The Best Places to Live 2005

The Hottest City Neighborhoods
Value for money can still be found in this city’s real estate market — if you know where to look. Here are eight neighborhood ideas to start your search.

East Boston Waterfront
Now that SoWa and the Leather District have jumped the shark, downtown Boston is not exactly affordable. That is, unless you cross the harbor. Flush with state and federal money, five new residential projects are in the works to replace the public housing along East Boston’s waterfront, with several smaller developments following in their wake. Among the neighborhood’s advantages are unbeatable views of the skyline, a cornucopia of Latin and Italian restaurants, and new open space thanks to the completion of the Big Dig. Units are appreciating so quickly here, says Colin Lynch of ERA Boston Real Estate Group, that some professionals are using them as better investments than the stock market. “If you can get in on one of these preconstruction projects, you can put down 5 percent, and it’s 6 to 12 months before you even have to think about a mortgage,” Lynch says. “In all that time, it’s making quite a bit of money.”

East Somerville
“When I was a kid, you weren’t allowed to go across the McGrath Highway,” says longtime Somerville real estate agent Donald Norton of ERA the Norton Group, referring to the de facto dividing line between East Somerville and the rest of the city. The first part of town to be built, East Somerville is full of charming houses with Queen Anne and Federal architecture, many of which are being rehabbed by professionals priced out of Davis Square and other western neighborhoods. You can buy a two-family Victorian in the neighborhood for $400,000, compared to $600,000 for a cookie-cutter two-family bungalow near Davis. The area is within walking distance of the Sullivan Square T stop, and with the coming development of nearby Assembly Square, it will have even more to recommend it, including the holy grail of urban chic: a proposed IKEA store.