As prices and rents have spiraled out of control across the Boston area, housing activists and a handful of enlightened public officials have campaigned for years to boost construction of new apartments and condominiums. Now all those dogged efforts – often in the teeth of stubborn and at times outright nasty NIMBY opposition – are finally show signs of paying off.
As prices and rents have spiraled out of control across the Boston area, housing activists and a handful of enlightened public officials have campaigned for years to boost construction of new apartments and condominiums. Now all those dogged efforts – often in the teeth of stubborn and at times outright nasty NIMBY opposition – are finally show signs of paying off.
Apartment and condo construction across Greater Boston jumped more than 42 percent last year, one of the biggest increases of any major metro market in the country, CMD Construction Data reports. Developers of new apartments and condos pulled permits for 10,400 new units last year, from the suburbs and towns along the 1-495 corridor to downtown Boston. And it comes amid signs that the region’s housing crisis is finally starting to get some of the attention it has long deserved.
“What’s coming into play is what analysts call ‘pent up demand,’” said Alex Carrick, chief economist for CMD Construction Data. “The Boston area has done very well.”
The Boston area came in No. 4 last year in terms of notching the biggest percentage jump in multifamily building permits, behind only New York, Miami and Dallas.
The Big Apple has gone crazy with new apartment and condo construction, with the number of multifamily building permits doubling to 75,000 last year, according to CMD. To put that in context, that’s what Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is hoping to build by 2030, and then some, all in one year. Of course, New York is much bigger, so it makes sense.
Miami came in No. 2, with 16,000 new multifamily units last year, up from 10,000 in 2014, while Dallas went up 54 percent to 28,000.
Still, for the Boston area, with its well-known allergy to new housing of all types – especially compared to free-wheeling Dallas and Miami, where developers aren’t routinely demonized as greedy neighborhood wreckers – it was an impressive showing.
The 10,400 new units that got the green light last year edged out the last peak in 2005, when 9,100 building permits were issued for condos and apartments across the Boston area.
The big jump in multifamily construction certainly represents a win for Walsh, who, like the late great Thomas M. Menino, has made pushing new housing job number one.
Scott Van Voorhis
Writing’s On The Wall
There are also signs years of warnings by economists and activists – that tens of thousands of new condos and apartments are needed in order to rein in the Boston area’s crazy and unsustainable home prices and rents – are finally sinking in.
There’s new and serious interest on Beacon Hill in proposals that would offer financial incentives to towns and suburbs that open their doors to more housing. There is even the possibility we might see some debate on a tougher proposal that would require towns and suburbs across the Boston area to open up land for new multifamily construction.
Maybe, just maybe, that message is actually starting to filter down to the NIMBY selectmen and neighborhood grumps in the suburbs who routinely blast every new apartment project proposed, though it’s hard to tell.
There has been at least one local dispute in which opponents stressed they weren’t opposed to new housing, just to the scale of the project. I guess that counts as progress.
But with the demand high and the market hot, developers are forging ahead anyway, most often by adding some affordable rentals and going the 40B route, which allows them to sidestep the deathtrap of endless local reviews.
Big new apartment developments are taking shape across the suburbs, with two new projects proposed for the area around Hingham’s waterfront.
CMD is now tracking 971 different apartment and condo projects in various stages of planning or construction across Eastern Massachusetts. And while many are in Boston, hundreds are taking shape in the suburbs, old industrial cities and towns beyond.
Still, as welcome as the increase is, it’s hardly time to declare victory either. Ever bigger numbers are needed to bring rents and prices down from the stratosphere and make up for decades of chronic underbuilding, Carrick, CMD’s chief economist, notes.
That said, it’s a darn good start.
