Jonathan Berk
I’m often asked what’s really driving the housing crisis in Massachusetts. The answers are many, but one of the more pernicious and least-discussed is hiding in plain sight in our municipal zoning codes: large lot requirements.
Here’s the reality: Half of the communities in Greater Boston require 40,000 square feet or more of land, nearly an acre, just to build a single home on at least half of their residentially zoned land.
Most existing homes sit on parcels that are now considered “nonconforming” under these rules, meaning they couldn’t be built today under their own town’s zoning. Nearly every residential lot in Massachusetts that actually complies with underlying zoning – a small percentage – is already built.
So, when demand for housing rises, supply simply cannot respond. Prices climb. Workers leave. Employers follow.
The Teardown Economy
When buildable land is this scarce, something troubling happens. Wealthy buyers don’t seek out new lots to build on because they don’t exist. Instead, they purchase existing homes and tear them down.
Consider Wellesley. Since 2003, the town has permitted 1,200 single family homes. Only 95 of those were net new construction. The other 1,105 replaced existing homes, predominantly with larger luxury builds.
Over that same period, the town’s median home price doubled from roughly $1 million to $2 million. Wellesley isn‘t an outlier; it’s the model playing out across our region. In nearby Concord, 300 tear downs during the 2010s saw homes averaging 1,400 square feet and $580,000 replaced by units averaging 4,000 square feet and $1.4 million.
This is what happens when large-lot zoning meets market demand. Wealthy families outbid everyone else for the few available parcels that can accommodate new construction.
But those parcels already have homes on them. The kind of modest housing that could serve young families just starting out, empty nesters looking to downsize, teachers, firefighters and the small business owners who make our communities function. Those homes get demolished and in their place rise luxury 4,000 square foot colonials with three-car garages.
Each teardown results in a net loss of workforce housing, homes that might have been preserved under smaller regional lot standards, while still allowing the addition of a new luxury property to the market.
Where Is Our Labor Force Building?
Massachusetts faces a shortage of skilled tradespeople: electricians, plumbers, carpenters, roofers. The workforce is aging out and not enough young workers are entering the trades to replace them. Federal immigration policies have also impacted the labor force in Massachusetts.
So where is our dwindling labor force spending its time and talent? Flipping and rebuilding luxury homes on the same footprints where modest housing once stood. Custom millwork. High-end finishes. Meanwhile, starter homes go unbuilt.
The average single-family home in the United States was 909 square feet in 1950, right around the time much of Massachusetts’s existing housing stock was built. Today, the average new single-family home is closer to 2,400 square feet.
We’re not building homes for families anymore. We’re building monuments to scarcity, enabled by zoning that makes anything else economically impossible.
The Economic Damage Is Staggering
The housing shortage isn’t just a quality-of-life issue for those struggling to find an affordable place to live. It’s an economic anchor dragging down the entire commonwealth.
According to analysis from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce using the REMI+ economic model, between 2008 and 2025 Massachusetts lost $13.5 billion in economic output, $8.8 billion in personal income and 91,249 jobs that were never created because there’s nowhere for workers to live.
These aren’t theoretical losses. They compound every single year we fail to act.
One of the greatest threats to our region remains the outmigration of the heart of our workforce, those between 26 and 44, who should be buying homes here and setting down permanent roots, but are instead fleeing for more affordable housing options elsewhere.
The Path Forward
Massachusetts must make it easier to build housing on smaller lots, as well as a variety of housing types in all communities – not as a luxury, but as a survival strategy.
Every day we delay, another modest home falls to the wrecking ball. Another family gets priced out. Another employer looks to Austin or Raleigh or Denver, where housing for their workforce actually gets built.
The teardowns won’t stop on their own. Wealthy buyers will keep outbidding working families for the only buildable land available because that’s what the restrictive zoning rules we’ve written demand of them.
Changing the outcome means changing the rules. Smaller minimum lot sizes. By-right approvals for modest homes. Density where infrastructure already exists.
The housing we need won’t appear from thin air, but the land is already there. It’s just illegal to build what we truly need on it.
Jonathan Berk is the founder of the real estate and placemaking consultancy re:MAIN and the board chair of Abundant Housing Massachusetts.
