initiatives that the local government is trying to make sense of for these people. The costs for homes is rising faster than the cost of renting.

Fees for Commercial Real Estate Developers?

The alternatives of micro-apartments in Boston for the young adult population has ending costs that do not necessarily meet the means of living out of necessity. Plus Mayor Walsh is looking to have a fee attached to developers who want to buy and create more commercial estate properties to support his plan to raise $20 million in funding to allocate those monies towards 53,000 affordable homes by the year 2030.

Also, the rising influx of the tech and pharmaceutical industry workers coming from Silicon Valley and other cities to Boston and Cambridge, where the latter is swiftly becoming an Eastern U.S. mecca for both industries, has made property values in that already expensively priced area continue to skyrocket at an exponential rate.

Chief Economist Nela Richardson of the real estate company Redfin explained the migration of wealthy workers. "Boston is an interesting story because it's attracting outsiders from tech and pharma." He continued: "There's a lot of wealthy workers coming to town. Match that with demand with a shortage of supply- that's a recipe for speed." 

Home listings on the market in May 2015 sold at a record-breaking rate. Factor that in with a shortage of supply. If you know the Law of Supply and Demand enough, you will see that this is a runaway freight train that won't be stopped anytime soon.

There is much competition to buy a home. In May 2015, there was an estimated 72 percent of offers for homebuying faced competition. That same month, Boston-area sellers put almost 12,900 homes on the market. That is a 25 percent year-over-year increase since May 2014. And the numbers keep rising.

According to Redfin, the median price of a Boston-area home rose to approximately $360,000, which is a 6.1 percent increase since April this year and considered the biggest month-over-month price hike since April 2012.

Do Landlords and Tenants Need to Wait For A Housing Bubble To Burst?

Sign of the times in Real Estate 2002-2012

From looking at these numbers, you may be thinking that the Boston area is becoming a city for the uber-elite. So does this mean that you have to study coding or have the mind of an MIT-schooled engineer in order to sustain a stable living here?

Do you have to wait another fifteen years per Mayor Walsh's plan for affordable housing in Boston, and not have to worry about making a stable life month to month? Well, not exactly. But it may take a renter much longer than expected to save and buy a home, or think about becoming a landlord in areas such as the Metro West areas of Waltham, Framingham, Malden, Medford, or other areas that area Commuter Rail-accessible for people to come into the city to work.

We are already seeing the signs of a housing bubble waiting to burst in the coming years. Just like in the U.S. real estate market crash in 2006, banks lending to buyers that take out mortgage products which exceed the actual home values, on top of money that dries up in various industries causing labor layoffs and a hostile job market that still exists today can lead to foreclosures and high turnover of tenants and residents.

This will help property management in a two-fold manner: with all of the landlords that buy housing before the prices get too high because they need to ensure their value and attraction from those who can afford to stay in the city.

Also, for the coming years, the affordable housing that the Walsh administration is vying for will help HOAs and others want to live in a place that has great services and will help landlords with smaller mortgages since people still want a quality of life while living in the city.

Overall, living in the Boston proper area and its surrounding neighborhoods is a lifestyle decision. Otherwise, these landlords and tenants would opt to move south like birds to escape the harsh winters, and rising costs. The prices will rise, but they will bottom out eventually. With the economies of scale, this bubble can only float for so long before the blowback occurs for the better for lesser-income residents and landlords to afford a decent mortgage and high quality yet low-priced Boston property management for their investment to stay profitable in the coming year.

Boston Housing Boom - Final Thoughts

Are you feeling the financial crunch of how hard it is to find or afford housing in Boston?

Are landlords becoming too strict on their criteria for screening tenants with decent credit? 

Are you as a landlord experiencing high turnover in your units due to your rise in prices per higher property taxes you must pay? 

You may wonder where is the middle ground to balance out the supply and demand of housing.Tell us your thoughts in the comments below and how long you feel it will take to get to this cost balance for housing. 

Bed Bugs: How To Remove and Prevent Them for Your Tenants

Boston is one of the United States top-rated rental housing markets. 

This is due to the transient dwellers skipping from lease to lease in various apartment and the condo building craze in the Boston area.

Those same living quarters that tenants move into is a fertile ground for bed bugs to cultivate their communities and lay longer in your mattress than you want.

Whether you are a landlord, tenant, or property manager in Boston you can use this article as a guide to learn the following about bed bugs:

• What Is A Bed Bug?
• How To Spot A Bed Bug
• How To Prevent Bed Bugs In Your Home

Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite In Your Home

Especially if you live or hang around areas like Allston and Brighton with a ton of college-aged tenants. These young tenant have year-long leases and every semester may leave behind more than just dust balls upon moving out. This is a real situation people deal with every year and is not always your fault, they are attracted to the warm spots in your house, most likely a mattress or couch.

What Is A Bed Bug?

This is gross, but pay attention so you know what to do if your property is infested with these insects. Attracted to the warmth your bed is their favorite spot to live and reproduce.

A bed bug is a tiny parasite that feeds on mammals and birds. They are a part of the insect family Cimicidae, and the most common human infestations are Cimex lectularius and Cimex hemipterus. 

Adult bed bugs have a reddish brown, flat, oval-shaped, and are about 4 to 5 millimeters in size. 

Younger bugs (nymphs) are usually a tan or light color, which develops them into a reddish color after feeding. They are attracted to warmth, and tend to develop over a period of 5 to 10 days, though they can survive without feeding for several months.

They generally feed at night, or just before dawn.

How To Spot A Bed Bug

The Show You Don't Want To Host

Hand bitten by bed bugs

It's not fun to know that these insects can bite and continue feeding off of a human without their knowledge over time. Bed bugs can painlessly pierce the skin and inject saliva containing anesthetics and anticoagulants into the host.

They feed on the host for several minutes, and then retreat to their warmth haven. This will cause these insects to stay in the closest quarters by hiding in their host's mattress.

Hosts can also be pets like cats and dogs, who can carry them into their home.

The transmission of human diseases is theoretically possible, but has not been established for what particular diseases. Rarely does a severe systemic allergic reaction come from bed bug bites. But cases of insomnia or anxiety can be developed by bed bug infestations.

Bed bug bites are easily treatable by your primary physician or dermatologist.

Where Do Bed Bugs Come From?

There is a current resurgence of bed bug infestations in the U.S.

Being in a major city where there are more bugs and rodents than actual people, you can bet they will be in places that have a high traffic of people to feed off hosts. That means they would likely come from apartment complexes, condo buildings, hostels, hotels where people are coming and going. During the day, they like to dwell in floors, and show up in people's luggage, furniture, clothing. or boxes.

What Does A Bed Bug Bite Look Like?

Symptoms of bed bug bites can be either visible of invisible on the skin's surface.

They can be dark red or just a shade lighter than one's actual skin color. They can be in the form of a flat lesion or a bump. They usually show up on exposed parts of the face, neck, torso, or feet to the bevy of bed bugs lay in various sections of your mattress. Lesions can be found in a line or a cluster pattern in one or several areas in your skin. They can appear within a matter of minutes or days after being bitten. Lesions are capable of fading from the skin within one to two weeks. Also, they can causes severe itching and irritation of the skin.

How To Prevent and Remove Bed Bugs In Your Home

As a landlord, it's important to implement an effective form of communication with your tenants so that any problems with bed bugs in your rental unit is immediately eradicated.

Bed bugs can happen to anyone, no matter how careful you are with your tenants. But there are some tactics to prevent and combat these pests from coming back to share bed space with you.

• Hire A Property Manager with Emergency Support Procedures- This will only help increase your property's value by having a reliable crew who can stay on top of the fumigation or extermination duties in all of the rental units. Also, tenants can work with the property manager who knows exactly how to handle bed bugs to stop from coming back to their bed(s). Use social media, text, email, and phone to be prompt in getting a quick response from the landlord to put in a work order.

• Keep Windows Closed Near Your Bed - These insects are looking for a space to crawl into. So minimize access to your bed via your window that may be near their entrance point.

• Remove Boxes Upon Move-In Date Of Your Lease - Many times the new tenants are the culprits that are hosting these parasitic creatures- not just landlord negligence nor previous tenants in those living quarters. It's important to either put moving boxes away from the bedroom or living room areas where bed bugs arise. Make sure that upon the Boston move-in date, you put the boxes in your basement once you remove your belongings. This is because in many cases the boxes are coming from outside after resting in the place the tenants is moving from, then to their moving vans that other people have used, the dirty street grounds before being put inside their new home.

• Replace Infested Furniture - After spotting bed bugs in your furniture, it is best to throw those sheets right away. Even if you wash those sheets, it doesn't mean that they have gone away from good. After all, you cant spell the word "persistent" without the letters "p-e-s-t," coming back for more. If you spot bed bugs forming their own community on your bed, I'm sure you wouldn't want to sleep on that same bed set anyway. Or if so, it's at your own risk letting them get too close for comfort on your skin.

Bed Bugs: Our Final Thoughts

Have you had any experience with bed bugs that have made you want to move out of your apartment? Or have you dealt with angry tenants that have made you wonder why these problems with bed bugs keeps occuring within your property or rental units?

Having an accessible property management company is key to preventing this from happening. Its essential to know what it take to prevent this to become a good landlord, or as a tenant so that you don't have a history of carrying bed bugs wherever you move to.

Tell us how you prevent bed bugs in the comment section below.

How To Manage Loud Parties In Boston

This article will help define how property managers can help turn a negative situation into a positive opportunity to communicate with student residents. 

How To Deal With House Parties At Your Property

The spring season in Boston is a special time of year for many reasons:

1. The weather temperatures finally begin to warming up after a harsh cold winter
2. The Boston faithful get to see their beloved Red Sox take the field again at Fenway Park. 
3. The clock's change to Daylight Savings Time positively affects your mood from seeing sunlight and less grey skies. 
4. College kids are begin to leave the city towards their permanent out-of-town residents for the summer. 

As you would expect, students in your Boston property management will be celebrating the last of their final exams for the academic year with a party to remember just how sweet it is to live away from their parent's house.

In this article we will explain how to effectively communicate with your college-aged tenants. As students prepare for the end of their lease, get ready to talk with your young tenants about the consequences of having a party with their friends on your property. 

Building A Positive Relationship With Young Tenants

Open communication is important for everyone involved. 

Chances are that you were once a kid looking for fun and enjoying life by not having to answer to your parents as well. Be approachable and understanding of their situation and remember that when you tell a kid to not do something, they are likely going push the risk to the limit and see how far they can go.

It's best to meet your college-aged tenants half way by letting them have their fun to an extent. Here are a few suggested communication methods to effectively notify your tenants about the parameters of living in your property:

• Detail The Guest Policy In The Lease- Make sure that upon the beginning of their lease that each tenants knows how many people are allowed at once within their rented unit. When you keep it in writing, and quantify the amount of people that are allowed at once, they can never say they never knew beforehand about how many people they should have as guests. 

• Ramifications for Damage To The Property- The security deposit is a coveted check amount that both landlords and tenants use for coverring any future mishaps within their rental unit. If there is any damage to the rental property, the security deposit is subject to being decreased upon the return to the tenant at the end of the lease. Or if the cost of the damage exceeds the amount of the security deposit when they come in, let the tenants know that they will not get it back at the end of their lease. Also, let the tenant(s) know they are responsible for their guest's damage to the property or injuries from being inebriated in the party make them liable as well.

• Set A Benchmark For Neighbor Complaints, Or Else- Living in off-campus housing means that there will be neighbors next door, or in the apartment unit below the tenant holding the party. The best way to let those neighbors know that a party will take place on a certain date is to give them a couple days notice. Also make sure that you and the tenants give the neighbors your phone numbers to call or text you if it gets too loud. If the tenant doesn't adhere to multiple complaints, make sure that you get the Boston Police Department to come and tell everyone to leave. The purpose of this BPD Party Line is to give residents direct contact for reporting the occurrence of loud parties, and to have them come to calm down the noise.   

• Social Media - Be the "cool" landlord that is privy to social media to connect with your tenants. Some landlords are deemed as either "slumlords" for their lack of maintenance on call for any problems their tenants experience. And there are some other who are considered "helicopter" landlords that never go away, hovering over their property as much as they can. Or some seem out of touch with their tenants for a lack of communication skills. Certainly you want to ensure your return on investment, but being the "cool" landlord can help you keep your tenancy rate high, with great referrals from your current tenants to potential new ones via social media. That way there is a trail that can be tracked online about your property and landlord reputation.  When the landlord and tenant are in good standing with one another, this could lead to positive reviews in the future when the tenants decide to move to another rental apartment or condo, and require a positive review from the previous landlord. 

Final Thoughts: Have you dealt with a tenant who partied too much?

Have you dealt with any tenants that refuse to comply with the terms of your lease regarding guests or parties? Or if you are a tenant, how did you handle your relationship with your landlord to make sure that you can stay on an even keel with your landlord, roommates, and neighbors in your rental unit? Tell us your thoughts. 

10 Things You Need to Know About Living In Boston

What It's Like to Live In Boston

Living through all four seasons within the Greater Boston area is similar in order to be consider that you have a true cultural understanding of the city has to offer. The city natives are quite geocentric, proud to be from The Hub while scoffing at the thought of living in any other city in the world.

So what makes Boston so special to the native and transplants here? 

The purpose of this article and quasi-checklist is to breakdown how you know you're like a Boston resident and native. Maybe you have dealt with a rude bus driver, train conductor, or fellow commuter on the road that yells obscenities to other on the road like they are terms of endearment to excuse themselves as they illegally pass you on the right.

Either way, we have plenty of characteristics that detail what it's like to live in Beantown. 

Some of the Traits of Living In Boston

1. Acting Too Bold For The Cold - The Boston area only gets warm weather about 4 out of 12 months of the year, normally during the spring and summer seasons. Even during that short third of the year may have cool temperatures that do not define those seasons outright around Beantown. So to continue with our routines, Boston residents look to upstage Mother Nature by withstanding harsh cold winds, and act like it's warm when they see sunshine amidst mounds of snow in the sidewalks and streets. Gymtime during a State of Emergency? No problem to Boston residents. Patriots Championship parade during the beginning of the worst winter on record? Check! Going to nightclubs without coats to look more macho or more feminine with just spaghetti-string shirts and high-heels with no leggings to protect yourself from the searing winds within the narrow streets of the Financial and Theatre Districts? Yes, indeed. Whatever it takes to look more "cool," even if cool matches the sub-freezing temperature weather.

2. Bostonians Know Too Much About Sports - Renowned cultural critic and author Noam Chomsky once stated about the way the American voting system is set up, it leaves little room for change anyway by its citizens. But instead, they resort more to having their expertise in sports as an alternative upon their apathy of politics and world affairs. No other city is this notion more apparent than Boston. Whether it's communicating in-depth with our Beantown dwellers about the bullpen of the current Red Sox roster, acting like we just left a funeral of a loved one when the Patriots lose in the Superbowl, whining about the Celtics bench and their front office decisions, or Bruins fans flooding MBTA trains and doning their jerseys on the way to the TD Garden arena at North Station, Boston has always been a sport junkie's heaven. And it will always keep that trait in play.

3. Academic Intellectuals - Perhaps you can cite Boston nearing the top of the annual polls of all the major U.S. cities as the "smartest" cities on the map. The Hub is the East Coast center for intelligensia, with the constant influx of  millions from across the globe to enroll in the hundreds of colleges and universities to socially mobilize themselves for their careers and socioeconomic status. It's also a hotbed for tech startup companies businesses started by graduates of these same academic institutations within the city limits, and even tech and Internet juggernauts Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have recently launched divisional offices in Cambridge's Kendall Square area, Also, if you are not a scholar that rubs shoulders with Harvard or MIT professors, other renowned authors and intellectuals who live or frequently visit the city. 

4. Loud College Parties/Students - In continuum of the previous bullet point, young adults have the most buying power in the city of Boston because most of them are college kids, and 60% of them are coming from out-of-state to attend college or work. The city caters to events and these kids, which gives them the sense of entitlement once they are out of their parent's house to live in close quarters with their peers on or off-campus. When you get kids together, music, and alcohol and other party elements, this garners loudness and obnoxiousness at times that older residents just have to deal without choice.

5. Living in the Allston/Brighton Area At Least Once - Being the backyards for some of the city's biggest colleges and universities B.U., B.C., Northeastern, Harvard, M.I.T., and Bentley to name a few, the Allston/Brighton area is a haven for young adults to live off campus or live and work in their nascent careers in their respective fields. The rent is high, but those areas are abundant for multi-family houses, or apartments with multiple floors that can fit multiple upstarts at once. Thus, moving into and out of this particular area is a rite of passage for any young Boston resident.

6. Lack of Parking Options- If you are a commuter, especially during this past winter 2015, you are well aware of the parking plight throughout the city. We have all witnessed meter maids on the prowl for would-be parking violators, or double checking your choice of parking to beware ourselves getting an orange envelope on your windshield by the time you return to your car. And these meter maids are faster than phantoms to get their quotas fulfilled and making you subjected to reluctantly add your own funds to the city revenue.

7. Rudeness of "Massholes"- If you don't know the colloquial form of Boston speak called "sarcasm," then you may have trouble being happy in this town. Or you will learn that being happy in Boston means acting not too happy for too long, or one-upping a peer or counterpart feel lesser than on their knowledge or experience in a certain topic of discussion. You may have a friend from Boston that you can't tell is either being spunky, or downright condescending in how they speak to you. Or if you are a new resident driving within the Boston city limits, you better get used to hearing a honked horn from the cars behind you a split second after a traffic light turns green if you front the line of cars in that lane. Counterintuitively, rudeness can be considered part of the modus operandi of the city resident's communication lines to stay open.

8. Vowel-driven Accents - The local "slanguage" of Boston is unlike any other city on the map. Boston native say words as if they are speaking with their mouths wide open in a dentist's chair. "Pahk" means park, "Ott," means art, "khed" is a term of endearment (even by middle-aged adults to others within their age group), and "Cawpley Squayah" means Copley Square to give a few examples of the nasal tones in the local form of speech by the Boston faithful. Also, Boston residents love to sing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me," or AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" at a local townie bar.

9. Commercial/Residential Real Estate Developments- If you look around in areas of Boston's downtown area, the Seaport, Allston area, or college campus, there are almost just as many contracts for commercial and residential condo development as corporations that fund new buildings and establishments in Las Vegas. And it will continue as Boston will keeps changing its skyline to match other expensive cities to live within like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Washington D.C. as more industries develop, thrive, and make boatloads of profits.

10. Neo-liberalists Embracing Diversity But Afraid To Address Diversity- Since the 19th century, Boston was always perceived as a progressive-minded city. Yet the city has had a long history of racial undertones that have geographically segregated the city populations ethnicities since that same time period. But all that is changing with the upswing in diversity in the city's population that are now causing a balance between the city's white versus people of color. Today, it's easy to become a neo-liberal in attempt to exonerate oneself from unconscious prejudices against people who may not physically look like you. Those who deny their recognition of a person of color's skin, it makes you wonder if they really are blind, or just choose not to educate themselves about the benefits of diversity by acknowledging the similarities as well as the differences from their own cultural customs. 

Final Thoughts on Living In Boston

What else make your feel like a true Boston resident? How long have you been living in Boston, and what did we miss on this list of Bostonian living traits? Tell us your thoughts.

This Important Snow Removal Tip Could Save Your Life and Home

Dealing with "Ice Dam"-age To Your Property

Ice dams are severely dangerous to you and your property. 

This article will provide tips and information about how to remove ice dams, precautionary measures, and how hiring a reliable property management team will save you money in large maintenance costs. You must have seen/heard the ice dams as they fall off roofs across the city!

March is a dangerous transitional month for two reasons:

• Daylight Savings Time begins
• Weather patterns change from winter to spring seasons.

The latter takes precedent as the city continues to recover from the harshest winter on record of modern-era Boston, being hit with multiple blizzards that incredibly netted over 100 inches in less than a 30-day span.

Emergency Alerts for Snow?

Sounds crazy, but snow falling off roofs is definitely grounds for an emergency.

This year there have been many new cases in which injuries, deaths, and emergency alerts about roofs collapsing or caving in from the combination of snowbanks that have turned to ice beds and heavy rains.

Many of the ice dams cases go unreported during these freezing temperatures and destroy house gutters and/or the siding of houses.
These treacherous situations will continue to increase as the last surges of cold weather grips the Boston area.Learn how to remove ice dams.

Removal Costs of Your Roof's Iceberg

Even as the weather continues to get warmer, please be aware that New England will likely see a last stretch of cold weather in which more ice dams will form.

Be aware that with the fact that March annually averages to be the wettest month of the year with the highest amount of precipitation, namely in the northeast, or New England now is the time to consider flood insurance for your property

Property owners should be prompt to prevent the dangers of these icicles falling onto their tenants heads upon entry into their units/buildings. The combination of wet weather and temperature increases the amount of icicles to dangerously fall.

How a Property Management Team Saves You Money

First of all, you can write off ice dam removal as an expense if you are an owner or board member within a condo association that could benefit you and your tenants.

Tips for funding ice dam removal on your property:

• Ice damming has been quite prevalent. Reputable vendors are often booked solid even working extended hours, so owners should report issues as soon as they notice to get on a service list as soon as possible. The City of Boston took over all available dump trucks this season, making it even more difficult for private property owners to lock down a vendor swiftly for hauling snow offsite.
  
• Some properties are physically unable to safely remove dams (due to roof access, no tie off points), so mitigation may be limited or delayed while the weather winds down. Owners should continue to monitor the issue and report any changes in the meantime.
  
• This season has been be a budget-buster for many associations. They may consider pulling from available reserve account funds, assessing supplemental fees to the ownership, or applying for a short term loan.
• Insurance – add a disclaimer to review your specific master policy, your individual homeowner’s policy, and your specific condominium documents.
  
• Ice dam abatement and roofing work will be completed as an association expense (because roofs and gutters are considered common area).
  
• Your homeowner’s insurance policy should be used to cover loss located within your unit that was a result of the malfunction of the common area elements. Boston Condo insurance docs generally dictate that Unit Owners are responsible for proper maintenance and repair of their own units. Unit boundaries are generally described in the Master Deed.
  
• If a claim is filed on the master policy, you would be responsible for the master deductible, which will be covered by your homeowner’s insurance policy, less the deductible on your homeowner’s policy. You will be responsible for your homeowner’s insurance deductible.
  
• Take special note of exclusive uses and easements to private roof decks, etc. You may be responsible for snow removal of these areas.
  

Final Thoughts on Snow Removal of Ice Dams

So you have the understanding of how insurance, a great property management team, and how ice dams can do damage to both your home and wallet if you do not plan accordingly for their potential formation.

Tell us your experiences with gutters collapsing and how the damage was handled? Or any alternatives to this that you may find viable on a shoestring budget after this harsh winter?

Why Minorities are the New Majority in Boston Real Estate

In honor of Black History Month, the focus of this article is to address how Boston's longtime homogenized neighborhoods are beginning to see a change in their racial and cultural makeup. Learn how the city is adapting and increasing in Massachusetts racial diversity.

Boston's Rise in Diversity And Your Neighborhood

With every census we learn more about homeownership statistics and will gain more findings of non-white property owners. In order to make a change it is important to know our roles in our neighborhoods and recognize these positive aspects of these changes.

Just like residents can make a difference, Boston management companies can also help non-white landlords and property owners gain better reputations and overcome prejudices that have plagued them for many generations.

Power In Numbers and Ethnic Division

Boston has a predictable "blue" vote due to the millenials who make up almost half of its workforce as well as the many students in the hundreds of academic institutions.

Historically, Massachusetts voters typically swing towards the left and can date back to the late 17th century, when it was the first state in the U.S. to abolish slavery in 1783. 

Even though Boston is the farthest north major city in their region of the country, and the North was once deemed as the haven for freedom for black slaves in America, there has been a dichotomous undercurrent that lies in the historic segregated sections of Boston since the turn of the 20th century.

Boston ethnic neighborhood ethnic divisions generally include:

• Italians in The North End
• Irish in South Boston and Brighton 
• Whites in Back Bay, Kenmore, South End, and Charlestown sections all predominated by white residents.

• Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain and Hyde Park are common for blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Indians 

These areas are statistically averaged as lower per-capita income areas for at least the past fifty years. This is not to say that it is not by choice from the people themselves in these neighborhoods of Boston feeling comfortable with their own racial background.

There has been a lot of progress since the racial strife that haunted many Boston generations (i.e. the Metco busing crisis of inner-city students to Roslindale, Swampscott, Newton, and other suburban sections during the 1970s and 1980s and the discriminatory practice of redlining that was outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act).

City of Boston's Change in Ethnicity 1980 vs. 2000

If you notice in the graph below there was a gradual decrease in many ways

How race matters in Boston real estate today

• Between the years 1980 and 2000, the majority of the city's white residents versus minorities went from 68% to 50%, respectively.

• As the laws for immigration continue to be amended, there has been a spike in newer immigrants to Boston, a major U.S. port city, for work and living.

• The local economy sees an increase in the costs of living across the board, causing people to move to the outskirts of the city such as Allston/Brighton, East Boston, Malden, Medford, Somerville, and Roslindale.

Bottomline: People Live Where they Can Afford It

People will live where they can afford to, no matter who looks like them across the street from their home. Diversity is on the rise in Boston and the predominance of whites is decreasing.

Money can socioeconomically stratify people, not necessarily just their color.

For this reason, a good example according to Alvaro Lima, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, who cited the census data between 2000 and 2010 states that the South End is becoming increasingly diverse as a hot bed for diversity (LGBT, blacks, spanish, young professional, Asian residents). 
South End residents live in close quarters between million-dollar homes and public housing complexes. Lima stated that "the biggest shifts in diversity occurred in West Roxbury, JP, and pockets of Dorchester."  
Also, new housing developments and commercial real estate in the city are seeing record numbers in sections such as Roxbury, Dorchester, Medford. Their is great potential for business profit and an increase with inter-cultural exchange.

So How Does Property Management Play Into Boston's Diversity?

Humans are naturally scared of things we do not understand and it is important as property managers that we keep an open mind towards racial diversity. Past experiences can often cloud our vision of how certain races behave, and we must realize that diversity helps our communities. Cultural groups add to the diverse fabric our country is built on in many ways:

• Cultural groups have unique strengths and perspectives that all communities can benefit. 
• Understanding cultures will help us overcome and prevent racial divisions.
• Appreciation of cultural diversity goes hand-in-hand with a just and equitable society.
• Learning about the influences that cultural groups have had on our mainstream history and culture, we are missing out on an accurate view of our society and our communities. 

Equal opportunity housing is important as we grow as a nation and city. Boston has a large turnover of students every year and it is important that we continue to bring in fresh new thinking as we accept all members of our community. 

Please tell us about how racial diversity affects your everyday life and what you are doing to make a difference in the comments below.

5 Benefits of Hiring an Experienced Property Manager

Investors in any industry want yield or profit. 

In the real estate market, home buyers need to find means to ensure their property value appreciates over the long-term span of their investment.

A Great Property Manager Will Improve Your Property Value and Create Happy Residents.

You will find there are requirements that are tough to handle all by yourself. There is only so much you can do when you have to balance a personal and professional schedule to get to all your tenants needs and property upkeep at once.

As a property owner, you can live comfortably by hiring an experienced property manager to help with daily activities that will ease strain on operations.

Have you ever dealt with tenant complaints such as:

• Suffering from horrendous bed bugs in your building?
• Lack of hot water to clean and shower?
• Your property being located between a main road and near a forest area with decaying, odorous roadkill near your front lawn?

Don't get stuck cleaning your own pool.

These complaints can quickly take all your time and finding reliable property management services in Boston can help make sure residents receive proper and timely care in their home.

Reliable building maintenance is not the only reason why you should hire a property manager, these 5 advantages will help you over the length of your property investment.

5 Advantages of Hiring A Property Manager

1. Capital Improvements- There are items and maintenance that you will want to spend time on in order to bring more value to your property. It could range from a newly improved basement, kitchen counter tops, or a new deck to add to the side of your building or a particular unit. A property manager's experienced staff will maintain professional affiliations and designations to assist with capital property improvement projects. These capital improvements have tax benefits that can lower your tax bills and add more value to your property if you decide to sell it.
2. Lifestyle Marketing- Tenants choose to live in a condo association if based off a lifestyle preference to the dwell in those facilities. Ease of repair request and prompt maintenance can be streamlined with a property management online maintenance request form to provide quick responses to complaints that arise. Landlords and property owners need to make their tenants feel secure and confident enough to renew their leases in their rental units. When it comes to the term "ROI" regarding home investments, it not only stands for "return on investment" but also "residential operations insurance." This will help your property's image to potential new tenants looking for a new home.
3. Emergency Support-As mentioned in the first paragraph, you may not be able to tend to your tenants concerns, incidents, or emergencies right away. You will need to have a property manage can swiftly communicate with tenants in these instances. What if you live another town or state in which you are unable to come to your tenant's rescue? Having a property manager for emergency support will mitigate the risk of these problems from persisting. 
4. Screening For High Quality Tenants- A good property manager can help in the sales and rental process for finding tenants that are just as reliable the property manager to you. The best tenants are the ones that can pay their rent on time and great research skills to find out about the rental applicant's history.Property damage control tips will help resolve communications issues with the ones that won't give you trouble overall like leaving in the midst of their signed leases. Less legal problems, more profitability in the end for your investment.
5. Affordable Housing Programs- Some landlords and property owners participate in an affordable housing program. These are complex situation per the terms and conditions of the financial assistance that you may receive for holding the property. The financial assistance may be in the form of a grant, low-interest loan, or tax credits, in exchange per an agreement to rent a portion of the property to tenants earning below a certain income level. The landlord or property owner must comply with a set of complicated rules in order to receive further financial assistance. This is when things get hairy, so hire a property manager with ample experience and expertise to handle property management administrative tasks.

Final Thoughts on Why to Hire a Property Manager

Housing investments are great additions to your personal wealth, but let the professionals handle your management tasks to free up extra time for you to expand your business.

In today's economy, where underwater mortgages and foreclosures are rampant, you want to keep your credit on the high and have a property manager that can add future value to your property. 

What are your experiences have you had where a property manager on your staff would have been helpful?

Tell us in the comment section below so we can all learn from this topic.