Lofty Views...

A few pics that I took of the windows in our unit during one of our open house visits. Get used to pics of the loft folks, as I will be documenting the process here.

It's official...

So the closing went off without a hitch on Tuesday. That means Crystal and I are homeowners/loftowners/condo owners! We have been sleeping here each night since, got the cable turned on, sofa delivered, washer dryer delivered and installed on Thursday.

Between Friday evening and this morning we made 4 trips from storage, getting out some of the bigger items that were coming into the new space along with kitchen stuff, the rest of our clothes and some other odds and ends. It is nice to have a dumpster again and we have been feeding it plenty of cardboard in the first week.

There are some old metal doors and some other smaller old mill equipment in my underground parking space, but they should have that out of there in a few days. Dropped $450.00 at Home Depot tonight on paint and supplies, a ladder and a wet dry vac.

The picture you see is of the sleeping area that is our paint project for tomorrow. Pics of the room painted to follow.

Fremont Lofts Auction Cancelled!!

Breaking news!

Velocity Marketing was supposed to be holding an auction this Sunday May 20th to sell off the remaining units at The Fremont Lofts located at 160 Fremont St in Worcester, MA. I guess Velocity was expecting quite a turnout as the auctions were to be held downtown at the DCU Center.

I sent Velocity Marketing an email earlier in the week to see if the auction was going to be open to the public, or if it was only going to be open to pre qualified bidders. In the email I basically stated that I was interested in attending from a blogging perspective and would not be bidding. I received an email that stated, "The auction is closed to bidders only so that we know everyone in the room is there to bid. Easier for us to manage the process that way." That email was sent to me today by Velocity Marketing at 3:44pm. I then received a second email today at 6:14pm stating that The Fremont Lofts auction has been cancelled because "the response did not meet the critical number required to hold a live auction..."

The Fremont is holding an Alternative Sales Program beginning this Saturday at 11am. We might have to give the phone number a call at the very least or perhaps even pop in and see what kind of pricing and incentives they are offering.

The fact that The Fremont had to cancel the auction due to lack of response is a cause for concern for the Worcester/Central MA/Massachusetts/US housing market as a whole. I figured that now that spring has sprung that the auction would go on and most of the units would sell at the minimum or slightly above. The fact that they could not even get enough people to register to hold the auction is troubling indeed, and not just for The Fremont but for anyone looking to sell their home at the present time.

Once again it all comes down to supply and demand and the amount of homes on the market continues to rise at an alarming rate. In April there were 743,367 existing homes and condos listed for sale in the 18 major metro areas tracked by ZipRealty. That number is 33% higher than April of 2006 and 7.2% higher than March 2007. Inventories in some metro areas have TRIPLED from the height of the housing boom in 2005.

If The Fremont is going to sell units for less than what the opening bids were going to be, or they throw in some nice incentives such as no condo fees for a year or some intrest rate buydowns I think they would make a decent buying opportunity. Right now the buyer has plenty of choice available to them so the sellers need to do something special to make themselves and their properties stand out from the crowd.

Supply & Demand, Let The Free Market Decide

Fremont Lofts Worcester Auction Price Sheet Pictured Above.


So the remaing available units at The Fremont Lofts in Worcester are turning into The "Free Market Lofts" on May 20th as the 23 remaining units are going to auction, with starting prices as low as $140K for the lone remaing 1 bedroom and as low as $150K for 2 bedrooms. The two level true style lofts that were priced at $319K & $329K for a year have a starting bid of $240K.


It seems the developer noticed it was time to adjust their marketing and pricing strategy of the past year and a half. See back in November Crystal and I made an offer of $180K on a unit that was priced at $219K. Our offer was flat out rejected at the time. When we made the offer we thought the pricing that The Fremont was using was overvalued and we were offering what we thought was true market value in November of 2006, which was $180K. Here we are 5 and almost 6 months later and that unit remains unsold and is now going to auction with a minimum bid of $165K.

The same could be said of University Park Lofts over on Main South. All in all back in November we probably visted Th Fremont a total of 8 times and University Park a total of 5 or 6. University Park was still a work in progress at that time, and there were some units that we really thought we could work with. Great views, but limited space and no gym, which Th Fremont did boast. And again we thought that University Park was also about 20% to 25% overpriced.

So here we sit... Within the past month University Park has unveiled a plan where they are now renting units as well as selling and the remaining unsold units at The Fremont are going to auction on May 20th. It seems the free market system is working here, when the buying pool drys up and refuses to pay more than what they deem "fair value" the developers must adjust at some point.


Free Market Wiki
Fremont Auction Site
University Park Lofts
Crystal's Take