--- title: "Greater Boston Grew by Just 9,000 People in 2025, and Housing Still Costs Too Much" description: "A new report card finds the region’s prices leveling off for the wrong reasons, while the cheapest homes now go for $600,000" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-11-10T10:00:00Z modified: 2026-11-11T07:18:34Z url: https://rews.cc/a/greater-boston-grew-by-just-9-000-people-in-2025-and-housing-7d5112 language: en tags: ["housing", "immigration", "economy", "boston", "rents", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Greater Boston Grew by Just 9,000 People in 2025, and Housing Still Costs Too Much *A new report card finds the region’s prices leveling off for the wrong reasons, while the cheapest homes now go for $600,000* By Jan Sokol · November 10, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/greater-boston-grew-by-just-9-000-people-in-2025-and-housing-7d5112 ## In brief - Greater Boston’s population grew by 9,000 in 2025, down from 49,000 in 2024, as international immigration fell sharply - New completions rose in 2025, but it was the region’s slowest year for new units permitted in a decade - Only six towns now have median home prices under $500,000, down from 42 in 2016 after adjusting for inflation - Voters narrowly rejected Question 7, which would have cut minimum lot sizes for single-family homes - Severe cost burden among families earning $35,000–$50,000 rose from 9% in 2006 to 51% in 2024 Every autumn Greater Boston gets a report card on its housing, and every autumn the grades read like a diagnosis the patient has heard before. This year’s edition, produced by Boston Indicators, the Boston Foundation’s research arm, with [Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies](https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/calendar/greater-boston-housing-report-card-2026-release), was released on November 10, 2026. That was less than a week after the region’s voters had their own chance to change something, and declined by a hair. The findings, [as Karyna Cheung reported in the *Boston Globe*](https://bostonglobe.com/2026/11/10/business/boston-housing-costs/), describe a market that is stalling more than it is cooling. Prices are flattening. Rents are softening. On paper this is the relief Boston has waited years for. The authors hold back their applause, because of the reasons behind it. ## The people who did not come For two decades the region has depended on arrivals from abroad. People moved away to other parts of the country, immigrants took their places, and the total kept climbing. In 2025 that stopped working. According to UMass Donahue Institute data cited in the report, Greater Boston’s population rose by only 9,000, compared with 49,000 the year before. Leaving aside the pandemic years, when the population actually shrank, it was the slowest growth since 2011. The report says every one of those new residents came from births. [Banker & Tradesman reported](https://bankerandtradesman.com/greater-boston-is-barely-growing-thats-easing-housing-costs-report-card-says/) that for the state as a whole, nearly 32,000 residents left, while international migration brought in fewer than 31,000 newcomers. The *Globe* puts the cause plainly: the Trump administration’s continued hostility toward immigration. Fewer people ought to mean cheaper rooms. As arithmetic, that holds. The report warns against counting it as a win. Prices that fall because new housing gets built are a sign of health. Prices that fall because people leave are a symptom: of lost jobs, of a weakening economy, of conditions getting worse for the people who stay. A reflection, not a finding: a city can always become affordable the old way, by becoming a place fewer people want to live. ## Buildings finished, buildings not begun In 2025 more new homes were completed than before, and US Census figures show a sharp jump in units added. The report suggests this may largely be large multifamily projects, stalled during the pandemic, finally getting finished. It is the past catching up, not the future arriving. The future looks thinner. It was the area’s slowest year for new units permitted in a decade, and permitting has been falling steadily since 2021. Greater Boston permits roughly two new units per 1,000 residents, according to Census Bureau data, fewer than other major metro areas. Permits have ticked up slightly in 2026, but rising material costs and high interest rates, the same rates that have [frozen the state’s mortgage market](https://rews.cc/a/mortgage-rates-reach-7-28-deepening-the-freeze-in-the-massac-95428e), make the pipeline for the coming years look weak. ## The bottom rung The steepest climb has come at the cheap end of the market. Single-family homes at the low end have risen in price faster than homes in the middle and upper tiers. In 2016, after adjusting for inflation, 42 towns had median sale prices under $500,000. Today six do. In the region’s low-end towns the median single-family sale price is now $600,000, according to Warren Group data compiled in the report. To afford it, a household needs an estimated annual income of $180,000. So this is what entry-level looks like: a price tag that requires a salary most first-time buyers have never seen. Question 7 on last week’s ballot was meant to bring that rung back within reach. It would have reduced the lot size needed to build a single-family home. As [WBUR reported](https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/11/06/massachusetts-ballot-question-7-rejected), it would have allowed a house on any residentially zoned lot outside Boston of at least 5,000 square feet with water and sewer connections. Governor Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu supported it. Its advocates argued it would spur construction of starter homes. It failed narrowly, [50.6 percent to 49.4 percent](https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2026/11/06/massachusetts-question-7-starter-homes-fails), and was the last of the state’s ballot questions to be decided. ## Rent Renters have fared no better. Using the Zillow Observed Rent Index, the report ranks Greater Boston the third-most expensive rental market in the country, after New York City and San Francisco, with monthly rent at $3,074. Vacancy rose very slightly in 2025 compared with the previous two years, to 3.2 percent, still among the lowest rates in the nation. There are early signs of give. Apartment List data show the time it takes to lease an apartment grew from 22 days in 2022 to 31 days in August 2026. The report links this, tentatively, to slower immigration and weaker demand overall, and cautions that the data is still limited. The more serious numbers are about the people already living here. Households are considered severely cost-burdened when housing takes more than half their income. Among low-income families earning between $35,000 and $50,000, that share rose from 9 percent in 2006 to 51 percent in 2024. Among families earning $50,000 to $75,000, it reached 24 percent, up from 1 percent in 2006. One percent to twenty-four, in less than twenty years. These are not the poorest families. They are the ones who once got by. ## Vienna, considered from Boston The report ends with a special discussion of social housing, an idea now being raised nationally and in places like Cambridge. In this model, mixed-income homes in publicly owned or subsidized buildings stay affordable permanently and house residents across a range of incomes. The report points to Vienna, where more than half of residents live in government-owned or subsidized housing. It also cites schemes in Seattle and in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a dedicated commission develops apartment buildings meant to stay affordable for good. Cambridge already has a task force working on high housing costs using social housing concepts. Elsewhere in Greater Boston the idea has not caught on, partly because few people can say exactly what it means. The report sets out several possible paths. Any serious push across the region, it says, would take a coordinated effort by existing housing groups and elected officials, backed by the wider community. None of that exists yet.