studio and 1 BR prices in market rate buildings
rona twofisch.com
A very quick survey of market rate rental prices in the new buildings in Assembly and Maxwell’s Green shows:
Ava – no studios, 1 BR $3042+
Avalon – studio $3077, 1 BR $3312
Miscela – studio $2938, 1 BR $3440+
Montaje - studio $2829, 1 BR $3625
Maxwell’s green – studio $2480, 1 BR $3028
My point is, smaller is not affordable at market rate. I do not expect that renters will move, en masse, from 3-bedroom apartments (at $1000-1300 a room) into newly built studios and 1 BR units at the market rate.
Rona
Brendan Ritter
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PJ Santos
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PJ Santos
PJ,New properties are expensive in part because it costs a lot to build and the land costs are high and developers need to recover their investment within an economic timeframe. However, I'm not sure that these apartments automatically get cheaper as they get older. That might happen if they are not maintained and get run-down; but I'm also not sure we should plan on run-down housing to create affordability.I think that location is a bigger driver of cost. This is why run-down apartments in Somerville cost more than brand new units in Reading. Many people live here because it is a desirable place to live, and if there are more people than units, rent increases. Somerville is a perfect example of this; 30 years ago it wasn't desirable and houses/rent were cheap. Today, the exact same houses (perhaps better maintained) are super expensive (8-10X!). What changed? mostly 'location' (i.e. desirability). I know that this is stating the obvious, but it may also be true; not saying this is good, bad or otherwise, it is just the economic reality of our current society.I think this is the core paradox facing the city; we want to make it a great place to live, and in many ways it is. However, the better it gets, the more desirable it becomes, and more desirable means higher rents and less affordability. This feedback loop continues until a new balance is reached. Perhaps we hit a price ceiling, we build to a density where it becomes less desirable, we lose all our greenspace, or we put restrictions on growth, rent, development, etc... that constrain this in some manner.Not sure what my point is, as I don't have a clear suggestion as to what we should do about it. Perhaps I'm just trying to point out that this is super complex and there aren't simple solutions to complex problems. I will say that DSNC is a great start as it is helping to further the conversation and bring in data and new ideas.Michael
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Brendan Ritter
Jeff Byrnes
I’ll note that those new buildings are mostly leased up, even at these prices, so they are clearly affordable (in the colloquial sense) to someone.
The smaller new apartments are more affordable than larger new apartments, here’s the prices for 2 & 3 BR homes in the same buildings:
- Ava:
- 2BR $3,577–$4,037
- Avalon:
- 2BR: $4,282–$5,007
- 3BR: $6,947+
- Miscela:
- 2BR: $3,825–$4,625
- 3BR: $5,355–$5,665
- Montaje:
- 2BR: $4,135–$4,925
- Maxwell’s Green:
- 2BR: $4,220–$4,625
- 3BR: $5,230+
That’s based on 30% or less of gross income being Officially Affordable™ per HUD’s guidelines.
By that same metric, a single person making ~$120–150k can reasonably afford a 1BR in one of these buildings, though of course each household’s situation varies depending on their expenses.
The median household in Somerville makes ~$113k / year, and here’s a graph of income distributions, showing that ~50% of households in Somerville make >$125k / year:
Source
What all this means is that if there’s enough newer homes for high-income households, they will “move on up” and free up less expensive homes. You might have heard of filtering, that’s the name for this “move on up” thing.
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
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Christopher Beland
> My point is, smaller is not affordable at market rate. I do not
> expect that renters will move, en masse, from 3-bedroom apartments
> (at $1000-1300 a room) into newly built studios and 1 BR units at the
> market rate.
studios that cost $2480-$3077 per month. Wealthier people move into
those apartments, making space for people in class B studios to move
up, making more room in the class C market so someone desperate to get
rid of their roommates can get the $1850/month Sargent Ave studio I see
currently advertised on Craigslist.
Based on the prices Jeff reported, renting a room in a 3-bedroom in
those class A buildings doesn't cost $1000-$1300 a month, it costs
$1700-$2300/month. Moving to that Winter Hill studio from one of those
would be a major change in age of building and distance from rapid
transit, but would be either a small $150/month increase in rent, or
potentially a substantial decrease.
According to Zillow, there are also 10x more 3-bedrooms available than
studios, which might mean we're simply disproportionately behind on
building studios and their prices are proportionately inflated. That
might be because we've killed large projects that would have
constructed lots of studios. For example, in 2019, Scape was planning
to put 250 units in a 6-story, no-parking building on Elm Street, a mix
of studios, 1-bedrooms, and 2-bedrooms, with 300-square-foot studios
(the size of our first apartment after getting married) renting pre-
COVID-inflation for only $1300/month and others at $2500-$3000/month.
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2019/10/24/scape-davis-square-project/
-B.
Aaron Weber
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Jeff Byrnes
I agree that homes shouldn’t be this expensive!
My point is that if these new homes don’t get built, those 6-figure earners will look for not-new homes and push their prices up. Which will push you and others who don’t earn a $100k+ income out.
Basically, we need a whole lot of homes of all different shapes, sizes, ages, and prices, or we leave landlords with the power to only rent to high-earners & displace everyone else.
Said another way: we won’t arrest the current trend by not building new, expensive homes.
That said, that’s the starting point for solving housing affordability, not the end-all be-all. Necessary but insufficient!
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
they are clearly affordable (in the colloquial sense) to someone
if you’ve a two-person couple household, and together bring home $200k–300k ($100–150k each, not unusual for mid-career office workers in Boston), you can comfortably afford up to $5000–$7500 / mo. in housing costs.
It is still reasonable to ask whether we want Davis Square to continue trending in a direction where only people with the means to afford that rent will be able to live here (I have never had a 6-figure annual salary in my life, and neither has my partner).Doubly so when we have conversations about long-term vs. “transient” residents. I have had friends leave Somerville because landlords were raising rent faster than their employers were raising their wages, and there was no path to ownership being a realistic option for them here. I have personally been in really bad financial shape at points to be able to keep living here, and kind of just expect I will have to leave at some point, not because I want to, but because I won't be able to afford it.Zachary Yaro
On Wed, 5 Nov 2025 at 14:58, Jeff Byrnes <je...@somervilleyimby.org> wrote:
Thankfully, it shouldn’t take quite that long! There’s good research that the price-calming effects of a new building are felt pretty immediately nearby.
I’ll note that those new buildings are mostly leased up, even at these prices, so they are clearly affordable (in the colloquial sense) to someone.
The smaller new apartments are more affordable than larger new apartments, here’s the prices for 2 & 3 BR homes in the same buildings:
- Ava:
- 2BR $3,577–$4,037
- Avalon:
- 2BR: $4,282–$5,007
- 3BR: $6,947+
- Miscela:
- 2BR: $3,825–$4,625
- 3BR: $5,355–$5,665
- Montaje:
- 2BR: $4,135–$4,925
- Maxwell’s Green:
- 2BR: $4,220–$4,625
- 3BR: $5,230+
While these, and the previous numbers, may seem eye-popping, if you’ve a two-person couple household, and together bring home $200k–300k ($100–150k each, not unusual for mid-career office workers in Boston), you can comfortably afford up to $5000–$7500 / mo. in housing costs.
That’s based on 30% or less of gross income being Officially Affordable™ per HUD’s guidelines.
By that same metric, a single person making ~$120–150k can reasonably afford a 1BR in one of these buildings, though of course each household’s situation varies depending on their expenses.
The median household in Somerville makes ~$113k / year, and here’s a graph of income distributions, showing that ~50% of households in Somerville make >$125k / year:
<Attachment.tiff>
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Michael Chiu
Michael Chiu
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Mieke Citroen
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Colin McMillen
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rona twofisch.com
This thread is going well, and I appreciate it, also.
Re: Prices going down by building many units in Davis Square.
The Pew Study that Jeff mentioned is comprehensive, but may not apply to our conditions. It is based on low-income areas. We are not that! Case in point is that the thousand+ units in Assembly Row have not gone down in price, even though they have been occupied for 9+ years.
Rona
From: johnh...@gmail.com <johnh...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2025 11:55 AM
To: 'Michael Chiu' <michael...@gmail.com>; 'PJ Santos' <peej...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'Brendan Ritter' <brendan...@gmail.com>; rona twofisch.com <ro...@twofisch.com>; 'Davis Square Neighborhood Council' <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [DSNC] studio and 1 BR prices in market rate buildings
Appreciate you commenting Michael,
Increasing density does not automatically lead to lower housing costs. According to a quick check of data, the top 12 most dense incorporated areas in the U.S.
are in the NY metro (not known for inexpensive housing). Somerville is already the densest community in MA, and 19th densest in the U.S, which doesn’t
currently correlate with low housing costs. Desirability and proximity to employment (including college off-campus housing demand) drive overall demand.
Areas that have more recently developed high rise housing, such as the Seaport or Cambridge Crossing/Lechmere area, are not cheap and have not resulted in lower housing costs in the older nearby housing stock.
Rents and home prices continue to rise in these areas.
In high demand areas, some sort of governmental led initiative is typically needed to control housing cost below market-rate. Programs like 40B “affordable” developments, prescribed “affordable” set asides, and rent control have had some success in controlling housing cost. Other tax incentive programs for developers such as through HUD and housing vouchers have also been used. Perhaps the city could look at tax incentives for public-private partnership developments.
I am concerned the push for very tall buildings (which seems often expressed), will drastically and negatively change the character of Davis for those who were attracted to this area in the first place, and will not in any way solve housing affordability. This is not to say that there are not many opportunities for reasonably taller buildings to replace existing on underutilized sites, and if developed in scale with our streets and existing fabric would have positive benefits.
I think more research is needed into what has been successfully done in other communities, (European examples are often helpful in looking at transit and pedestrian oriented communities that also are sensitive to preserving character, quality of life, and cost of living). Some precedent examples can be instructive.
John
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rona twofisch.com
I will stand with Colin that old construction does not mean “c” grade housing.
Many condos in those 1900ish buildings have been insulated and improved and have market rate values (for sale) over $900K. That is why a lot of the “naturally occurring affordable housing” has been drying up. Developers buy the run-down two-family houses and renovate them into luxury housing.
That door to affordable housing has been closing for decades. Last year, two-thirds of home sales in Somerville went to non-owner occupiers (REIT or developers).
Rona
From: Colin McMillen <colin.m...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2025 12:23 PM
To: Michael Chiu <michael...@gmail.com>; PJ Santos <peej...@gmail.com>
Cc: Brendan Ritter <brendan...@gmail.com>; rona twofisch.com <ro...@twofisch.com>; Davis Square Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [DSNC] studio and 1 BR prices in market rate buildings
"New construction is more expensive" is broadly true pretty much everywhere in the world, including places where they *do* build plenty of housing, such as Tokyo. A place can be perfectly solidly built and habitable and still less fashionable / stylish according to current trends, have older and less efficient appliances / build quality, etc. It doesn't mean it's a bad or run-down place to live.
Frank Mals
Aaron Weber
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Asheem Linaval
Frank Mals
Carol
Jeff Byrnes
In 1930, it was 103k people.
Helpful chart:
> “You can blame both the city and developers for the increasing prices and rents.”
No, actually, you can’t. The City is only responsible in the sense that we, the citizenry, reduced how many homes that can be built here via City laws. But that’s a democratic process that we, the citizens, did, not “the City”.
Developers also are not responsible for increased prices and rents; prices & rents are set by the market, not by builders. One cannot arbitrarily set a sale or rental price. If you set it too high, nobody buys/rents. They are chasing the dollars available to them because of scarcity.
We, the residents, are responsible. We (royal we, historic) in the 70s/80s/90s decided to not allow even the homes already in existence to be built again, resulting in things as small as 3 deckers and 2-fam houses being illegal to build by-right.
So, with current conditions of smaller households requiring more space per person, what would it take to grow Somerville back to our former peak population of 103,908 people?
What would it take to grow Somerville to 200k people? 500k people? 1M? Food for thought: under the first zoning ordinance, Somerville allowed for growth up to 300k people (about 3× its population at the time, and also today).
With that in mind, what amount of homes do we need to legalize if we want Somerville to have enough homes for that many neighbors?
As for losing representation, Aaron is referring to how Electoral College and House of Representatives allotments work. As our population declines and other areas in the country grow (read: Red States), we lose Electoral College votes and House Reps to those places. Meaning our national political power wanes. CA, NY, and MA are in the forefront of this loss of national political power because we do not allow enough new homes to be built to satisfy demand, which means prices rise astronomically, both pushing people out and blocking newcomers from moving in.
Said another way, allowing more homes, and thus more neighbors, means preserving our federal political power in addition to ensuring we welcome newcomers.
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
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johnh...@gmail.com
Appreciate you commenting Michael,
Increasing density does not automatically lead to lower housing costs. According to a quick check of data, the top 12 most dense incorporated areas in the U.S.
are in the NY metro (not known for inexpensive housing). Somerville is already the densest community in MA, and 19th densest in the U.S, which doesn’t
currently correlate with low housing costs. Desirability and proximity to employment (including college off-campus housing demand) drive overall demand.
Areas that have more recently developed high rise housing, such as the Seaport or Cambridge Crossing/Lechmere area, are not cheap and have not resulted in lower housing costs in the older nearby housing stock.
Rents and home prices continue to rise in these areas.
In high demand areas, some sort of governmental led initiative is typically needed to control housing cost below market-rate. Programs like 40B “affordable” developments, prescribed “affordable” set asides, and rent control have had some success in controlling housing cost. Other tax incentive programs for developers such as through HUD and housing vouchers have also been used. Perhaps the city could look at tax incentives for public-private partnership developments.
I am concerned the push for very tall buildings (which seems often expressed), will drastically and negatively change the character of Davis for those who were attracted to this area in the first place, and will not in any way solve housing affordability. This is not to say that there are not many opportunities for reasonably taller buildings to replace existing on underutilized sites, and if developed in scale with our streets and existing fabric would have positive benefits.
I think more research is needed into what has been successfully done in other communities, (European examples are often helpful in looking at transit and pedestrian oriented communities that also are sensitive to preserving character, quality of life, and cost of living). Some precedent examples can be instructive.
John
From: daviss...@googlegroups.com <daviss...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Michael Chiu
Sent: Wednesday, November 5, 2025 2:06 PM
To: PJ Santos <peej...@gmail.com>
Cc: Brendan Ritter <brendan...@gmail.com>; rona twofisch.com <ro...@twofisch.com>; Davis Square Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [DSNC] studio and 1 BR prices in market rate buildings
PJ,
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rona twofisch.com
Good morning Asheem.
I heard the figure about developer purchasers from someone on the Somerville delegation (a state elected official, I think it was Mike Connolly) when they testified before the Revenue committee in September 2025. I am looking into the way it was calculated. I have experience in residential real estate and was on the Affordable Housing Task Force. Therefore, I have spent lots of time mucking around in the data. But, I did not develop this particular figure.
“Luxury” is not a real term in Somerville, it’s sort of random and includes Ikea and Home Depot kitchens and plastic surround tub enclosures. Having updated systems, energy efficient features, and level floors counts as luxury around here. Well, after the fresh paint is slapped on and the floors get sanded.
I own a two-family house. I have spent decades bringing it out of the 1970s aesthetically, and out of the 1920s structurally. I understand the cost and do not intend to dishonor people who are rebuilding old properties for their own use, with one or two rental units. However, people like you and Colin are not the norm. People have been buying two-family houses and flipping them to two condos for decades. That has shrunk the pool of naturally occurring affordable housing.
My points are:
Owner occupied two and three family houses are a shrinking commodity. They are the naturally occurring affordable housing in Somerville (until we get serious about ADUs).
Old properties can be renovated and compete with new construction as A-/B+ (and sometimes A) level housing and are not invariably C level housing. Old is not necessarily bad in historic areas like Greater Boston.
I am looking into getting the answer to how the developer figure was calculated. I am not ignoring the question.
Thank you for the positive engagement,
Rona
johnh...@gmail.com
Thanks for the articles Aaron, I read through some and will get to all after the workday.
I was pointing to some mechanisms that were used on housing projects I’ve been involved with over the last 25 years that achieved various percentages of “affordable” units up to 100% “affordable”.
The Bloomberg article also mentions this need.
As I said, I completely agree there are many opportunities on underutilized sites around the city, particularly in the commercial corridors and around transit centers to replace
existing buildings with taller and higher density housing, and which could provide other positive benefits to streetscape.
I realize that many in the group are looking to radically reinvent Somerville to high-rise development with an extremely high density, (compared to other communities in our region).
I am simply stating my own viewpoint that an understanding of the effects to quality of life for what would be built should be studied and clearly understood, and precedent examples can be
helpful. I like the Bloomberg article mentioned Helsinki as I was just there and found the downtown great and very pedestrian and bike friendly.
I was also giving a viewpoint that I was attracted me to Somerville when I bought my home 26 years ago, because it was a walkable community near transit, and where you could have a detached home
with small yard.
Another personal opinion - I don’t like the bacon strip high-rise building in Union Square, and I wouldn’t want to see something like this all around Davis, or replicated all over Somerville.
Perhaps, my home will be taken by eminent domain and replaced by a tower, but I hope not.
Do we know the lasting effects of building extreme density, is the benefit long-term or would this be akin to widening roads to alleviate traffic congestion, which then leads to more traffic?
Asking a question, don’t know? However, Brooklyn was once a village…
John
From: Aaron Weber <aaron....@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, November 7, 2025 9:18 AM
To: johnh...@gmail.com
Cc: Michael Chiu <michael...@gmail.com>; PJ Santos <peej...@gmail.com>; Brendan Ritter <brendan...@gmail.com>; rona twofisch.com <ro...@twofisch.com>; Davis Square Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [DSNC] studio and 1 BR prices in market rate buildings
John,
The research is quite clear that increasing the total quantity of homes is directly correlated with falling prices. The amount does need to be sufficient to increase the vacancy rate from our paltry 1-3%, but the fact that lack of supply causes high prices is irrefutable. Case studies in Jersey City, New Rochelle, Denver, Austin, Minneapolis, and Aukland all bear this out.
Is market-rate housing alone sufficient? Of course not. Creating broad affordability will require a mix of market-rate and subsidized homes, at all levels, in all shapes and sizes. Our city's work at 299 Broadway (the old Star Market site) is exemplary: they've put in a great deal of money through several different financing mechanisms to increase the affordability percentage there from 20% to 50%. But it cost a LOT of money to make that happen. Remember, each apartment costs more than six hundred thousand dollars to build — more if you pay the higher labor and administrative costs created when you accept subsidy funding.
I'm not making this up off the cuff. Here are some citations to support my claims:
General audience journalism:
- Bloomberg: No, Really. Building More Housing Can Combat Rising Rents
- Wall Street Journal: Sunbelt Construction Boom Threatens Top Apartment-Building Owners (WSJ presents this as a bad thing for landlords, but it's good for tenants)
Academic research:
- Journal of Economic Geography: Do new housing units in your backyard raise your rents? ("the supply effect dominates the amenity effect, causing net reductions in the rents and sales prices of nearby residential properties.")
- Journal of Urban Economics: Condominium development does not lead to gentrification
- SSRN: Does Building New Housing Cause Displacement?: The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco ("increasing the supply of market rate housing has beneficial spillover effects for incumbent renters, reducing rents and displacement pressure while improving neighborhood quality.")
- UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies: Research Roundup: The Effect of Market-Rate Development on Neighborhood Rents
Best,
Aaron
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Aaron Weber
- Bloomberg: No, Really. Building More Housing Can Combat Rising Rents
- Wall Street Journal: Sunbelt Construction Boom Threatens Top Apartment-Building Owners (WSJ presents this as a bad thing for landlords, but it's good for tenants)
- Journal of Economic Geography: Do new housing units in your backyard raise your rents? ("the supply effect dominates the amenity effect, causing net reductions in the rents and sales prices of nearby residential properties.")
- Journal of Urban Economics: Condominium development does not lead to gentrification
- SSRN: Does Building New Housing Cause Displacement?: The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco ("increasing the supply of market rate housing has beneficial spillover effects for incumbent renters, reducing rents and displacement pressure while improving neighborhood quality.")
- UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies: Research Roundup: The Effect of Market-Rate Development on Neighborhood Rents
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rona twofisch.com
Correction and apology!
Investor purchaser concentration is actually 21-23%. However, that is still a large plurality of buyers. The problem is still important.
I and another person at the State House last September both misheard the statistic about investor development being 75% -- it is closer to 25%. I know I am not the only one, because I had a long conversation about it that day. However, it is a huge error and I apologize for not documenting it before bandying it around. I will do better, promise.
Sources:
https://www.mapc.org/news/homesforprofit/
https://mailchi.mp/electpatjehlen/whos-buying-homes?e=2a1a9beef5
From: Asheem Linaval <xor...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2025 4:17 PM
To: rona twofisch.com <ro...@twofisch.com>
Jeff Byrnes
This is the share of buyers per year, not the share of owners overall, right?
My understanding is that institutional buyers (corporations that own >1000 homes) still only account for a very small percentage of property ownership, despite being a large chunk of buyers recently. E.g., I’ve seen that nationally large corporate landlords only own ~2% of single-family houses for rent.
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
hu...@comcast.net
Jeff,
Yes, 2% corporate ownership nationally for single family homes, but those are a minority in Somerville. Per HUD and the Census, overall in the US 15% of rental properties, representing 40% of all rental units, are owned by LLCs or partnerships. I don’t know what the respective figures are for Somerville.
FWIW
-Hume Vance
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Aaron Weber
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Jeff Byrnes
Rona is referring to what’s usually called “institutional” landlords, who own ≥1000 properties.
To give you an idea, there are ~1500 unique rental property owners in greater Boston.
The reason I asked to clarify is that, while institutional buyers are a larger portion of buyers recently, it appears that they remain a very small player in the overall market, b/c it is still mostly owned by small and midsize landlords, all of whom make use of LLCs to insulate their personal finances from their real estate interests.
Said another way: an LLC or partnership is not a signal that a property is “corporate” in the sense we all mean colloquially.
E.g., were I to buy the downstairs apartment in our 2-family house & convert our building back to a multifam from condos, I would form an LLC or trust to own the building, to insulate my wife & my finances from the risks of being a landlord.
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
rona twofisch.com
Jeff, I am NOT referring only to landlords that own big developments. Don’t put words in my mouth. Lots of small and midsized landlords are buying properties that could go to live-in owners and running profitable businesses. 8+ of the properties are being flipped. The other 12% or so hit the rental market, rehabbed. There goes the naturally occurring affordable housing…
Rona
Jeff Byrnes
To be clear, I wasn’t talking about “landlords that own big developments”.
I was talking about landlords that own ≥1000 properties, aka “institutional landlords”.
And yes, the “21–23%” stat you referred to isn’t limited to institutional landlords, so that is my mistake. Again, my apologies.
To elaborate, you referred to:
> “Investor purchaser concentration is actually 21-23%.”
MAPC’s definition of “investor” is:
> ”We define four types of residential property investors: 1) count investors, who purchased more than three residential properties within any five year window in the study period; 2) LLC investors, who purchased any residential property through an LLC, 3) building investors, who purchased any residential building with four or more units, and 4) value investors, who spent at least $3.45 million on residential properties over the 23-year period, or an average of at least $150,000 annually throughout the period”
MAPC’s definitions are novel to me. Elsewhere I’ve seen the breakdown be focused on “number of properties owned”, which correlates to “size of landlord”.
MAPC’s choice of including anyone who purchased a property through an LLC is interesting to me, b/c were we buy the house we own an apartment in (we live in a 2-fam house), I’d form an LLC despite it being an owner-occupant property. Which would mean we’d count as an “investor”, despite not being a speculative investor.
What I’m trying to get at is that we should be worried about institutional landlords, and I did a poor job trying to get that across.
Again, apologies Rona.
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
Christopher Beland
On Wed, 2025-11-05 at 14:06 -0500, Michael Chiu wrote:
...the better it gets, the more desirable it becomes, and more desirable means higher rents and less affordability. This feedback loop continues until a new balance is reached. Perhaps we hit a price ceiling, we build to a density where it becomes less desirable, we lose all our greenspace, or we put restrictions on growth, rent, development, etc... that constrain this in some manner.
I think this is an unrealistic theory in several respects.
Increased density does not mean less greenspace. Somerville could double its population and its greenspace simply by building taller buildings. For example, imagine replacing three triple-deckers with a single 6-story, 18-unit apartment building with a much smaller footprint, and putting a park on the newly unused land.
Cities become more desirable to more people as they increase in density - a higher population means more job opportunities, and more commercial and cultural offerings. Lots of people like the high-density walkable neighborhoods in which everyday needs are served nearby. I don't think any human city has ever reached a point where density is so high that it starts to become problematic enough to bring the population to equillibrium.
The biggest factor causing highly desirable cities to stop growing or grow slowly is high housing costs driven by insufficient supply. Putting restrictions on growth does not contain housing costs, it makes them higher. Insufficient housing supply and high housing costs are already preventing Somerville from getting denser and even more desirable, and the same could be said for New York, San Francisco, London, and Paris. It's possible to simply run out of humans. For example, Tokyo has adequate housing supply and thus reasonable rents, Japan severely restricts immigration. Its population is still growing, but it tends to be constrained less by affordability than by residents of Japan deciding whether they'd like to move to a big city. Folks who don't are more likely to be happy where they are, whether to stay close to friends and family, because other cities are specialized in some way, or because they want more space or a more natural setting or less traffic or a community where they know everyone personally.
Metro areas tend to lose population when there are employment changes that make them less relatively desireable, or there's a widespread disaster.
-B.
Christopher Beland
On Thu, 2025-11-06 at 11:54 -0500, johnh...@gmail.com wrote:
Increasing density does not automatically lead to lower housing costs. According to a quick check of data, the top 12 most dense incorporated areas in the U.S.
are in the NY metro (not known for inexpensive housing). Somerville is already the densest community in MA, and 19th densest in the U.S, which doesn’t
currently correlate with low housing costs. Desirability and proximity to employment (including college off-campus housing demand) drive overall demand.
Like most free markets, for housing price is determined by the cost of production and the balance of supply and demand, not the volume of trade. High-density cities can have high housing costs like New York if supply doesn't keep up with demand, or low housing costs like Tokyo where supply is less restricted. But increasing the density of a given city faster than demand does lower housing costs, as documented by the studies Aaron cited.
Areas that have more recently developed high rise housing, such as the Seaport or Cambridge Crossing/Lechmere area, are not cheap and have not resulted in lower housing costs in the older nearby housing stock. Rents and home prices continue to rise in these areas.
...
On Thu, 2025-11-06 at 18:34 +0000, rona twofisch.com wrote:
The Pew Study that Jeff mentioned is comprehensive, but may not apply to our conditions. It is based on low-income areas. We are not that! Case in point is that the thousand+ units in Assembly Row have not gone down in price, even though they have been occupied for 9+ years.
Rents are not going down because demand continues to rise faster than supply. Housing costs would be rising faster if additional supply hadn't come online in those new neighborhoods, but because very little was added in most existing neighborhoods, we're still falling behind. What the Pew study shows is not that wealthy neighborhoods like Davis are immune from the laws of supply and demand, but that when new supply comes online, the biggest price effects are felt in less-wealthy neighborhoods, allowing 3 years for chains of people to move around. Whether that's a drop or a slowing rise depends on the speed and magnitude of the supply increase.
If we had ample housing supply, because of competition those new buildings would have to accept lower rents. They could take a lower profit margin for higher-end apartments, or could target other segments of the housing market by offering some lower-cost, less-desirable units. This is exactly what happened with streetcar suburbs - with no zoning to constrain supply or regulations telling them what size units to build, developers put in triple-deckers for less-wealthy occupants right next to single-family homes for wealthy buyers.
Frank was asking if Beacon Hill or Back Bay housing prices went down because of these new neighborhoods. Based on the Pew study, those are actually the last places we would expect to see price decreases from a sufficient supply increase (which this was not). And yeah, age alone definitely does not determine desirability when buildings can be renovated and location context matters. There's a lot more that makes Beacon Hill and Back Bay desirable, like the walkability (that exists because they are very old - from the pre-automobile era) and excellent access to the job towers of Copley and downtown via rapid transit (none of which existed when the buildings were originally constructed, compensating for any downsides of age).
On Thu, 2025-11-06 at 11:54 -0500, johnh...@gmail.com wrote:
In high demand areas, some sort of governmental led initiative is typically needed to control housing cost below market-rate.
If supply keeps up with demand, a lot less government intervention is needed. If costs aren't getting driven up by shortage-induced bidding wars, most people can afford housing at cost + reasonable profit, and the government can focus on people who can't afford the actual underlying cost of maintaining housing.
-B.
Christopher Beland
On Fri, 2025-11-07 at 15:58 +0000, rona twofisch.com wrote:
People have been buying two-family houses and flipping them to two condos for decades. That has shrunk the pool of naturally occurring affordable housing.
That's true and I'm seeing it on my street, but renovating does not eliminate naturally occurring affordable housing if there is adequate supply. If there is adequate supply and competition on the condo market, something that would sell for $500,000 today might only sell for $300,000 and be affordable to a wider range of incomes. The flipper puts less money into the renovation or takes a lower profit margin. Flippers will only target the high end of the market to the degree there are enough buyers willing to pay for high-cost, high-quality units.
At the same time, even not-recently-renovated units in my neighborhood are pretty darn expensive and keep going up. I'm not sure there are any really low-income renters here left to displace, and if current trends continue higher and higher-income renters are going to get priced out. All housing needs to be renovated sooner or later, and it wouldn't be safe or desirable to stop that for the sake of keeping prices low.
Given the data from other cities, I don't think we need to worry about a upzoning building boom causing a complete city-wide shortage of lower-cost, less-desirable existing housing. We can steer away from that by allowing much taller buildings around subway stations. That might make the average rent in Davis and Ball Squares go up, but some people moving to those places would to be moving out of the central hills, leaving cheaper housing far from transit so more people could stay in or move to Somerville. If we're looking at upzoning the entire city so apartment buildings could go on any residential street, ideally we'd get neighboring cities to adopt similar reforms and the metro area would add so much capacity that by the time the last old and least-desirable housing stock is redeveloped, new buildings would no longer be able to only target the high end of the market. Failing regional cooperation, we do know that redevelopment of existing buildings at city scale happens slowly enough that complete churn would take many decades, by which point with constrained regional supply we'd be displacing relatively wealthy people with slightly wealthier people.
With regard to the condoization aspect - we do want both rental and owned housing to be affordable. Changing a building from one category to the other might be beneficial to affordability if it keeps supply balanced with demand. Though I'm sure most are owner-occupied, many condos are also rented out. In that sense, we could see condoization as the democratization of housing choice. For example, my mom owns a two-family house. It's up to her to decide whether to move to Florida and keep her apartment as a rental (as friends have done), and it is also up to her if the upstairs apartment should be rented out or should be kept empty for the convenience of visiting family (which she did for a while). If the house were condoized, she would decide whether to live in or rent her own apartment only, and someone else would get to decide the same about the upstairs apartment.
-B.
Christopher Beland
On Fri, 2025-11-07 at 10:41 -0500, johnh...@gmail.com wrote:
I was also giving a viewpoint that I was attracted me to Somerville when I bought my home 26 years ago, because it was a walkable community near transit, and where you could have a detached home with small yard.
This raises a key question: is having a detached home with a yard within walking distance to the subway something we should preserve about Somerville for future immigrants to the city, or limit that to the current owners and whatever chain of descendants and buyers that keep an existing home that way? If we want to preserve them, we'd want to allow relatively tall buildings in a relatively small area, maybe lots of 8-12 story buildings right around subway stops or a small number of 25-story towers, and 6-story apartment buildings for a few blocks. But then keep the zoning on most of the residential streets as it is, so detached houses could still be within walking distances of rapid transit.
The other option is to let the market make the most efficient use of land near rapid transit, and if that means everything within walking distance of the subway is an apartment building, then we say that makes the greatest number of people happy and is a good outcome. We can take all the tax dollars from that humming economy and make the Commuter Rail run every 15 minutes or extend the Red Line to Arlington and Lexington and Concord, and point people who want that type of house to other parts of the metro area. No one who owns their home would have to sell it, so homeowners enjoying that lifestyle here could do so indefinitely, but the question is whether newcomers to the city should also expect that, or if people have lots of kids that all of them would be able to find that in their hometown. I suppose renters might not be able to stay in detatched homes if the family downstairs decides to sell for redevelopment, but long-term stability and control is one of the things people are paying for when they buy.
On Fri, 2025-11-07 at 10:41 -0500, johnh...@gmail.com wrote:
Do we know the lasting effects of building extreme density, is the benefit long-term or would this be akin to widening roads to alleviate traffic congestion, which then leads to more traffic?
Building more housing here would indeed induce demand by lowering housing costs and causing more people to move here, in the same way building a new bypass induces demand by reducing travel time. That doesn't mean increasing supply wouldn't lower prices, it just means a larger supply increase is needed for a given price decrease than if there weren't people attracted from outside the metro area. I was reading a study recently which I think implies that 40%-70% of new housing supply typically goes to local demand; obviously it depends on market conditions. Another form of induced housing demand is that lower costs allows some people to de-crowd and stop living with roommates or family, which makes more people happier.
Building the highway can make people overall more sad because it increases congestion on connecting roads, whereas a subway expansion would also induce demand but not stress the rest of the road network. Building higher-density housing in high-demand areas should make people overall happier, because more people would get to live closer to work, move to nicer more walkable neighborhoods, there would be less burden on the transportation network overall because people would travel shorter distances, having more neighbors means the amenities in your neighborhood get better (the opposite of a crowded highway), and the city gets more in property taxes. If Somerville gets, say, a 20% increase in population over the next 20 years, I'm not sure how many people who live here now would be terribly much sadder because of those new neighbors, like having an apartment building go in down the block or some big buildings next to the local T stop. If that expansion helps stabilize housing costs and taxes, more current residents would be able to stay where they are, which would make them happier.
-B.
rona twofisch.com
We are on the same page, Jeff. You said, “What I’m trying to get at is that we should be worried about institutional landlords”. I agree.
The problem with the data is that people who own one to three 2-3 family houses often run LLC for tax purposes. Are they “institutional”? Even the $3.45M+ definition can be satisfied with two or three larger 2-3 family houses here in Somerville. Some of these owners are REIT (real estate investment trusts), some are individuals running a small real estate business.
What I have been seeing for decades now are buyers who purchase with the intention of renting. They buy collections of rental properties to use as income generators and not as their homes. The property upkeep is as good as the people they hire to manage the places. So, the quality of upkeep is inconsistent.
Between the conversions to condos and these buy-to-rent-out owners, the pool of “naturally occurring affordable housing” shrinks every year. Replacing it with luxury condos and rentals will not solve our problem (even with 20% set aside for affordable pricing). We need other strings to our bows, if we are going to get to house people who don’t earn $150,000+ a year. Rent control, transfer fees? both are held up in Home Rule Petitions on Beacon Hill.
hu...@comcast.net
Rona,
Very helpful framing.
Do you have suggestions of other ‘strings to our bows’ to generate affordable housing?
Just a thought—through an historical fluke, Vienna created an approach to social housing a century ago that persists to this day. The City owns beautifully designed and maintained apartment buildings that it rents at rates accessible to the core workers of the city—teachers, police, nurses, sanitation, transportation, etc., etc.
From an article in The Guardian, Jan. 10, 2024, The social housing secret: how Vienna became the world’s most livable city (I’m not pasting a link, because I’m not sure that won’t flag my note; for the record, there’s similar piece in the NY Times Magazine within the past few years):
Vienna’s renters on average pay roughly a third of their counterparts in London, Paris or Dublin, according to a recent study by the accounting firm Deloitte.
…
[Vienna is] the landlord of approximately 220,000 socially rented apartments, it is the largest home-owning city in Europe… A quarter of the people who live in Vienna are social tenants – if you also include the approximately 200,000 co-operative dwellings built with municipal subsidies, it’s more than half the population.
Many of these apartments came into being a century ago, as part of an enormously ambitious building programme after the end of the first world war, when Vienna was awash with people uprooted by the collapse of the Habsburg empire. Funded primarily through a hypothecated tax on luxuries such as champagne or horse-riding, the inaugural phase of socialist-governed “Red Vienna” saw 65,000 socially rented apartments shoot up within the city by the [mid-1930s].
Why not set our sights on emulating the Viennese model?
Aaron Weber
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rona twofisch.com
Hi Hume,
Yep, I read the article in The Guardian almost 2 years ago. It is a good model, but I fear there isn’t the will to build it here. Nantucket wanted to build for their doctors (who can’t afford to live on island!) and they have to fight and fight and fight about it. Aaron also weighed in on why the market makes it an uphill climb here.
Here, the options that have any chance are
- Transfer fees (a tax on the part sale over $1M). It has almost passed a couple of times now. The State House Revenue Committee was behind it last year. If passed it will generate revenue for affordable housing and reinforce the momentum we have from the CPA funds we already have.
- Rent control. (OK, I am about to get blasted!) But, I had to say it. My rant on why it is good below, but I don’t want to go on and on about it.
I was renting when rent control ended (1996). Somerville wasn’t rent controlled -- but Brookline, Cambridge were. Rents DOUBLED in Somerville in18-24 months ($650 for a typical 2-bedroom in a two-family house to $1300 for a typical 2-bedroom in a two-family house).
-- Cambridge had some funky provisions in their rent control rules.
1. There were properties where owner occupancy was prohibited; over time, these units’ rent limits didn’t cover costs. They were mostly little studios and single bedroom condos.
2. There was no financial vetting of the tenants, so the units were passed on from upwardly mobile young professional to upwardly mobile young professional. That was OK, but some people who could afford to buy stayed in the controlled unit longer than financially necessary – this led to a lot of resentment.
3. Some of the stories about buildings falling apart are exaggerated (some are not). The rent control board sent out annual notices for tenants to report conditions; there was oversight. Even so, there were some landlords who intentionally did as little as possible to keep the places from falling down around their “freeloading” tenants.
* Rent control, last time, was in a substantially different market.
There was a recession in 1988 that hit hard in the tech sector and prices went down substantially from the housing price boom before that. Big buyer’s market. Recent owners who bought in the bubble were underwater. There were hundreds of two-family houses for sale in Somerville, just waiting for buyers. Really, I still shake my head at the 20-30 or so two-family houses in Ball Square for sale for $190-230K-- that was near the end of the recession, 1993ish. They were all the same (rental condition, not renovated) and buyers were thin on the ground.
Once rent control ended (voted out 1994, implemented January 1996), it took two years for those same unrenovated houses to be selling like hotcakes for $350,000. It only got worse from there. Flips, condos, renovation…Thus, the rental jump described above.
The current market -- The remaining rental quality two-families are our dwindling “naturally occurring affordable housing” There are roughly 9000 of those buildings (in various conditions) for a city of 80-something thousand people. Some are renovated, many work fine but look like 1975.
Landlords are people. They find out that the apartment down the street that just like theirs is renting for $3000 and they think “am I an idiot to be renting for $2200?” They find out Assembly Row places are $5000 a month, and are smaller!
Rent control works on the whole market because the anchoring “normal” for rent is held to a reasonable level.
If half of them were to be rent controlled… think about it. There are still lots of decent landlords with fully functional, but not swanky, units for moderate wage earners to rent. Developers would have a disincentive to buy small multifamily houses at our high prices if they can’t get those high rents anymore. Sale price might could go down. Really. It would be good for Somerville all around.
Christopher Beland
On Wed, 2025-11-12 at 19:40 +0000, rona twofisch.com wrote:
Rent control works on the whole market because the anchoring “normal” for rent is held to a reasonable level. If half of them were to be rent controlled… think about it.
I don't think that's true. When half the market is rent controlled and half is market-rate, the market price is unaffected by the below-market rents. If you look at cities like New York or San Francisco with partial rent control, there's just a massive divergence between market and controlled rents that grows over time if there is inadequate supply.
When I last put one of our two-bedrooms on Craigslist, I got 1 party almost interested at $2600, and 8 parties very interested at $2500. If at the end of the first showing the potential tenant had said, "but rent controlled apartments are only charging $1500", I would have said "OK, feel free to rent there, then" and they would have been "I can't, I lost the social housing lottery". So either they could write me a check or I would just rent to one of the 7 other parties at $2500.
If rent-controlled apartments are reserved for lower-income people, the same number of people are going to be bidding $2500 for our market-rate apartment. If it's an income-blind lottery and 50% of the city is social housing, then maybe I'd have 4 parties interested at $2500, charge the same rent anyway, and we'd be wasting rent-controlled apartments on people who could pay full rent that would fund the construction of enough housing to meet demand (and they are going to hog those apartments even after they are no longer the best fit).
I would support more social housing, but the funding for that shouldn't come from massive increases in regressive property taxes. But even with 50% social housing, we'd need a solution to make it so that a median housing unit is affordable for a median household income, and the only way to do that without somem pretty undesirable side effects is to match supply with demand. Given how long social housing takes to construct and the huge amounts of private capital is available to build market-rate housing, it's more realistic to expect that the need for a market solution for the top 80%-90% by income will persist for many decades.
-B.
hu...@comcast.net
Aaron,
Thank you for your thoughtful and knowledgeable response. I wasn’t aware of the work of the Somerville Community Land Trust.
-Hume
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David Booth
> . . .
> for rent is held to a reasonable level.
of rent control you mean. If you are talking about the kind of rent
control that limits rents only for *existing* tenants, but new tenants
are charged market rent, then from what I have seen it does *not* seem
to hold down the price of market rent. Having a rent-controlled
apartment is more like winning the lottery: the lucky few who were
tenants when it was enacted don't get priced out, but everyone else is
still screwed by the overall landscape of unaffordable rents.
I think rent control might help some as a stop-gap measure, but what we
really need is more naturally affordable housing.
Thanks,
David Booth
David Booth
> . . . There’s good research
> that the price-calming effects of a new building are felt pretty
> immediately nearby
> <https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2025/07/31/new-housing-slows-rent-growth-most-for-older-more-affordable-units>.
Very convincing study! Another interesting point that study makes is
that a housing shortage disproportionately drives up the price of
*lower* income housing.
Even though that study looked at low income *neighborhoods* rather than
low income *housing*, I think the logic is still applicable.
Paraphrasing and adapting their explanation: When not enough high-income
housing is available, high-income renters can still afford to move into
middle-income housing, and middle-income renters can still afford to
move into low-income housing. But low-income renters have nowhere to
turn. They can only keep their housing by absorbing large rent increases.
Thanks,
David Booth
hu...@comcast.net
David and Rona,
Interesting. Roge Karma has a discussion of the politics of rent control and new housing development in a recent piece in The Atlantic, in the context of Mamdani’s campaign promise in New York to freeze rents. Based on a natural experiment in Berlin, Germany:
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/11/mamdani-housing-rent-control/684790/
Residents who lived in rent-controlled apartments were 37 percent more likely to support new local-housing construction than those living in noncontrolled units... This gap was largest in neighborhoods that had experienced the sharpest rental-price increases over the previous decade. The authors concluded that by guaranteeing price stability, rent control eases residents’ fears that new housing will make their current living situation unaffordable.
So, while rent control may be a bad solution from the perspective of economics, it may politically necessary to pave the way for acceptance of greater housing production.
-Hume
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To: daviss...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [DSNC] investor concentration
On 11/12/25 14:40, rona twofisch.com wrote:
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Jeff Byrnes
Used homes are like used cars that way: gotta make & sell new cars in order to get used ones!
This phenomenon is called filtering in housing economics.
And if we don’t build enough new homes, as we’ve not done for the last ~50 years, then older ones get upconverted to be like-new via renovations. AKA, upfiltering.
I’d also like to encourage folks to retire using the term “luxury” for homes that are simply newly-built, and are nothing more than expensive as a result of being new.
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
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rona twofisch.com
Jeff,
Naturally affordable housing is not luxury housing that ages. I agree that most of what is being called luxury is really just newly built at current rates. There are better and worse finishes for those new builds, but the cost is in the overall construction, not the counters and cabinets.
I entirely disagree about houses being like cars. Cars depreciate very quickly and are subject to becoming obsolete. Some cars get restored, but most don’t. Whereas housing appreciates almost all the time because of the value of the land. Most houses can be restored and brought up to current technology standards. Some old building materials are superior and more highly valued. In Somerville, the building lots are small and don’t lend themselves to adding significantly more living space; there’s some room for ADUs, but not a boatload.
The housing stock built in Somerville between 1900-1930 was mostly naturally affordable housing. It was built in multiple copies to keep costs down. They had a few “nice” features like cast iron gas heaters in the entry and stained glass windows at the stairway. But, they were built for what was then called “working class”. Because of the rental unit, these 2 and 3 family houses were economically flexible. They were an affordable ticket into home ownership that has been eroding here for decades. 2-family home owners could live in the small unit and get a significant rental income. Some had an owner with kids in the big unit until the kids left, then they moved downstairs. Some housed the whole family, in different configurations over several lifetimes.
In contrast, there are some luxury buildings in town from that period. They are up on the hills and along certain streets – Benton Rd, Highland Rd, Broadway at top of Winter Hill between Central and Sycamore… you know them when you see them. They have fancy woodwork, they are bigger, some are single family. They have bigger lots, larger rooms…
What should we call new buildings? What should we call old, class A buildings that are fully rehabbed (upfiltering)? What makes an old building a class B or C? What makes a new building really luxury? We should agree on calling the same things by the same names.
From: daviss...@googlegroups.com <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Jeff Byrnes
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2025 9:40 AM
To: David Booth <da...@dbooth.org>; daviss...@googlegroups.com; Carol <crego...@aol.com>
Subject: Re: [DSNC] investor concentration
Important to note that “naturally affordable homes” only come to exist when we continuously build new “luxury” homes. Every older, less expensive home was once a new “luxury” home.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/davissquarenc/fcb58518-fc49-4bd3-bcc5-fb636462faea%40Spark.
Nicolas Garcia
Jeff Byrnes
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
rona twofisch.com
I will be more clear. I thought I gave enough examples and details to explain myself. I’ll restate.
- “Naturally affordable housing is not luxury housing that ages. I agree that most of what is being called luxury is really just newly built at current rates.”
Here is what I meant, said a different way:
New construction does not automatically become “naturally affordable housing” once it depreciates. Just because it is old, does not make it affordable. Actually, 2025+ construction will become more expensive over time, since the inclusionary discounted rents will age out after some number of years (I think 10).
- Your example of yesteryears 2- & 3-fam buildings is an example of new (“luxury”) homes being built & sold at market-rate. The builders of that day were going after the highest-paying customer they could find then, just like they do today. They were “greedy” just like private, capitalist builders of any age. 🤷🏻♂️
The 2-3 family housing from 1900-1930-something was not built as luxury housing. They were built as workforce housing. The building costs were kept down by the efficient construction. The sellers were NOT looking for well-healed buyers. Rather, these were entry level housing for working families. They were built as groups of houses sharing the same footprints and some slight variations on floor plans – sort of the double-house parent of the suburban tract houses of the 1960s. Those post-war houses were also intended for entry level homeowners.
The housing built in Somerville for the past 15 years has not been workforce housing. Construction costs are such that no one wants to take on projects that people with median-income +10% or +20% can afford. That’s the housing we need. Not $5000/month 2 bedroom rentals and $800K+ condos.
I hope this clarifies.
Rona
hu...@comcast.net
Rona,
You give an astutely observed summary of Somerville’s housing stock. What does it say that housing designed a century ago as bare-bones worker housing might today be considered luxury construction?
To the extent your questions aren’t rhetorical, does the real estate industry use a set of criteria to make these designations? That might be a start.
-Hume
From: daviss...@googlegroups.com <daviss...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of rona twofisch.com
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2025 10:41 AM
To: daviss...@googlegroups.com
PJ Santos
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Alex Dehnert
> urban housing getting built in the US.
that AIUI shows that (at least at that scale) if you make it legal to
build higher-density housing, you can get it instead of new mansions.
https://bsky.app/profile/shanedphillips.bsky.social/post/3lv6uu56wpc2f
https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/07/30/95-low-rise-multifamily-with-tobias-peter/
A bunch of the new units for the last several decades have been
multi-family, and there's a clear trend for more-units-per-plot homes to
be cheaper than fewer-unit-per-plot homes, and once you have four units
post-conversion the price is about the same as the old single-family
housing. (With just one unit, the price nearly triples, as you replace
an old rundown building with a bigger(?) newer one.)
(It's also interesting that Seattle tried imposing inclusionary zoning
on projects with as few as four or five units -- also our limit -- and
"we see building permits for townhomes in these low-rise multifamily
zones within a relatively short span dropped by 80%" (from the
transcript around 59:57).)
I'm not sure what the lesson is for Somerville. Apparently Seattle is
redeveloping at 140% Floor Area Ratio these days, and judging by pg. 37
of [1], it looks like Somerville is mostly around 75%. It does make me
think that something like Cambridge's citywide upzoning is probably a
good idea, and is somewhat likely to result in replacing old buildings
with more units at somewhat higher densities but similar prices, which
seems positive. Dunno how we get bigger buildings like Copper Mill to
have cheaper new units, though.
P.S. Viz the bsky post you linked: "The fact that the US has a bimodal
density distribution where one of the modes is just New York urban
center is crazy" is indeed crazy
[1]
https://www.somervillezoning.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/02/ra-rb-report-final-web.pdf
On 11/13/25 20:52, PJ Santos wrote:
> Hi Rona,
>
> A small correction, I'm pretty sure inclusionary units are deed
> restricted in perpetuity.
>
> From https://online.encodeplus.com/regs/somerville-ma/doc-
> doc-viewer.aspx#secid-813>
> "Applicants must execute and record a deed restriction limiting the sale
> view.aspx?pn=0&ajax=0&secid=17> to eligible households in perpetuity
> Registration Office."
>
> To try to reconcile what you and Jeff were saying: I think Jeff's point
> is builders in 1900 built whatever they thought they could sell at the
> highest price. Per your point, that usually was working class housing
> instead of glamorous mansions because the demographics of the city were
> really different. Plus, the tradeoffs of labor cost, land cost, various
> regulations, and more made "large amounts of less profitable housing"
> still a feasible business.
>
> In modern Somerville, we have a much different scenario. Incomes are
> higher, costs are a ton higher, and living standards have improved. I'm
> not sure if I agree with your point that today's newly built apartments
> will just get more expensive, but I suppose that would happen if land
> values rose faster than depreciation.
>
> I think a big issue is we don't have many great examples of cheap urban
> housing getting built in the US. A big reason is that we don't have any
> "real cities" in the US other than New York (please forgive the
> exaggeration, but it is sort of true: https://bsky.app/profile/
> kavi.bsky.social/post/3l354e4rceb22>), and they haven't really built any
> which has done a lot to try and maintain some affordability despite
> being next to NYC.
> It's also worth looking at what a bunch of the Asian cities build, since
> a lot of them are trying to retain affordability in the face of a
> recent, big economic boom.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 4:53 PM humev via Davis Square Neighborhood
> Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com
>
> Rona,____
>
> __ __
> You give an astutely observed summary of Somerville’s housing stock.
> What does it say that housing designed a century ago as bare-bones
>
> __ __
> To the extent your questions aren’t rhetorical, does the real estate
> industry use a set of criteria to make these designations? That
>
> __ __
>
> -Hume ____
>
> __ __
>
> *From:*daviss...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:daviss...@googlegroups.com>
> <daviss...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:daviss...@googlegroups.com>> *On Behalf Of *rona
> twofisch.com <http://twofisch.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, November 13, 2025 10:41 AM
> *To:* daviss...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:daviss...@googlegroups.com>
> *Subject:* RE: [DSNC] what is naturally affordable housing?____
>
> __ __
>
> Jeff,____
> Naturally affordable housing is not luxury housing that ages. I
> agree that most of what is being called luxury is really just newly
> built at current rates. There are better and worse finishes for
> those new builds, but the cost is in the overall construction, not
>
> __ __
> I entirely disagree about houses being like cars. Cars depreciate
> very quickly and are subject to becoming obsolete. Some cars get
> restored, but most don’t. Whereas housing appreciates almost all the
> time because of the value of the land. Most houses can be restored
> and brought up to current technology standards. Some old building
> materials are superior and more highly valued. In Somerville, the
> building lots are small and don’t lend themselves to adding
> significantly more living space; there’s some room for ADUs, but not
>
> __ __
>
> The housing stock built in Somerville between 1900-1930 was *mostly*
> keep costs down. They had a few “nice” features like cast iron gas
> heaters in the entry and stained glass windows at the stairway. But,
> they were built for what was then called “working class”. Because of
> the rental unit, these 2 and 3 family houses were economically
> flexible. They were an affordable ticket into home ownership that
> has been eroding here for decades. 2-family home owners could live
> in the small unit and get a significant rental income. Some had an
> owner with kids in the big unit until the kids left, then they moved
> downstairs. Some housed the whole family, in different
> In contrast, there are some luxury buildings in town from that
> period. They are up on the hills and along certain streets – Benton
> Rd, Highland Rd, Broadway at top of Winter Hill between Central and
> Sycamore… you know them when you see them. They have fancy woodwork,
> they are bigger, some are single family. They have bigger lots,
>
> __ __
> What should we call new buildings? What should we call old, class A
> buildings that are fully rehabbed (upfiltering)? What makes an old
> building a class B or C? What makes a new building really luxury? We
>
> __ __
>
> *From:*daviss...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:daviss...@googlegroups.com>
> <daviss...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:daviss...@googlegroups.com>> *On Behalf Of *Jeff Byrnes
> *Sent:* Thursday, November 13, 2025 9:40 AM
> *To:* David Booth <da...@dbooth.org <mailto:da...@dbooth.org>>;
> daviss...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:daviss...@googlegroups.com>; Carol <crego...@aol.com
> <mailto:crego...@aol.com>>
> *Subject:* Re: [DSNC] investor concentration____
>
> __ __
> Important to note that “naturally affordable homes” only come to
> exist when we continuously build new “luxury” homes. Every older,
> less expensive home was once a new “luxury” home.
>
> Used homes are like used cars that way: gotta make & sell new cars
> in order to get used ones!
>
> This phenomenon is called filtering in housing economics.
>
> And if we don’t build enough new homes, as we’ve not done for the
> last ~50 years, then older ones get upconverted to be like-new via
> renovations. AKA, upfiltering.
>
> I’d also like to encourage folks to retire using the term “luxury”
> for homes that are simply newly-built, and are nothing more than
>
> __ __
>
> --
> Jeff Byrnes
> he/him____
>
> 🌐 somervilleyimby.org <http://somervilleyimby.org>____
>
> 🟦 bsky.app/profile/somervilleyimby.org <https://bsky.app/profile/
> somervilleyimby.org>____
>
> 📖 facebook.com/SomervilleYIMBY <https://www.facebook.com/
> SomervilleYIMBY>____
>
> 🐘 better.boston/@SomervilleYIMBY <https://better.boston/
> @SomervilleYIMBY>____
>
> 📷 instagram.com/SomervilleYIMBY <https://www.instagram.com/
> SomervilleYIMBY>____
>
> 📱 704.516.4628____
> On Nov 13, 2025 at 8:05 AM -0500, 'Carol' via Davis Square
> Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com
> Bad idea for small landlords with 1 tenant and less income to
> keep the building up. Housing stock quality decreases with less
> investment from multiple sources. Look at what happened in
>
> __ __
>
> Carol____
>
> Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS <https://
> aolapp.onelink.me/eG2g?
> pid=NativePlacement&c=US_Acquisition_YMktg_320_EmailSignature_AttributionDL&af_sub1=Acquisition&af_sub2=US_YMktg&af_sub3=&af_sub4=100002473&af_sub5=SentFromNewAOLApp__Interstitial_&af_ios_store_cpp=ce85ce34-ad0f-4811-a92b-a172743b064e&af_android_url=https%3A%2F%2Fplay.google.com%2Fstore%2Fapps%2Fdetails%3Fid%3Dcom.aol.mobile.aolapp%26listing%3Demail_signature_attribution>____
>
> __ __
> On Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 4:32 PM, David Booth
>
> On 11/12/25 14:40, rona twofisch.com <http://twofisch.com>
> wrote:____
>
> > . . .____
> > Rent control works on the whole market because the
>
> > for rent is held to a reasonable level.____
>
> __ __
> This does not match my perception, but perhaps it depends on
> of rent control you mean. If you are talking about the kind
> control that limits rents only for *existing* tenants, but
> are charged market rent, then from what I have seen it does
> to hold down the price of market rent. Having a rent-
> apartment is more like winning the lottery: the lucky few
> tenants when it was enacted don't get priced out, but
> still screwed by the overall landscape of unaffordable
>
> __ __
> I think rent control might help some as a stop-gap measure,
>
> really need is more naturally affordable housing.____
>
> __ __
>
> Thanks,____
>
> David Booth____
>
> __ __
>
> --____
> Davis Square Neighborhood Council · https://
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Jeff Byrnes
So today, that highest bidder is someone making top-10% incomes nationally (>$250k as a household), instead of a middle-income household like the days of yore.
Somerville, as a City, has a goal of increasing well-paid jobs here, which means that it is Official City Policy™ to encourage the kind of market forces that push up the cost of housing. This is driven by the well-meaning desire to grow the City’s tax base & balance residential & commercial tax revenue.
This would be fine if we paired that with a policy of allowing & encouraging a huge amount of new homes, but we don’t: our zoning is still quite restrictive, with ~75% of the City’s parcels restricted to 3 or fewer homes, regardless of parcel size.
Meanwhile, the parcel my home (an apartment in a 2-fam house) sits on is 7500 sq ft, large enough for at least 9 homes, if not far more. 26 homes are being built on a similarly-sized lot, 13 Warwick St, which I can see from my window right now. That lot happens to be zoned more densely than mine.
As for “land always appreciates”, sure. But land isn’t 1:1 with homes; we can put lots of homes on a single parcel, thus spreading the land cost out among more households.
Lots of great writing in the vein of “how is land’s economic value unique, and how do we accommodate that to ensure affordability & positive outcomes for society” (Henry George has entered the chat).
And yes, our Inclusionary Zoning subsidized homes must be subsidized in perpetuity.
IZ homes are subsidized by the market-rate homes in the same building, which requires that those homes rental prices cover the subsidy for the IZ homes. If the builder can’t project that those rents will be enough to cover the subsidy, the building won’t get built.
Jeff Byrnes
he/him
Don Meglio
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Jeff Byrnes
For the last few years, the City has pursued efforts to encourage commercial (re)development, for the very reason of both creating net-new tax revenue and to shift the burden of property taxation from residential to commercial property.
E.g., with the US2 master project in Union Square, US2 is bound by agreement to develop 60% commercial & 40% residential.
This focus on commercial buildings has the effect of creating net-new jobs in Somerville, many of them very high paying (e.g., tech, biomedical, pharma).
Somerville itself has created far more new jobs than it has new homes.
We know that adding high-paying jobs, combined with not adding more homes, means ever-greater competition for a home in the area.
Which means adding jobs can be a driver of displacement if adding homes isn’t done at a similar or greater rate.
Shifting the tax burden onto commercial is a good thing, as Cambridge shows, but we should be mindful of side effects.
Jeff Byrnes
he/him