By Curt Nickisch (WBUR)

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Jon Davis handles 10 percent of the state’s foreclosure auctions. The Marshfield lawyer has been watching these auctions migrate from places such as Dorchester and Lowell.

“Now you’ll see them in the Sudburys, the Hinghams and the Westons,” Davis said, “where you wouldn’t have in the past expected to see foreclosures.”

The reason for these auctions is not the crazy interest-rate mortgages. It’s the recession. Nowadays, people are losing their homes the way they used to before the sub-prime crisis.

Snapshot Of A Suburban Foreclosure
7 Beechwood Ave., Sudbury, Mass.

(Curt Nickisch/WBUR)

The facts:

• Single-family colonial house

• 1,770 square feet

• 3 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom

• Built in 1995

The figures:

• Purchased: $410,000 in Nov. 2003

• Assessed value: $420,800

• Foreclosed: Oct. 1, 2009

• Sale price at foreclosure auction: 1 bid at opening price of $365,000

“Historically, people lost their home when they lost their job, they lost their health or they lost their spouse,” said Nick Retsinas, a housing market economist at Harvard University.

Unemployment is to blame again today. The number of foreclosure proceedings in Massachusetts has jumped an alarming 150 percent.

In fact, people under foreclosure I talked to in Sudbury didn’t want to be interviewed for this story. They said they’re ashamed — to have lost their jobs; to have run out of savings; to not be able to make their payments.

Whitney Tilson, a Harvard Business School grad and money manager, said, “the number of distressed homes coming through the pipeline has actually never been greater than right now.”

Tilson said Sudbury is a good example of what this coming wave could do to the market. Only seven homes above $1,000,000 have sold in the town this year. Last year it was 43, and that was a bad year.

“The listed prices appear to show that prices are holding up, but that’s phony,” Tilson said. “So what breaks the logjam? The wave of foreclosures working their way through the pipeline.”

Foreclosed properties priced to sell will push housing prices down and push more homeowners under water and into foreclosure. And that could really hurt regional banks.

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By Deborah Becker (WBUR)

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Brockton District Court has one of the highest number of cases involving mental health in Massachusetts. That includes cases where someone asks a judge to involuntarily commit a loved one for substance abuse treatment. It’s called having someone “sectioned” or “sectioned 35″ — named after the state law that allows civil commitments for those who won’t get treatment on their own.

It happens as often as eight times a day in Brockton, when the judge must ask a state psychologist for an emergency recommendation.

One option for judges is to send a person into treatment for 30 days. For the men and women not considered too dangerous to themselves or others, the court can send them to a Department of Public Health facility or to private treatment.

But for men whose loved ones ask the court to civilly commit them in a secure facility, there is only one place to go: the Massachusetts Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center, or MASAC, in Bridgewater.

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This week on The Bottom Line podcast: Hyatt fires its Boston-area housekeepers. The governor threatens a boycott, and the hotel company stands firm. Also, why some companies are giving more paid sick days this fall. And the recession hits a New England sport hard — you probably can’t guess which one.

Hosted by Curt Nickisch.

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This week on The Bottom Line podcast: Community college students “bunker in” to get their education. Turns out the changing economy is changing higher ed. And we’ll have another example from the high-end of the spectrum. Plus, a new business library in Boston.

Hosted by Curt Nickisch.

By Bianca Vazquez Toness (WBUR)

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The recession has sent more people back to school, and Massachusetts is no different. At Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, enrollment is up 23 percent since last year. The college is taking extraordinary steps to address the lack of space and the needs of working students — midnight classes.

Hector Gonzalez is late for the 11:45 class. But he stops in the lobby for coffee. He’ll need it to get through the almost three hour lecture.

“Basically, this was the only class of psychology that was open,” he says, stirring creamer into his coffee.

Tanneke Burns is taking two midnight classes. The mother of five, who draws blood for the Red Cross, wants to be a nurse. (Bianca Vazquez Toness/WBUR)

Gonzalez is a police officer in Chelsea. He works at 7 a.m., but he needs Psychology 101 for his criminal justice degree. “I’d prefer to take it in-person,” he says, instead of online classes. “I’d rather have a teacher.”

Professor Kathleen O’Neill is standing in front of a classroom of 20 people. “When you think of psychology, what do you think of?,” she asks the group.

“The brain,” one student calls out.

“Yes, the brain,” O’Neill says. “Good. What else?”

O’Neill came up with the idea of these midnight sessions to deal with the increased enrollment at Bunker Hill Community College.

“There are so many students that want to come here, it would make sense to run it overnight,” she says. “Having teenagers myself I know they’re up at midnight. So, I thought why not just run it overnight and see what happens.”

(more…)

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This week on The Bottom Line podcast: We remember Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. The congressional titan is being laid to rest this weekend after a funeral here in Boston. As the nation recalls his enormous legacy as a lawmaker, we look at the economic impact in Massachusetts of that sweeping political record. Also, another federal law with enormous economic impact gets a lift: the new GI bill. And, Boston cabbies try to stretch out the miles.

Hosted by Curt Nickisch.

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This week on The Bottom Line podcast: Lobstermen in Massachusetts are catching plenty of lobsters this summer, but they can’t seem to catch a break. Also, two very different stories of living with less — from two very different women.

Guest hosted by Andrew Phelps.

By Monica Brady-Myerov (WBUR)

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Bill Silver is trying to sell a one-story, weathered shingle home that he calls cute. “Now I don’t have any taste, so I don’t know what cute is,” says Silver, a real-estate agent with Kinlin Grover in Harwichport, “but I know that the buyers think it’s cute.”

The two-bedroom house is decorated with eclectic art and painted furniture. It’s on the market for $425,000, which is $25,000 less than the owners were asking a few months ago. And if there are no offers in the next few months, Silver says they’ll have to go lower still.

This two-bedroom home in Harwichport is on the market for $425,000, which is $25,000 less than the owners were asking a few months ago. (Courtesy of Kinlin Grover GMAC Real Estate)

“The market talks to you. It says hello or it doesn’t talk to you at all,” Silver says. “So if you’ve done everything you can do to market the house, then in the end it’s the prices.”

Prices for property on Cape Cod went up 138 percent between 1999 to 2005. Since then, they’ve been falling. Last year, in total, prices fell 13 percent compared to the year before. In the first half of this year, they have taken a 12 percent nosedive.

But the ups and downs of the Cape market are different than the rest of the state because it’s a vacation home market.

“We’re not forced to sell because it’s not our primary residence, but we would like to sell,” says Gail Hickey, who owns the “cute” Harwichport cottage. Her sentiment is shared by most of the sellers on Cape Cod: second-home owners are not under the gun.

Hickey’s vacation home has been on the market for six months. “We haven’t gotten frustrated yet because we put it on the market to see what would happen,” she says. “We’re not chomping at the bit because it’s not selling, we’re willing to wait until the market opens up.”

But so far the market continues to fall.

Aglaia Pikounis, with the real-estate data firm The Warren Group, says tumbling prices are affecting all towns on the Cape. “Take Truro, it’s dipped 39 percent, Pikounis says. “Another area with a steep decline in prices was Osterville. There were 18 single-family home sales in the first half of the year, and the median prices dipped about 37 percent.”

Real-estate trackers warn these numbers don’t mean all home values are down by this much, it most likely means only smaller, lower-priced homes are selling. And prices are being driven down by foreclosures and short sales. Hyannis is one of the 10 communities with the highest foreclosure rates in the state.

One buyer, Mark Andrade, was surprised when he went bargain hunting. “As we went into it, we thought the prices would be lower than they actually were,” Andrade says, “that part of the Cape — the Outer Cape, Eastham, Wellfleet and Truro — was holding their own as far as the market goes.”

Still, Andrade found what he thought was a good deal, a four-bedroom house in Eastham for $435,000, and bought the vacation home in June.

Andrade is the exception. What’s really distressing real-estate agents is the slow pace of sales.

“Lately, it’s pretty ugly,” says real-estate agent Bob Sheldon, who sells second homes in Eastham on the Outer Cape. “What’s happened is that the people who are in our traditional middle space, which is somewhere between $450,000 and $600,000, there’s nobody buying. Zero.”

In Eastham, 30 homes sold in the first half of this year, 33 percent fewer than the same time last year. Cape-wide, sales are down 21 percent, double the state’s rate.

Agent Bill Silver said the market abruptly changed last fall when the market plunged. “It sent a lot of buyers home,” he said. “It sent many of my buyers home, I know that because they were afraid of jobs.” Now buyers are waiting — waiting for the bottom or to see if their company will have layoffs or if the stock market will go up.

Real-estate agents always say now is the perfect time to buy. But agents on Cape Cod say now really is a good time, because of the combination of a lot of homes languishing on the market and slumping prices.

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This week on The Bottom Line podcast: A disaster declaration is in the works for Massachusetts farmers, who report the worst summer in memory. We smell out the tobacco crop. Also, lower land values are a window of opportunity for conservation measures. Massachusetts gets puritanical and taxes alcohol. That took awhile. And finally, musicians: will strum for cash.

Hosted by Curt Nickisch.

By Andrea Shea (WBUR)

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Mezzo-soprano Ja-Nae Duane is in her thirties, but she has been hitting the high notes since she was 13. At age 18, she sang at the White House. She has performed at top venues such as Lincoln Center in New York and Jordan Hall in Boston. Her opera career seemed to be right on track, Duane said, until this year.

“I haven’t done any singing since May,” Duane said.

She was supposed to sing with the Granite State Opera in New Hampshire this season, but “that fell through because they had to shut their doors.” Then, Duane said, the job she won at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, was canceled because of funding issues.

“To have two gigs fall through within three weeks of one another is devastating,” Duane said. “It’s one thing to be a musician and not be able to do it full time because you can’t afford it as a singer, but it’s another thing to have these little glimmers of light just sort of dash away.”

Finding humor in the situation, Duane laughed, adding, “It’s been an interesting year.”

The life of a freelance musician has never been easy, but the current economic downturn is making things a lot harder for working performers in all genres. CD sales are down; orchestras are slashing budgets; gigs at weddings, corporate events and rock clubs are drying up.

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