Subtheme: Speculation

In 2023, MAPC released the “Homes for Profit” report about the negative effects of speculation in the Metro Boston housing market, including driving up prices and displacing residents. Undertaking an analysis of more than twenty years of real estate transactions, students can build on MAPC’s work to dive deeper into these questions to analyze how much profit investors are making from “flips”, examine large corporations buying up housing stock, and/or visualize who (and where) is being most affected by speculative investment. Additionally, they can investigate absentee owners, i.e. people who buy a high-end property solely as an investment vehicle and don’t live there. This can have the effect of driving up prices while taking housing supply off the market. One area worthy of investigation is the increase in housing production for extremely wealthy, absentee owners. What proportion of Boston’s newest and most expensive high-rises are owned by corporations? By absentee owners? What are the connections between high income and absentee-ism? What proportion of the city is owned by people who don’t live here? Just how unaffordable are these developments for average Bostonians?

Background Reading

  1. Homes for Profit: An Analysis of Investor Activity in the Greater Boston Residential Real Estate Market, 2000 - 2022 – An important report by our partner, MAPC, about the negative impacts of speculation on housing affordability. Uses the same datasets as listed below.
  2. When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord – A data journalism piece by ProPublica (you may have already read this in A1) about giant private equity firms that have been buying up apartment buildings nationwide to make a profit.
  3. Reckoning with Boston’s Towers of Wealth – An investigative journalism story by the Boston Globe about how Boston is building luxury housing for the wealthy at the expense of affordable housing.

Datasets for the Final Project

  1. Residential sales data in the City of Boston, 2000-2023 – All residential sales transactions in the City of Boston between 2000-2023. Includes information about seller, buyer, price, location, whether the sale constitutes a “flip”, and much more.
  2. Residential sales data in Metro Boston, 2000-2023 – All residential sales transactions in the Metro Boston region between 2000-2023. Includes information about seller, buyer, price, location, and much more.
  3. Residential sales data in Metro Boston with census data
    1. 2010 data - aggregates residential sales from 2000-2010 to 2010 census tracts and adds in demographic characteristics (race, income, etc)
    2. 2020 data - aggregates residential sales from 2011-2020 to 2020 census tracts and adds in demographic characteristics (race, income, etc)
  4. Corporate ownership rates and owner occupancy rates in Boston neighborhoods, 2004-2024 – Rates of corporate ownership and owner occupancy by neighborhood in the City of Boston over 20 years. With this data, you can see which neighborhoods might be experiencing more corporations buying up properties and/or more absentee owners also buying up properties.
  5. Metro Boston property assessment data, 2024 – If you want to look into specific hi-rises and luxury housing (such as the Towers of Wealth in the above link), this is the place to start. This is a large dataset so you will probably want to filter it down to properties greater than some threshold.
  6. Geographic data for making maps

Other Creative Data Ideas

  1. Google Street View Data – Google Street View might be an interesting source of photographic data for pre- and post-luxury housing developments.
  2. Real estate listings – E.g. Zillow, Redfin. Also possibly a good source of photographic information about specific properties, including interior shots. Make sure you use these with credit to the source.
  1. Affordable Homes Act – See specifically the provision about levying a transfer fee on large sales which would help deter speculation and “flipping” - short-term sales. See also any measures that relate to rent stabilization/rent control which could potentially deter speculators from jacking up rents.
  2. Local Option Transfer Fees - Similar to #1. Bills proposed in the Massachusetts House and Senate would allow towns to impose transfer fees (0.5% - 2% of the sale price) on large real estate sales as a way to deter flipping and to generate revenue for affordable housing.
  3. Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) – Bills proposed in the Massachusetts House and Senate In order to prevent the displacement that occurs when properties are foreclosed or subject to short sale, this bill would give tenants in these properties a right to purchase the property or assign their right to purchase to a non-profit developer.