For the past eleven years we have witnessed real estate values receding in Boston as well as in all the other older cities. This span of time, although short in the history of a city, represents a fairly large portion of the life of a real estate owner. The buying and selling of real estate since 1936 has been quite as extensive as in the normal years previous to the first World War. Real estate prices, however, in some of the older business and residential sections of the city of Boston have returned to levels below those of the pre-Civil War years.