NEWTON, Mass. — It’s becoming an increasingly common sight in many neighborhoods: a so-called McMansion crammed onto a small lot and surrounded by smaller homes.
Now there is a growing backlash against the trend of tearing down a small ranch or Cape and replacing it with a structure that has two to three times the square footage.
“Around 8,000-9,000 of the lots which should have smaller homes, probably 1,000 have been converted to much larger houses via this teardown phenomenon,” said Joe Matthews, a Needham town meeting member.
“That’s continuing at a rate of 70 to 100 houses per year.”
Matthews doesn’t like the impact this is trend is having on his hometown. “I think really what you’ve seen with these teardowns is an explosion of property values. That’s really shifted Needham decidedly out of having any middle-class presence.”
Needham isn’t the only community where developers think bigger is better.
Boston 25 News found a lot in West Roxbury where a small ranch has been replaced with a huge modern house.
In Brookline, a Cape was torn down and a much larger house is now under construction.
Mike Chavez, an architect with Social Impact Collective in Dorchester, said the trend for bigger homes has been happening over the last several decades.
“In the 1960s, the average home size was about 1,500 sq ft. Now it’s about 2,500 sq ft. The interesting thing is that household size is actually getting smaller.”
Newton City Councilor David Micley wants his city “to be a place where people of diverse incomes and diverse occupations can afford to live.”
He says Newton recently adopted measures to tap the brakes on teardowns.
“The key tool that the council has is about what we allow to be built by right and what is built by special permit.”
Those special permits are now required for structures that would exceed 2 ½ stories and retaining walls over 4 feet.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a number of big homes go up with really big retaining walls that allow them to build even bigger,” Micley explained.
In 2017, Needham put policies in place to limit the size of a home after a teardown.
Matthews is pushing to toughen them up.
“What is happening? That’s a split house that someone was living in a month ago and now you’re destroying it just to make money when the state is suffering because of a lack of affordable housing. We’re losing people to North Carolina, Virginia, Florida.”
He adds that many of his friends are getting married and looking to buy homes. “No one is looking in Needham.”
Chavez believes it’s important to have a healthy mix of housing in a community.
Still, he says sometimes replacement ends up making sense.
“From a teardown perspective, there’s a lot of homes that were built very poorly a long time ago. So, there’s this balance of trying to find out what to do.”
He says that often leads to the conclusion that a house can’t be reused and needs to be knocked down.
“A lot of communities are trying to find the balance.”
Affordable housing advocates aren’t just concerned about inflating prices will these bigger homes.
They also say all the labor and materials that are put towards building big houses means fewer resources are spent creating more modestly priced homes.
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