The 2025 Greater Boston Housing Report Card is the 24th edition of our annual look at housing supply, home prices and affordability in Greater Boston. This year, in addition to an in-depth examination of the latest data from the team at Boston Indicators, the report explores how the 177 cities and towns subject to the MBTA Communities Act are implementing zoning requirements designed to encourage greater housing development. In the Special Topic section, researchers from the Boston University Initiative on Cities look at three Boston suburbs––Lexington, Needham and Wellesley––and what their different approaches mean for MBTA Communities' true housing impact.
Overview and Key Findings
Demographics and Population Change
Supply
Homeownership
Rental Housing
Homelessness and Housing Instability
Introduction
Analysis of EOHLC Documents
Case Studies:
Lexington, Needham, Wellesley
Policy Recommendations
Core Metrics
Peter Ciurczak, Boston Indicators
Aja Kennedy, Boston Indicators
Kimberly Goulart, Boston Indicators
Luc Schuster, Boston Indicators
Lessons from MBTA-C Zoning
Katherine Levine Einstein, Initiative on Cities at Boston University
Maxwell Palmer, Initiative on Cities at Boston University
Sandy Kendall, The Boston Foundation
Soni Gupta, The Boston Foundation
Mel Isidor, Isidor Studio
Friends,
For more than two decades, the Boston Foundation's Greater Boston Housing Report Card has helped our region understand its housing landscape by translating complex data into clear insights and actionable strategies. The 2025 edition arrives at a pivotal moment. The data confirm what many residents already know from lived experience: Housing costs continue to rise faster than incomes, housing need far exceeds production, and the gap between who can afford to stay in Greater Boston and who cannot continues to widen.
These trends are not inevitable. They reflect choices—policy choices, investment choices, and collective priorities—that we have the power to change.
Like every Housing Report Card before it, this year pairs a clear- eyed view of the data with concrete paths forward. Through its Core Metrics section, prepared by Boston Indicators, and its Special Section on the MBTA Communities zoning law developed by scholars from the Initiative on Cities at Boston University, the report reminds us that good data analysis can do more than describe a problem. It can help us solve it. The findings highlight opportunities to streamline permitting and procurement, encourage zoning reforms, align state and municipal policies, and rethink how we finance and support affordable development. Together, these steps can help us to build a housing ecosystem that is more strategic, coordinated, and equitable.
Yet numbers and policy tools alone are not enough. Housing is, at its core, about belonging—about whether the people who make Greater Boston thrive can also afford to build their futures here. The true measure of our community is not found in market data, but in whether teachers, health care workers, artists, service workers, young families and many others can find a stable, affordable place to call home.
As we look ahead, the question is no longer whether we need more housing—our data make that abundantly clear—but whether we can summon the civic will to act. The Greater Boston Housing Report Cardwill continue to serve as a shared fact base, a platform for convening, and a lever for accountability.
The work ahead is substantial, but with the alignment of research, advocacy, and policy, we are better positioned than ever to make a difference for people and communities across Greater Boston.
M. Lee Pelton
President and CEO
The Boston Foundation
The Core Metrics section explores the data behind the headlines –– how changes in housing supply, permit levels, and affordability are woven together to create the current market. While new U.S. Census data captures a strong increase in new homes being completed, a slowdown in permitting and continued rise in single-family and condo prices is shrinking the pool of buyers and putting homeownership out of reach for many renters.
It's been four years since the signing of the MBTA Communities Act. While more than 90 precent of the 177 cities and towns affected have come up with plans that meet the standards of the law, things can look very different in practice. Here's how it plays out in three Boston suburbs.
