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Boston’s international business boom pushes housing demand

Tony Ramos — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:42:42 +0000

Boston’s international business boom pushes housing demand

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‘Distressing’ Number of Boston’s Gen Z Residents Eye the Exit as Housing Costs Soar

Tony Ramos — Mon, 04 May 2026 14:06:59 +0000

Boston is staring down a mass exodus of young residents who are being squeezed out by surging housing costs driving them toward more affordable markets, according to a new survey.

The 2026 Young Residents Survey, commissioned by The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Foundation, found that more than a quarter of Bostonians (26%) between the ages of 20 and 30 years old say they plan on leaving the metro in the next five years—a share the organization calls “distressing.”

The survey also determined that newer residents, LGBTQ residents, unemployed residents, students and unmarried people were more likely to report plans to leave Boston.

The share of survey participants heading for the exit is similar to the results of the 2023 survey, which found 25% of respondents eyeing a move three years ago.

The latest study was conducted in February and March and included 600 young people living in the Greater Boston area, which includes Suffolk, Norfolk, Middlesex, Plymouth, and Essex counties.

The findings reveal that when deciding to stay or leave, 78% of respondents said the cost of rent is important, and 72% cited the ability to buy a home.

The cost of staying

As the region grapples with a housing crisis, half of survey respondents said that affordable housing should be a top priority for local leaders.

“It’s no surprise that housing affordability is a top issue in Boston, especially for the youngest residents who are more likely to be renters,” says Realtor.com® senior economist Jake Krimmel.

Median asking rents in Boston stood at $2,918 in March, the second-highest among the nation’s top 50 metros, surpassing New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and trailing only ultra-expensive San Jose, CA.

On the homebuying side, Boston’s real estate market is one of the nation’s least affordable, with median listing prices climbing to $832,500 in April—the fifth-highest among major U.S. metros and nearly double the national median, according to the latest Realtor.com monthly housing market trends report.

Concerns over housing affordability, along with job availability, and safety, have soured the outlook for young Bostonians, with the report showing that life satisfaction has plummeted from 89% to 79% in just three years.

Boston’s waterfront is seen above. More than a quarter of young Boston residents are considering leaving over housing costs.Getty Images

Why the Sun Belt is winning over Bostonians

Among the responders planning to leave Boston, approximately half are looking to move within Massachusetts and the rest are considering venturing out of the state.

A deeper dive into the 30-page report shows that 46% of Bostonians planning to exit the Northeast are headed South. Specifically, 23% are looking to settle in Southeastern states, such as Florida, Kentucky, or Tennessee, while another 23% are mulling a move to the Southwest, which includes Arizona and New Mexico.

Compared with Massachusetts, these states offer more inventory and lower housing costs, making them magnets for debt-burdened college graduates and early-career professionals.

“The region’s affordability continues to be a concern as young residents struggle to seize opportunities that outweigh challenges, like housing and career growth,” the Chamber of Commerce Foundation said. “Competitor states that are more affordable may be appealing to young residents who are eager to find housing to rent or purchase that is more affordable and accessible.”

Jack Gaughan, a Nashville Re/Max broker and president of Greater Nashville Realtors®, has helped a transplant from Boston in his mid-30 put down roots in Nashville.

“He originally moved right around COVID but rented until he decided Nashville was the place he wanted to call home,” Gaughan tells Realtor.com.

The broker says his client, a western Massachusetts native who spent nearly a decade living in Boston, wanted to invest in a property that was “modern but functional.” In the end, he closed on a four-bedroom home in a trendy part of Nashville.

For perspective, Nashville’s median listing price was just under $539,000 in April, nearly $300,000 below Boston’s.

The hidden cost of losing Gen Z

Krimmel says that while an outflow of young people from Boston might put some downward pressure on rent price growth in the short term, the long-term trade-off would be a major blow to the metro’s economy.

“Boston’s young people are overwhelmingly high-skilled college graduates who play an important role in the job market, entrepreneurship and innovation scene, and the local service economy, too,” he says.

Krimmel also points out that in a metro with so many universities, including Harvard and MIT, even if tens of thousands of young people moved out overnight, there would be tens of thousands of other recent graduates or current students to take their place.

“That’s the root of Boston’s rental market crisis: a seemingly never-ending supply of young, educated renters but never enough supply of rental housing for them,” says the economist.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey’s plan indicates the state needs to add more than 220,000 housing units by 2035.The Boston Globe via Getty Images

To reverse this trend, Krimmel says the answer is simple in theory but seemingly impossible in practice: increase housing supply of all types at all price points, both in the urban core and lower-density suburbs.

In 2025, Gov. Maura Healey’s administration unveiled a housing plan indicating that Massachusetts needs to add 222,000 new homes by 2035 to keep up with growing demand while keeping costs in check.

A year earlier, Healey, a Democrat, signed The Affordable Homes Act, which authorized a record $5 billion for housing and created nearly 50 initiatives aimed at speeding up housing production.

Yet, progress has been elusive. Last fall, Massachusetts received an F on the Realtor.com State-by-State Housing Report Card after falling behind most other states on affordability and new home construction.

During her monthly “Ask the Governor” segment on Boston Public Radio that aired in late March, Healey addressed her administration’s efforts to keep Massachusetts’ young people from moving somewhere cheaper, stressing that it is a trend currently haunting other high-cost areas like California and New York.

“Over the last three-and-a-half years, we’ve got 100,000 homes in the pipeline. Is it enough? No,” admitted the governor. “I need every community in the state to understand that housing is fundamental to the vibrancy of our neighborhoods.”

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Boston’s ‘Out-of-Place’ 5-Story Walk-Up Is Transformed Into $20 Million Townhome

Tony Ramos — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:12:22 +0000

An out-of-place walk-up in one of the most historic neighborhoods in the country has been turned into a single-family townhouse that stays true to its 19th-century architectural origins.

The row home at 18 Commonwealth Ave. in Back Bay, built in 1864, was turned into a lodging house sometime in the 1940s, ruining the original facade that had once blended into the historic avenue.

The property “was destroyed in the 1940s,” Joshua Stephens, vice president at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Warren Residential, tells Realtor.com®.

He, along with Tracy Campion of Campion and Company, will represent the home when it hits the market with a planned price tag of $20 million to $25 million this spring.

“It was the only building on Commonwealth Avenue that looked from that time period—I don’t even know what time period you’d call that,” he says. “It was not like the rest of [the avenue] and really stuck out on first block on Commonwealth Avenue, the most expensive real estate in Boston.”

The property at 18 Commonwealth Ave. (middle building) as it appears in a circa 1870 photograph (Boston Public Library)

Pictures of the old lodging house—which had then been turned into a walk-up, 11-unit rental building—show a plain brick facade with large modern windows that looked nothing like the stately brownstones on either side of it.

According to Boston.com, the exterior of the building was overhauled in the 1940s. Then the interior was gutted to turn into rentals in 1952.

“That would never get approved today,” Stephens says of the transformation that turned one of Boston’s original townhomes into a facade with zero character.

The new exterior of 18 Commonwealth Ave. looks much as it did in the mid-19th century. (O’Kane Marketing)

“Local architectural and historic commissions are really trying to preserve the history of neighborhoods,” he says. “We need more housing, but at the same time we don’t need everything to be a giant square box.”

The new row home has been designed so that even the most discerning eye can’t distinguish it from the original 19th-century homes on either side.

“It’s being restored to almost identical to how it looked when it was built,” says Stephens. “We want to bring it back to its true vision.”

Re-creating a historic townhome

Developers Lourenco Carminati and Eagle Hill Capital, who have a history of buying and renovating brownstones in the area, purchased the property in September 2024 for $7.85 million. Stephens says 18 Commonwealth Ave. is the developers’ first foray into historical renovation.

“This is the feather in their cap,” he says. “They wanted to take on something that we know is going to be hard, but it’s going to be magnificent, and someone is going to treat it like a legacy property for generations to come.”

The townhome will have a thoroughly modern amenity: a roof deck with an outdoor kitchen. (O’Kane Marketing)

He notes that the developers considered turning the property into several luxury condos—which likely would have made them more money—but preferred the challenge and personal fulfillment of turning back the clock to the building’s single-family home origins.

“Lorenzo is a master builder,” he says. “He’s there when it’s 100 degrees or below zero out with a hammer and nails. He loves getting his hands dirty.”

According to city records, the residence was built in 1864 as a single-family home for the daughter and son-in-law of a prominent merchant class family, the Wards.

At the time, the home fit seamlessly into the row of houses on the avenue, which overlooks a private park and a statue of Alexander Hamilton, a Founding Father and first U.S. secretary of the Treasury.

While the new construction now fits perfectly into the row, there is a small alteration: There are three smaller top windows above the large bay window instead of the original two.

The parlor-floor entryway of 18 Commonwealth Ave. (O’Kane Marketing)

Modern luxury with historical nods

The interior was designed by Boston Modern Design and Amber Wilhelmina Design & Interiors. It pays homage to its 19th-century architecture yet offers all the luxury amenities expected of a $20 million-plus price range.

The property may even set a sale record for a single-family home in Boston.

In February, a restored 1825 townhouse with six bedrooms and 7.5 baths at 46 Chestnut St. in Beacon Hill was sold in short order for $22 million, setting a record for a single-family house in the city, according to Boston.com.

Then, in 2023, another row house in Beacon Hill was sold for $28.25 million, according to Boston Magazine. Perhaps that one set the record.

And according to Stephens, a home across the street from 18 Commonwealth Ave. may have even sold for $30 million. That deal was hush-hush, and no final number has been revealed.

Welcome to 18 Commonwealth Ave.

The 8,100-square-foot residence will have five bedrooms, each with an en suite bath; a two-car garage and two off-street parking spaces; an elevator; a garden-level au pair suite with auxiliary kitchen; and a private roof deck with outdoor kitchen. The residence will be equipped with smart home technology and a sprinkler system.

While the marble finishes, crown moldings, and custom millwork will speak to the home’s historical architecture, Stephens says there were no photos of the original interiors to work with.

“I wish we had some, but back in the late 1800s, there were very few cameras floating around,” he says with a laugh.

One tremendous benefit of the new construction is the new pilings. The developers dug up the original pilings—which were put in because Back Bay was built on what used to be large swaths of Massachusetts Bay—and replaced them.

“The pilings were in really good condition,” says Stephens. “But when [the developers] are spending this kind of money to renovate, and someone will invest the kind of money they will to buy, why not spend the extra few hundred thousand dollars to make sure this property is built for the next century? Why not give this assurance to the buyer?”

The new kitchen of the reimagined historical townhouse (O’Kane Marketing)

Stephens says the future homeowners will be those who want a legacy home, a crown jewel in their property portfolio.

“This isn’t just a luxury property,” he says. “This is a revival of an iconic Back Bay home that sits on the first block of one of the most historic boulevards in the country. This is an opportunity and a legacy home.”

He adds that the buyer may also be an Alexander Hamilton admirer.

“If you’re the person who buys [the home], imagine walking outside and saying hello to Hamilton across the street,” he says. “It would be a great reminder of all you’ve accomplished.”

The primary bedroom (O’Kane Marketing)

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