Spring House Hunt
(Left to right): Ardelin de Jesus outside her Roslindale home; Lakia Chambliss outside the Hyde Park home she bought; The Flottas at their new town house in Newton. Ardelin de Jesus; Lakia Chambliss; Tara Flotta
The new year has brought significant changes to the housing market. The Warren Group reported an over 10 percent dip in Massachusetts single-family home sales, while the war in Iran has increased mortgage rates nationwide.
As house hunters face higher property price tags, here’s how three Boston-area buyers navigated the market.
A space for mom, dad, and young-adult children
Tara Flotta, her husband, and their three children recently moved from their house in Medway to a townhouse in Newton. They had a budget of $1.8 million.
The Flottas at their new town house in Newton. – Tara Flotta
Bedrooms/bathrooms: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 baths
Most important feature: Proximity to Boston
Q: What was your house hunting experience like?
Tara Flotta: We were looking to cut down on my husband’s commute and my son’s commute. We had a budget in mind, but we had to increase it.
We really wanted to be in Newton because we wanted enough space. We’re at a stage of life where we have three older kids — one is graduating college, one is in college, and one is in high school in Brookline. So in five years, we may not need so much space, but we still need space for the time being. We thought Newton would probably give us the option of buying a single-family home, but we actually ended up buying a town house.
Probably the trickiest part of house hunting for us was the parking because you can’t park overnight in the winter in Newton, and we have five cars, so that really limited our options.
Q: What else were you looking for?
TF: We’ve lived through a lot of renovations. For our price point, any single-family homes that we came across required almost essentially a full renovation, and I wasn’t interested in living through more renovations. So finding something that was updated to our taste was important.
Q: How long did you search?
TF: We put our house on the market, and it sold in one weekend. We probably looked for houses for maybe six to eight weeks.
Tara Flotta’s town house, bought with Amy Weitzman of Commonwealth Standard Realty Advisors in Newton Highlands. – Handout
Q: How are you feeling about the space?
TF: The space is fantastic. It has a fully finished basement with a bedroom and a bathroom. My high school son loves that. If you asked my husband, he would say, I wish we did this much sooner, because he commuted an hour and 20 minutes each way for 25 years.
A single mom grows roots in Boston
Originally from New York City, Ardelin de Jesus is a nurse who used to live with her two teenage children in the South End. She worked with the Boston Housing Authority’s First Home Program and the City of Boston’s Downpayment Assistance Program to purchase a house in Roslindale in October.
Ardelin de Jesus outside her Roslindale home. – Photo courtesy Ardelin de Jesus
Roslindale, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms
Most important feature: Parking, two bathrooms
Q: What brought you to Boston?
Ardelin de Jesus: I came from the Bronx. It’s was very different. I mean, all my family is in New York. [Boston] was more calm, and when I got pregnant, I said, “Do I want to go back and raise my child over here?” I was thinking of moving to Puerto Rico because my mom was there, or staying in New York because my sister was there. But I said, No, let me just start by myself in a different place.
Q: When did you start to consider buying?
AJ: I came to Boston, I started from zero, and I had two children. I decided to work and go to school. When I finished school, I said, “OK, now I’m in a better place. Now is the time.”
My daughter is going to medical school, so I had to stay in Boston.
Q: What was the process like?
AJ: Everything was really expensive. We started looking for houses in December 2024, and we finally closed the deal on Oct.15.
Q: Were there any challenges?
AJ: The difficulty was mostly the budget.
There was a house that I did go for, and I put more money down than the person that got the house. I got upset. That was a setback that really broke me in the moment. My realtor, she told me, “That sort of thing can happen … maybe they knew the buyer, maybe they knew the other realtor.”
Q: Were there certain features you were looking for?
AJ: The thing I said wasn’t negotiable was the parking. I wanted a two-bathroom because my daughter takes a while hour in the bathroom.
Down payment assistance helps achieve a goal
Lakia Chambliss was born and raised in Roxbury but moved to Canton, where she lived for 11 years. With help from the City of Boston’s down payment assistance and the Family Self Sufficiency program [Section 8], she was able to move back to Boston in June and bought a home in Hyde Park, where she’s raising her 11-year-old daughter.
Lakia Chambliss outside the Hyde Park home she bought. – Photo Courtesy Lakia Chambliss
Hyde Park, 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom
Most important feature: Quiet neighborhood
Q: When did you start to consider buying?
Lakia Chambliss: It’s always been a dream for me, but I started during the pandemic time back in 2020, that’s when I decided. Since we were stuck indoors and things like that, I was able to really buckle down and save more. And just keeping my credit in good standing.
The interior of Lakia Chambliss’s home. – Photo courtesy Lakia Chambliss
Q: What was important to you?
LC: Neighborhood was a big one. I wanted to be somewhere where the environment was nice, the school systems, low traffic.
Q: What was your budget?
LC: I wasn’t sure of what I was going to be approved for. But when I finally got the OK through Boston Housing, I went to a lender, they gave me my ballpark, and that’s what I worked around, but I didn’t know going into it what my budget would be. I knew my credit was pretty good, my income wasn’t really up there, so I knew that was going to be like a little setback.
Q: How did the Boston’s programs come onto your radar?
LC: I’ve been with the Boston Housing Section 8 program for quite a while, since I was 21, and I’m 44 now. They do send notifications periodically of programs that they have. So when I saw the FSS program. I signed up for that because they put a certain amount of money into an account for you, and it builds over five years, and then you work with them towards your goals, like, if you want a new home, a new car, a new business, things like that. That was a big help, right there, that program. And then I always heard about Boston Housing having the homeownership program. I had to have a certain credit score, make a certain amount of money, and have a certain amount of money saved — I met all of those. So then I just went forward.
Interviews were condensed and edited for clarity.
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