This is a question that I'm asked time and time again.  Buyers come in, reading the news about how it's such a buyer's market out there now, and ask me how much they can negotiate off the price of a condo.  My answer (at least in the Downtown Boston condo market) usually comes as a surprise to buyers.  Not much, I say - about 3 or 4% from the final asking price (on average, obviously ever property is evaluated independently when negotiating an offer).  That also isn't to say the price hasn't already been reduced from it's original price, so the average discount rate from the original price of a condo in Boston is obviously higher.  See for yourself:

If you could go back to the year 2000 and buy a condo in Boston, would you?  Does it make sense?  Are prices up, or down?  When was the peak?  What's going to happen in the next few years?  These are all common questions I've been getting a lot of recently so I want to answer them and produce an ongoing quarterly market analysis to keep you on top of the market.  I am still working on a final quarterly report for Q1 2009 (plus the past 9 years or so), but I wanted to provide a little "preview" here first. 

As promised here is some additional Boston neighborhood condo sales data, including data from 2006 as well.  The annual data is pulled from MLS and details sold properties occurring from January 1st of each year to September 29th of each year.  I also added percentage changes in each category both from 2007 to 2008 and from 2006 to 2008.