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Massachusetts is already 15 percent of the way to its 10-year housing construction goal after just one year, but that pace isn’t likely to be sustained.
The state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities announced Thursday afternoon that Massachusetts developers and contractors delivered 34,561 new homes in 2025. The state is aiming to add 222,000 homes between 2025 and 2035.
EOHLC said it used a new type of Census Bureau data in its analysis, which it published on its website in dashboards and in downloadable form, that reflects new addresses reported to the Postal Service as new housing units are completed.
“We know that we need to build more homes to lower costs across the state,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement. “This new data shows that we are making serious progress and helping more families, workers, seniors and young people afford homes in their communities. But we know there is more work to do. It’s why we’re getting after it every day to increase housing production, help more people become first-time homebuyers, eliminate burdensome renters’ fees, and make Massachusetts more affordable for everyone.”
Statewide, 341 of the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts have seen a net increase in residential addresses since November 2024.
According to the new data, the city of Boston added 5,983 housing units, which is a 1.9 percent increase in housing stock and 45th in the state by percentage increase in its housing stock.
In Cambridge, there was a 1.15 percent increase, with there being 645 units added to its housing stock. There are now 56,684 housing units. Somerville added 286 units, a 0.75 percent increase year-over-year.
The statewide numbers appear to show Massachusetts is ahead of where it needs to be to hit its 10-year housing production goal. However, state housing officials told reporters during a briefing Thursday that 2025’s pace of construction likely won’t be sustained thanks to a dramatic drop-off in new housing developments entering the pipeline in recent years. Huge jumps in the cost of construction loans, construction materials and labor, plus lenders’ reticence to finance as much new construction following the 2023 banking crisis, are creating significant headwinds for developers.
The officials said 2025’s production likely reflected housing developments that “got stuck” during the COVID-19 pandemic and were delayed in delivering.
The state is also launching a new housing production tracker to monitor progress, officials said Thursday. While previously relied on spotty surveys of local officials to count the number of building permits issued, new data from the Census Bureau utilizes “address count” to get a more comprehensive conclusion of the number of units added. When briefing reporters Thursday, state housing officials characterized the data as the most accurate picture of housing construction available today.
These files track when new residential addresses have been created and provide unit counts at the census block level, reflecting when newly-built homes are ready for occupancy.
“Reliable data is essential to understanding where we are making progress and where more work remains,” Juana Matias, secretary of housing and livable communities said in a statement. “This tracker will help us measure housing production across Massachusetts as we work to increase supply and lower costs, while also providing researchers, policymakers, and residents with a transparent view of what’s happening in their communities.”
So far, the state doesn’t have any plans to use the data to punish or reward towns for how much housing they produce. State housing officials said they plan to update the data every year as the Census Bureau releases new address count files.
