Two Parking Spots On Comm. Ave. Sold For $250,000

Photos by Steve Annear

A little rain didn’t keep buyers interested in spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on prime parking spots in the Back Bay from showing up to an auction on Thursday afternoon.

And lucky for them, it was over fast enough that they were able to keep dry. “One, two, three, bang. Done,” said Paul Saperstein, owner of the auction company, Paul E. Saperstein Co., which hosted the event.

The two spots, sold as a tandem package, went for $250,000 and are located in the alleyway behind 132 Commonwealth Ave. They are accessible via Clarendon and Dartmouth Streets. Buyers were required to have a $20,000 deposit on hand to finalize the sale at the auction, securing the deal.

Before the auction began, Saperstein tried to start the bidding higher, at $300,000. “Come on gentlemen, I’m not here for rehearsals,” he said.

But no one took the bait. One gentleman standing nearby was only there to watch. “I live around the corner, so I was just curious,” said the man, who wouldn’t give his name.

Instead of bidding higher, the parking spots sold for the asking price, and were scooped up by representatives from Otis and Ahearn, a real estate company located on Newbury Street. “The process goes by pretty fast,” said Mike Durand, principal of the agency. “This is pretty normal.”

Durand didn’t say what the fate of spots would be, as he walked off with Saperstein to ink the sale.

While the spots—nothing more than a strip of broken concrete,  pocked with cracks and tree roots poking through—were expensive, they certainly didn’t come close to the other high-priced spots in the city.

In June, a pair of tandem spots behind 298 Commonwealth Ave. sold for $560,000 at an auction. The IRS seized the spaces from a man who owed more than half-a-million dollars in back taxes. The asking price for those spots started at roughly $40,000, but because of the appeal, quickly shot up the day of the auction.

Other spots nearby have sold for around the same as the tandem pair put out to auction by Saperstein’s company.

Saperstein said people are quick to purchase these small lots—rain or shine— because of the prime location to Newbury Street, and the overall “desirability.”

“You’ve got players here,” he said. “These people know what they want. They know what they are doing. These are people that want to pay for these desirable spots.”