High-end digs dominate Boston in ’14

Real estate in Greater Boston this year has been somewhat of a paradox.

The market saw a huge influx of luxury apartment complexes, with high rents and lots of amenities, and construction is under way on some of the city's most expensive condos.

Yet there's been a shortage of inventory, especially mid-priced properties, and sales have slowed. And Boston has yet to solve a major problem — there are not enough condos or apartments that average city dwellers can afford.

Several thousand new luxury apartments — more than any in the city's history — opened this year in areas ranging from the Seaport District to the Greenway to Back Bay. Some of the first wave of high-rent digs, such as the Kensington and 315 on A, leased up well, but others have struggled, offering anywhere from one to three months of free rent, with fears that there may be a glut of upscale apartments on the market.

Looking for rental relief, some have opted to lease in places like Chelsea, where One North over the Mystic Bridge and new apartments in the Box District have done well. In an industrial area of Everett, apartments were carved out of a former Charleston Chew candy factory.

Two new apartment buildings at Assembly Row developed by AvalonBay Communities have leased up well, part of a successful urban village in East Somerville with 40 outlet stores and a dozen restaurants next to a newly completed Orange Line Station.

On the condo side, Boston has seen higher prices but lower condo sales this year because of low inventory, with midpriced units snapped up quickly. Meanwhile, the upper end of the condo market is going gangbusters driven by foreign buyers and local empty nesters. Preconstruction sales at condo projects now going up, such as the Ink Block's Sepia in the South End, Twenty-Two Liberty on Fan Pier and downtown's Millennium Tower have been brisk.

The highest price condo and single family sold in Boston this year were on the same Beacon Street block across from the Public Garden — at 96 Beacon St., a 6,337-square-foot, four-bedroom penthouse condo went for $13 million in March, and 74 Beacon St., a redone 6-bedroom, five-story, single-family townhouse with its own rooftop lap pool, sold for $12.5 million in October.

This year saw the highest price condo ever listed in Boston, a 12,000-square foot penthouse at the Millennium Tower that's asking $37.5 million.

The market in Somerville and Cambridge remains hot, with prices increasing and not enough inventory to meet demand. But the Alewife area of Cambridge saw several new apartment developments this year.

Along the banks of the Charles River in Watertown, several luxury apartment complexes have opened this year, and new rental properties have also sprung up near Orange Line stops in Malden Center and over the Melrose line near Oak Grove.

In the city, East Boston saw the first phase of Portside At East Pier, a luxury waterfront apartment complex.

South Boston real estate stayed hot this year, with dozens of high-end apartment and condo projects opening, a number around West 1st on D Street such as the Flats on D, West Square and Seaport Crossing that helped to knit together the gap between the Seaport District and the West Side.

To spur construction of more housing for moderate-income residents, the city has just designated corridors along Dorchester Avenue between the Broadway and Andrews Red Line T stations in Southie, and around the Forest Hills T station area in Jamaica Plain for higher density, transit-oriented development. But high labor, land and materials costs remain a challenge.

Next week we'll take a look at the real estate prospects for 2015.

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