Apartment Look

To Alice Fonseca, getting an apartment at The Beverly building downtown would be like winning the lottery. The 14-story project, set to open near North Station early next year, isn’t quite like all the other luxury housing that has sprouted up in downtown Boston recently . Every one of its 249 units will rent at below-market rates, with a one-bedroom starting at $900 a month for tenants of modest incomes. That’s about a third to half the cost of a similar unit just across the street. Advertisement “It’s a beautiful area , a dream area,” said Fonseca, who currently lives near Franklin Park, and will enter a lottery later this year that will choose The Beverly’s tenants. Instead of the usual mix of a few low- income units amid high -priced apartments, The Beverly is the first new complex in Boston composed entirely of “workforce housing,” an emerging category of midpriced housing with more affordable rents and wider income restrictions . The Beverly is setting aside 20 percent of its...

Mainstreet Equity (OTC:OTC:MEQYF) is an under-the-radar residential apartment owner/operator in Western Canada . Despite a market cap of $325m (all figures Canadian ), it often sees volume of less than 1000 shares a day on the TSX where it trades under the MEQ ticker. The recent investor presentation (July 2017) gives a brief snapshot of the properties Mainstreet controls . It's important to note that Mainstreet is well away from the frothier markets in Canadian real estate , both geographically and in terms of price point. The average apartment it owns is valued at just marginally more than $100k with an average monthly rent of just $864. These are solidly middle class , leaning lower middle class , properties. The company is focused on rolling up what they view as smaller, underperforming buildings, often ones that have fallen into significant disrepair, are being managed by inexperienced and/or unprofessional owners, and giving them a makeover, with some recent examples fr...