Don’t recommend thinking/worrying about appreciation. Appreciation in this market is tied to factors you can’t anticipate (incomes in tech/biotech/finance jobs in Kendall / downtown Boston).

My only complaint so far has been old house problems. It’s a duplex so I can’t toss problems to the hoa, I am the hoa. So I’ve had to learn a lot about maintaining an old house, and plan fixes for things that need fixing.

Edit: also if you look at tax rates and the residential exemption you’ll find that you save a lot of money there compared to the suburbs. Cambridge especially, damn near zero property tax

Agreed but

> a few months

Overly optimistic

From a city investment PoV, investing in other modes pays off vastly better. Most investment in roads and parking gets used largely by non residents.

If anything, the state should be the one funding EV infrastructure. As a Cambridge resident I don’t want the city budget spent supporting EVs driving in from Lexington, but we’re all MA residents so it makes sense in the state budget.

I’ve got a plug in hybrid and a tiny driveway, so I installed a charger and im on electric most of the time, minus road-trips. But I don’t drive much because it’s a city, so walking + T gets me to a lot of the places I want to go

In my old apartment I had street parking and I almost never was on electric because there wasn’t much reliable charging. If you do street parking, getting a Tesla for the supercharger network or an ICE is probably your best bet.

Parking spot is usually rare in cheaper housing because city space is a premium. On street parking is possible.

In unit laundry is unfortunately very rare because our housing stock is mostly 100 year old buildings that weren’t build for it, so adding in unit laundry is a big project for a unit owner.

City compensation is usually much higher. I make probably more than double than I would in the middle of nowhere. YMMV of course, especially based on industry. If you’re in tech, finance, or biotech id imagine you should end up doing much better here than the Midwest (except perhaps Chicago)

Agree with other commenters but make sure to examine what you consider “decent standard of living”

Urban living with roommates on that salary will be fine. If you start adding expectations of say living in an expensive new building, having in-unit laundry, having a car and a dedicated parking spot, etc, then it’s more questionable.

Now can we re-zone west Cambridge from Residence A-1 (single family residences with a minimum 6000 sqft of lot per dwelling)? ResA is outdated in this day and age. Even ResB is honestly a little too restrictive.

This doesn’t force the removal of parking, it stops forcing the addition of parking. More freedom, not less

Really what this will probably do is incentivize construction of multi families / townhouses / small apartments on smaller lots that are underutilized but zoned for multi family. I can think of a few on mass Ave near Arlington.

On sufficiently large projects, there’s usually enough money involved that owners are already looking to include a parking garage of some kind (attractive to wealthy tenants for “luxury housing”) and they will probably go to the zoning board of appeal anyways for other variances. Probably not much change there. Main change might be enabling some smaller projects, which generally don’t have funding to pursue zoning variances