Artist’s Communities: Time & Space for Creativity

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Art Towns

Arttowns_coverStudies are finding that artists are an increasingly important part of a town’s economic infrastructure, and people are increasingly moving to these small communities for their creative energy.

What is the #1 art town?  Santa Fe, NM but there are a number of other appealing towns in John Villani’s book, The 100 Best Art Towns in America.  New England has three towns on the list of best small art towns, with populations under 30,000:

Provincetown, MA (ranked 3rd overall, ahead of Toas, Northampton, & Aspen)
5 college town area in central Massachusetts
Brattleboro, NH

Villani says New London, NH and North Adams, MA look like rising stars in New England.  Another trend to watch are members of the creative class  who are living in two art towns, six months a year.  An audio clip of WBUR’s interview today is online at Here-Now.org, and watch Villani’s web site, ArtTowns.com, now under construction following the April release of the 4th edition of his book.

Wonder why Cambridge, MA did not make the short list?  Our support for the visual and performing arts are arguably world class, but it’s hard to think of our fair city as a small town, even if our population is under 100,000.

What’s your nomination for the best art towns — or more specifically, BEST NEIGHBORHOODS — in Greater Boston or New England?  If you are passionate enough about that location, would you be willing to lead of tour of potential home buyers to that town, neighborhood, or building; or alternatively, act as an informal "virtual" guide?

If you are one of our clients, you can earn commission credits by posting to our blog.  Call 617-661-4046 or email recafe@mac.com for more info on The Real Estate Cafe’s "Tipping Policy."

Countdown to Meltdown: Doomsday scenarios for “Hallucinating Homebuyers”

Long_emergency1This doomsday scenario is worth
scanning, not just because the author — a former editor of Rolling
Stone magazine
and author of three books on suburban sprawl — calls the
real estate bubble the “last act in the sorry drama of the hallucinated
economy” but because it’s the second economic doomsday scenario we’ve heard in 36 hours and offers some potential decision-making criteria for home buyers.  Writing about James Howard Kunstler’s new book The Long Emergency,the Santa Cruz Sentinel says:   

"Understanding the deep changes the United States and the rest of the
world will experience as early as this decade, he said, could be the
deciding factor in which thriving communities of today become the ghost
towns of tomorrow."

"The middle
class will become distressed, the construction industry flat,
interstate hauling will disappear, airlines will become toast and our
daily lives will be defined by what’s within walking distance."

"Suburbs, large cities and McMansions will become slums."

The
good news is that “Some communities will fair better than others during
the “Long Emergency.” So how do you find one if you are planning on buying a home this year despite repeated warnings of the real estate bubble? 

Should I Buy a House in the Bay Area?–Running the Numbers

Godzilla_crowds1The brain is hardwired to expect patterns to repeat themselves, says Harvard Business School professor Terry Burnham author of Mean Markets & Lizard Brains:  How to Profit from the New Science of Irrationality, which may explain why many smart people still want to buy homes at irrationally
high prices.  Publisher John Wiley & Sons writes: 

"In contrast to old-school assumptions of cool-headed rationality, the
new behavioral school embraces hot-blooded human irrationality as a
core feature of both individuals and financial markets. The 2002 Nobel
Prize in Economics was awarded to scholars of this new scientific
approach to irrationality. …The human brain contains ancient structures that exert
powerful and often unconscious influences on behavior. This "lizard
brain" may have helped our ancestors eat and reproduce, but it wreaks
havoc with our finances. Going far beyond cataloguing our financial
foibles, Dr. Burnham applies this novel approach to all of today’s most
important financial topics: the stock market, the economy, real estate,
bonds, mortgages, inflation, and savings. This broad and scholarly
investigation provides an in-depth look at why manias, panics, and
crashes happen, and why people are built to want to buy at irrationally
high prices…"

How should smart home buyers protect themselves?  Make every single financial decision rationally, not emotionally, says Burnham.  Analyze your own behavior, find out where your emotional weaknesses are, and act in rational ways to counteract them.  Most economists believe that people are rational but over the past 20 years they have found that is not the case.  People make all kinds of mistakes, driven by emotional non-rational factors whether they are evaluating stocks, bonds, or housing.

When asked by The Motley Fool if he would buy, sell or hold real estate right now, Burnham said, "Real estate is not a bubble, but it is overpriced.  …the reason it has gotten there is that people have been fooled by low interest rates."  Burnham’s bottom line advice in the radio interview today:  "Don’t buy, I say "hold" as I do in the book."  Chapter Nine, entitled "Live in Your Home; Make Your Money at Work" includes a seven page subchapter on the housing bubble.  You can view the table of contents, index, and reader reviews on Amazon.com.  I haven’t read the book or the section on the housing bubble yet but am eager to do so. 

What’s your take — is the irrational exuberance in the housing market being driven by our lizard brains or something else? 

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