The $1.4M Price-Chop; Cheapest, Priciest Hub Rents

It's Friday, and that means it's time for Curbed Cuts: all the latest neighborhood news from our sister site Curbed Boston...

Grid View

BACK BAY - The achingly elegant Mason House has chopped its price by $1.4 million. It remains, despite the biggest price-chop in years in Boston, the most expensive home on the market at $16,500,000. Also, we should note, a price-chop like this might as well be seen as a prerequisite to a sale.

JAMAICA PLAIN - This week comes the good word that the former Blessed Sacrament Church off Hyde Square in Jamaica Plain will likely become at least 32 condos priced from $269,000 all the way to $725,000. The plans are not that big a surprise—talk of a conversion of the 85-year-old church goes back to when it closed in 2004—but the idea of luxury condos will surely not sit well with some who wanted affordable housing.

BULFINCH TRIANGLE - One Canal, the would-be $175 million, 320-unit apartment complex in Bulfinch Triangle, will never get the O.K. from the state unless it snags a supermarket first. MassDOT, owner of the former Central Artery parcel where One Canal would go, says developer Trinity Financial (they did the nearby Avenir apartments) must get a Shaw's, a Stop & Go, something, by March 1 or risk not being able to build.

HUB-WIDE - Everybody knows it's bad out there for tenants and very likely getting worse (for landlords, not so much). The latest quarterly report from RentJuice/Zillow only reinforces the point. Take the aggregates (please): the average apartment rent for Boston proper in the first quarter of 2012 was $2,228, and in the second quarter was $2,503; the average apartment rent for Greater Boston was $2,218 in the earlier quarter, and $2,308 in the quarter ending June 30.