To the editor:
Ahead of Marblehead’s May 2024 Town Meeting, many residents expressed reasonable concerns about the impact of constructing new housing on the value of existing homes, a potential impact of the town’s 3A Zoning plan.
This is a perfectly reasonable concern. For many American families, their home is their largest repository of wealth. A policy change that puts at risk the value of one’s primary asset is worthy of close scrutiny indeed.
This week, the Marblehead Housing Coalition is pleased to release its research into the relationship between new housing construction and single-family home prices. It shows that instead of new housing causing property values to decline, the associated economic growth of well-managed development has caused faster price increases in nearby North Shore towns.
We compared Marblehead’s percentage housing increase between 2010 and 2022 with five other North Shore communities: Swampscott, Newburyport, Gloucester, Beverly, and Salem. Not only did all of these towns build more housing than Marblehead, but they also saw single-family home prices rise faster on an inflation-adjusted basis.
Approximately 2,670 of Marblehead’s single-family homes were purchased in 2010 or earlier. If you are one of those homeowners, the town’s lack of economic progress since that time has cost you money. If the median single-family home in Marblehead had increased in price at the same rate as Newburyport between 2010 and 2022, the median homeowner would be $86,000 better off. Newburyport’s relative increase in housing stock was two and a half times greater than Marblehead’s over this period.
If you are reading this, you are probably the owner of a single-family home in Marblehead, like me. And you are probably also concerned about the value of your home. So if someone is threatening you with plummeting property values by adopting 3A Zoning, you should interrupt them to ask if they can guarantee they’re not going to cost you $86,000 over the next decade.
To learn more about 3A Zoning and property prices, visit the Marblehead Housing Coalition website: https://www.marbleheadhousingcoalition.com/post/3a-zoning-and-home-prices
Nick Ward
Rolleston Road