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Residential construction in Boston plummeting

Scott Van Voorhis took a look at residential construction permits issued in Boston so far this year and finds only a couple hundred have been issued, compared to more than a thousand in the same period last year.

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Not in East Boston

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You can easily click the link and actually read the information. There has been almost no residential construction permitted anywhere this year including in East Boston.

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That's because there's no room left to build anything in South Boston - very interesting how only certain parts of the city are having all the condo's built - I mean buildings.....

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Too early for Wu's anti-development policies to have had an impact but the lack of pro-development efforts probably more the culprit.

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QED.

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Construction loans have become very expensive, not to mention the refinancing that follows. Construction costs remain at an all time high. These contractors are going to have to lower estimates to get work.

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that was almost $10/each during the pandemic is less than $3 now. If you built in the last 3 years you lost money.

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His source is also "a review of city records". Yet he gives no actual numbers of his findings.
To gain any understanding of how much policy had an effect it would probably be nice to compare to national numbers,
https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/data/series.html
Just looking at Annual 2021 to 2022, for housing permits (what I think Van Voorhis) is looking at total permits in US were down 4.9%, while multifamily housing permitting was actually up 8.3%... could be some evidence to support his case but really until we know the actual numbers he got and methods used to collect them its really just speculation.

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Higher interest rates as well as development-unfriendly policies can both be contributing factors but it begs the question, if we can't control interest rates (we can't), and if we still need to encourage new housing starts (we do), we need to reexamine if the endless studies, larger and larger slice of IDP units, and multi-year approval processes are causing more harm than good.

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The article blames fear of upcoming rent control and affordable housing requirements as one of the reasons.

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Now all those "thousands of empty units in the city" that those with degrees in Early 17th Century French Poetry espouse on about without any proof will be absorbed by the market.

Win win baby.

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really sad to hear this?

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If you're concerned about the fact that there are barely any vacancies in the housing stock we have you should be extremely worried that this situation will get worse and lead to even higher rents. If there isn't an increase in supply of housing in Boston then people either start leaving or those who move here displace those who can't afford the higher rents. Oh, and Wu is hellbent on getting Boston's population from 670k to 800k by 2030. Great idea

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