Name: Barry Hoffman
Title: President and Partner
Company: Pilgrim Management Corp.
Years with Company: over 50 years
Address: 745 Boylston St., Boston
Telephone: 617 584-5555
Email: pakistan@tiac.net
In what way has the New England Real Estate Journal been a benefit to you and your business? My gosh, 50 years have passed. Where did it all go? Have been visiting the old haunts and it brings back memories. Gone are the $25,000 Back Bay townhouses (ok, that was for a 4- story and you had to pay $30,000 for a 5-story. Now they tell me they bring well over a $1 million. Oh, why did I sell! I kind of like the old days. One eagerly opened up the New England Real Estate Journal to see who-bought-what. I even made a few headlines myself. One was a sort of a king with only a few thousand apartments. I loved the Fenway area.
Whatever happened to secretaries and IBM machines? Everybody works from home. And everybody talks to me from his or her car!! Miracles all over.
I remember the city without a skyline. Railroad yards where the present Prudential Center sits with its own city. I went to the opening party for the first big office buildings at 225 Franklin St. done by State Street Properties and wondered if the city could handle this much new space.
Quite a memorable time in Boston. City employees paid like peons and police the same. Finally somebody got wise and now one sees such high quality workers. No more corruption! Political life changed and the city no longer dominated by one ethnic group - everybody now has a chance. OK, lots of changes but I think for the better. I look back from my home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine and play with my grandkids. I had enough and I made enough so let's leave it to the grandkids of my old friends. But I am realizing that once a "real estate-nik, always a real estate-nik".
I have been busily buying up Portland apartment buildings. They remind me of my Boston 50 years ago, old apartments buildings with unrealized potential. I am having a lot of fun and busy enough so I don't rush to the Boston Globe's obituary pages.
Oh, I am still Consul General of Pakistan for New England, which gave me my most interesting "other life". I suspect that all of real estate types would make great diplomats!!