Massachusetts Plan for More Starter Homes Fails as ‘NIMBY’ Voters Insist on Local Zoning Control

Massachusetts voters rejected Question 7, a ballot initiative aimed at promoting starter homes by reducing the size of the lot required to build a home.

The initiative would have established a new minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet for single-family homes. The lot would need at least 50 feet of land bordering the street or public way, and it would also need access to public sewer and water, but otherwise, it would pave the way for smaller starter homes to be built across Massachusetts.

The measure failed by a slim margin of 50.6% to 49.4%.

"I think that, you know, there unfortunately is still a lot of NIMBYism throughout Massachusetts," says Mike Travaline, the government affairs chair of the Homebuilders and Remodelers Association of Massachusetts. The HBRA supported the measure, arguing that it would help address the state's 220,000-home shortage and allow builders to build more starter homes.

"There's a lot of resistance to any type of legislation or referendum that would take away local control from each individual municipality," he tells Realtor.com®. "Residents and town politicians really want to have the final say in what gets built in their towns."

Massachusetts has a serious lack of smaller, more affordable starter homes, which is preventing young residents from becoming homebuyers and keeping older residents locked into larger homes they can no longer afford to keep up.

The lack of starter homes in the state is part of an overall national trend away from smaller homes. The median home size in the 1960s was 1,500 square feet. By 2024, the median home size had grown to 2,205 square feet.

A Tufts University study found that approving Question 7 could create between 3,500 and 12,000 net new homes in its first decade and ultimately increase Massachusetts' housing supply by up to 320,000 units.

Andrew Mikula, the ballot initiative's organizer and chief housing economist at the Pioneer Institute, spearheaded the effort.

"We're grateful to have the support of more than 1.2 million voters who support bringing more starter homes to families across Massachusetts," he tells Realtor.com.

Currently, lot minimums are determined at the local level. A zoning report from the National Zoning Atlas found that over half the municipalities in the state require lots to be a minimum of 40,000 square feet—or about an acre—to build a home.

Those restrictive zoning laws are part of why Massachusetts received an "F" grade and was ranked almost dead last in the Realtor.com Affordability and Homebuilding Report Card two years in a row. The state was dinged for its complex zoning rules, along with its high prices, and high construction costs.

Massachusetts' median listing price is $699,990, around $250,000 more than the national median listing price of $415,000.

"From a developer perspective, we know that if we if we did build it, they will come," Travaline says.

"There's just gigantic pent up demand for that type of housing in Massachusetts because that housing really just does not exist in any sort of substantive quantity," he continues. "We don't have enough small homes that would appeal to first time homebuyers or young professionals, young families or empty nesters."

Travaline believes the bill was defeated because of pushback from local politicians who "really want to have the final say in what gets built in their towns."

Indeed, that was a major point of contention, according to Adam Chapdelaine of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which opposed the measure. Chapdelaine wrote in an op-ed that the proposed zoning law would "override local planning" and replace "thoughtful local planning with a one-size-fits-all mandate that ignores the individual needs of all 351 Massachusetts cities and towns."

Travaline says that many towns are concerned about how the passage of Question 7 might impact housing density.

But from his perspective, "it gives developers another alternative when they're buying a lot. Rather than maybe taking the risk that they have to build a really large single-family home on a lot in order to make their return that might have to sell for you know, $1.8 to $2.5 million, they could instead create two or three smaller homes on that lot and still make their return."

"Massachusetts residents, especially young people, are leaving the state to find a more affordable place to live, separating extended families and hurting our economy," Wesley Lima, of Legalize Starter Homes, wrote in an op-ed. "Requiring huge lot sizes to build a single family home makes houses expensive, reduces construction of new single-family housing, and encourages developers to build giant McMansions to recoup land costs. Anyone who needs a low-cost, single-family suburban home is all but locked out of the market."

Mikula says his next step is to "get into all the demographic data and kind of assess you know, where where we think, you know, policies like this can pass and then go from there."