Where in Massachusetts have home prices dropped the most since the peak of the market?
Mostly in urban areas that have been hard-hit by foreclosures.
Median selling prices for single-family homes in communities like Brockton and Chelsea, for example, have plunged by 40 percent or more since 2005, when home prices peaked in Massachusetts, according to [...]

Median prices for single-family homes sold in Boston last year slipped 2 percent to $327,500 from $335,000. But home prices actually managed to creep up in a few city neighborhoods, according to new stats from The Warren Group.
In downtown Boston, which includes posh neighborhoods like Back Bay and Beacon Hill, home prices surged 36.1 percent [...]

It should come as no surprise that the cities that have struggled with the highest foreclosure numbers in the last two years were also facing the issue in 2009.
Worcester, Springfield, Boston’ s Dorchester neighborhood, Brockton and Lynn were the cities with the most foreclosures in  2009, according to new data put out by The Warren [...]

Some smaller Bay State communities appear to have had the biggest increases in foreclosures this year.
In Greenfield, home foreclosures almost doubled to 22 from 12 last year, according to The Warren Group.  Raynham’s foreclosures jumped 75 percent, and in Marshfield, foreclosures increased almost 60 percent to 41 from 26.
Nantucket has had the sharpest [...]

One of the biggest challenges for real estate agents, especially in a down market, is getting home sellers to price their property to accurately reflect market value.
That’s why a recent article in the Hartford Courant about underpricing homes caught my attention. The article highlights a home seller and agent who priced a property slightly [...]

A neighbor of mine recently asked her daughter-in-law what she wanted for Christmas. Her daughter-in-law quickly replied that she didn’t want or need anything, except to find a house to buy.
The young woman and her husband are both Boston-area professionals who are currently renting in Needham. They started their search in the summer before they [...]

As if home sellers didn’t have enough to worry about, now they have to beware of one more thing: scam artists who post their home as a rental on Craigslist.
A Brockton couple who was trying to sell their home had a few would-be tenants show up at their front door saying they saw their home [...]

The Obama administration is putting the pressure on lenders to provide permanent loan modifications for homeowners in danger of foreclosure.
So far, the federal government’s efforts to prevent foreclosures by getting mortgage companies and banks to rewrite loans have fallen short.
More than 650,000 trial loan modifications have been issued but that’s only helped about [...]

Bay State condo sales have been dragging for the last four years.
Condo sales peaked in 2005, when 32,907 condos traded. About half that amount – only 15,308 condos – have been sold in the first 10 months of 2009, according to The Warren Group.  
The last two months have offered some hopeful news. Unit sales increased [...]

Perhaps someone needs to remind Curt Schilling that Medfield isn’t Weston.
It’s not that Medfield isn’t a lovely and desirable community. I know some great families who’ve moved there and rave about the town.
It’s just that Medfield homes don’t fetch the kind of prices that Weston homes do.
Schilling has been trying to unload his [...]