There’s no escaping the next real estate downturn: the only question is when it will hit. The signs of softening – slowing home sales and slowing price growth – are already readily apparent both in Greater Boston and in major markets across the country.

But even after the tide recedes on what has been a record-shattering boom, some changes are likely to remain. Top among them is the so-called “upscaling” – formerly known as gentrification – of previously middle-class and blue collar communities where you didn’t have to be rich to own a home and get access to decent schools.

Just take Waltham, Natick and Medford. All three communities were always respectable, but they weren’t exactly known either as magnets for upwardly mobile professionals and pricey housing.

All three were early centers for manufacturing and industry, with Waltham earning the name “Watch City.” In more recent decades, Natick became known as a regional shopping destination thanks to the Natick Mall and the Route 9 retail sprawl that surrounds it.

Today, you’ll need to be pulling down an upper middle-class income to buy a house in these towns.

The median home price in Natick hit $612,000 in September, rising a hefty 8.3 percent through the first nine months of 2018 compared to last year, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. Medford and Waltham, at $605,000 and $604,900 respectively, aren’t far behind.

To afford a house at those prices, a buyer would need to make least $150,000 – probably more, if student debt and other debt are factored in. That’s a good step or two above the typical middle class income – only 17 percent of Massachusetts families pull down that kind of money.

It’s the same story for Melrose ($651,000), Watertown ($650,000) and Somerville which, at $785,000, has long since shed its old, derisive nickname “Slumerville” from the days when it was a gritty, densely packed factory town.

Once solidly plebian Boston neighborhoods like South Boston ($807,500), Charlestown ($1 million) and West Roxbury ($600,000) have made or are in the midst of a similar transformation, Warren Group numbers show.

Climbing Ever Upward

Meanwhile, as once middle- and working-class suburbs and neighborhoods have joined the upper middle class, other already fairly well-off communities have undergone their own gold-plated transformation.
Brookline ($1.7 million), Wellesley ($1.4 million) and Weston ($1.5 million), not to mention the South End and Back Bay, have increasingly morphed into inaccessible preserves for the rich (or the merely wealthy).

And as the rich towns and shiny urban ZIP codes have gotten richer, they have sent buyers fleeing to their once relatively humble neighbors, driving up prices there.

Boxed out of Cambridge ($1.45 million) and then Somerville, buyers with more than a few bucks in their pockets are fleeing to Waltham, Watertown, Medford and Melrose.

The Bay State’s dramatic rise from near Rust Belt status back in the 1970s to a powerhouse of the New Economy has been a big factor driving these changes.

It is an economic boom that has transformed Boston, Cambridge and their environs into a global center for the biotech and tech industries – and which has dramatically increased the value of major academic research institutions and hospitals of which the region has so many. The financial services sector has also grown apace.

Yet we’ve done an atrocious job accommodating all this new growth.

NIMBY, anti-housing zoning restrictions have made it all but impossible for Greater Boston to accommodate the influx of highly paid researchers, executives and techies drawn to our burgeoning local economy, killing off most single-family home construction beyond teardowns and sending prices in once relatively affordable communities through the roof.

We have essentially been importing highly paid professionals and researchers who can afford to pay more for housing and exporting middle- and working-class families who can no longer afford to live here to New Hampshire and beyond.

Scott Van Voorhis

Change may be inevitable, and certainly the economic boom we have seen has been a blessing.

But the rising unaffordability of communities across the Boston area has been anything but inevitable. Rather, it’s a product of a monumental failure to adapt.

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.