bostonbubble.com

[admin]

Stats showing decline in Boston/MA (et al) population in tandem with increase in housing supply:

http://www.housingbubblebust.com/MajorMetroNStatesPopHsgRate.html

[Guesty]

A study issued yesterday by National City Corp. and Global Insight removed Boston from the list of ''extremely overvalued" housing markets. The study examined single-family housing markets nationwide during the second quarter and concluded that 56 of 299 markets were ''at risk of future price declines." Boston, which had been on the groups' previous list, was taken off the current list because of ''improving fundamentals, such as income and population gains," the study said.

[admin]

Perhaps the situation is improving, but Boston is by no means out of the woods. The organization just moved Boston off of their list of the absolute worst markets. The study you are referring to still pegs the level of "extreme overvaluation" in Boston at 23.1%.

It's also hard to know what the change in their ranking is attributable to without the raw data. Consequently, it may be premature to view this as a reversal of the last several years of population declines given that the population change may have been minor or even limited to areas near Boston (excluding Boston proper) and income growth may have been a more dominant factor. That isn't to say that income growth isn't important, I am just pointing out that the National City study may not actually indicate there is an improvement over the Census Bureau data, which was the original focus of this thread. The Census Bureau data that I posted is as up to date as it gets, I believe, but it is yearly data - do you know of a reliable source that is updated more frequently? National City appears to have a resource for updating their own data at least quarterly, though that may be a private survey which isn't available except filtered through their overvaluation formula.

- admin