Related Guides
Housing
- DataTown (Massachusetts Housing Partnership Center for Housing Data) DataTown compiles community-level information for all 351 Massachusetts cities and towns, and visualizes that data in graphics and charts that are easy to understand, print out and bring to a community discussion. DataTown allows you to download the underlying data as well. And we've just added a new feature - the ability to create graphics that compare communities!
- TODEX: Transit-Oriented Development Explorer for Massachusetts (Massachusetts Housing Partnership, Center for Housing Data) The Massachusetts Housing Partnership Center for Housing Data has developed a user-friendly tool that allows you to review densities at all 261 Greater Boston transit stations and picture the great opportunity we have to build more housing and reduce traffic congestion.
- RentSmart Boston (Analyze Boston) RentSmart Boston compiles data from BOS:311 and the City's Inspectional Services Division to give prospective tenants a more complete picture of the homes and apartments they are considering renting, assisting them in understanding any previous issues with the property, including: housing violations, building violations, enforcement violations, housing complaints, sanitation requests, and/or civic maintenance requests.
- Income-Restricted Housing Inventory (Analyze Boston) This data, maintained by the Department of Neighborhood Development, is an inventory of all income-restricted units in the city. This data includes public housing owned by the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), privately- owned housing built with funding from DND and/or on land that was formerly City-owned, and privately-owned housing built without any City subsidy, e.g., created using Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) or as part of the Inclusionary Development Policy (IDP).
- Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2022 (The Boston Foundation) The data and findings in this report card parallel the housing efforts we see at work among community leaders and housing advocates. In broad terms, one area of focus is housing supply and demand and the resulting prices of homes to rent and own; another is affordability, housing instability and, new in the 2022 report card, subsidized housing. The core metrics section of the report card lays out the persistent realities of the region’s housing crisis related to market forces: cities and towns with variable and insufficient housing production histories, and rents and home prices that are among the highest in the country.
- Housing Data (Zillow) Home Values (ZHVI) and Rentals (ZORI) available at the Zip Code level.
- FY2023 ERAP Maximum FMRs for Suffolk County, MA (HUD) The Department of the Treasury's Emergency Rental Assistance Program allows grantees to make payments to households up to the maximum of the applicable Fair Market Rent or Small Area Fair Market Rent in cases where the household does not have documentation of actual rent paid. The following table shows the maximum of the Fair Market Rent or Small Area Fair Market Rent by bedroom size.
- U.S. Housing Market Conditions (HUD) The USHMC website contains all the national, regional, state, metropolitan, and local data and analysis in one location. You may search by geography to obtain all the reports available for a particular area. Alternatively, you may search by the type of report. Each report contains different levels of data and/or analysis. The Boston Housing Market Area (HMA)
- Out of Reach: Two Bedroom Housing Wage by Zipcode (National Low Income Housing Coalition) The dollar amount shown for each zip code is the two-bedroom Housing Wage. Given the number of zip codes, they will appear on the map only while you are zoomed-in past a certain level. If zip codes are not showing or are too difficult to read, please zoom in further. New zip codes may take some time to load on the map.
- Out of Reach: 2022 Massachusetts (National Low Income Housing Coalition) Out of Reach documents the significant gap between renters’ wages and the cost of rental housing across the United States. The report’s central statistic, the Housing Wage, is an estimate of the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a modest rental home at HUD’s fair market rent (FMR) without spending more than 30% of his or her income on housing costs, the accepted standard of affordability. Data for Massachusetts and Boston-Cambridge-Quincy HFMA.
- FY 2023 Fair Market Rents for Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH HUD Metro FMR Area (HUD) 2023 Fair Market Rents for Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH HUD Metro FMR Area
- FY2023 Small Area FMRs For Suffolk County, MA In metropolitan areas, HUD defines Small Areas using ZIP Codes within the metropolitan area. Using ZIP codes as the basis for FMRs provides tenants with greater ability to move into “Opportunity Neighborhoods” with jobs, public transportation, and good schools. They also provide for multiple payment standards within a metropolitan area, and they are likely to reduce need for extensive market area rent reasonableness studies. Lastly, HUD hopes that setting FMRs for each ZIP code will reduce overpayment in lower-rent areas.
- The Gap (National Low Income Housing Coalition) Housing cost burden by income group and affordable and available homes per 100 renter households, for the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH (Metro) area,
- Eviction Lab (Princeton University) Explore nationwide eviction data spanning the years 2000-2016. View maps and charts, download reports, and more. Search by state, county, city, Census tract, block group.
- American Housing Survey (census.gov) The American Housing Survey (AHS) is sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The survey has been the most comprehensive national housing survey in the United States since its inception in 1973, providing current information on the size, composition, and quality of the nation’s housing and measuring changes in our housing stock as it ages.
- HUD User Datasets (HUD) HUD provides interested researchers with access to the original data sets generated by PD&R-sponsored data collection efforts, including the American Housing Survey, median family incomes and income limits, as well as microdata from research initiatives on topics such as housing discrimination, the HUD-insured multifamily housing stock, and the public housing population.
- Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data Browser (U.S. Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council) HMDA Data Browser allows you to filter, aggregate, download, and visualize HMDA datasets. Available at the county level.
- National Housing Preservation Database The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. Tailor the data to your community to help preserve your local assets or explore national data to better understand the need for affordable housing and the dynamics of the publicly supported housing market.
- Housing Best Practices (Boston Indicators) The two interactive features below allow you to explore data from the 2019 Housing Report Card. The map shows which municipalities have adopted six key housing production best practices. Following the map is a sortable table presenting a range of local housing market data for each municipality.
- Boston, MA (Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America) Mapping Inequality brings one of the country's most important archives to the public. HOLC's documents contain a wealth of information about how government officials, lenders, and real estate interests surveyed and ensured the economic health of American cities. And with the help of ongoing research, we continue to learn at what cost such measures were realized.
Featured Article on Boston and Housing Data
- Journal of Housing Economics 38 (2017) (ScienceDirect) In this paper, we add to the small but growing body of knowledge on how the sharing economy is shaping the housing market by focusing on the short-term effects of the growth of Airbnb in Boston neighborhoods on the rental market, relying on individual rental listings. We examine whether the increasing presence of Airbnb raises asking rents and whether the change in rents may be driven by a decline in the supply of housing offered for rent.
