Realtor.com analysis weighs income with housing production and prices
APRIL 29, 2025…..Massachusetts was one of seven to receive a failing grade in a new report card assessing which states are addressing housing affordability challenges and which ones are lagging behind.
Realtor.com released its “Grading the States: Affordability & Homebuilding Report Cards” on April 24, with rankings based on price, income-based housing affordability metrics and assessments of the ability to meet supply challenges through new construction.
The states with the highest grades “strike the right mix of affordability and new construction,” analysts said, and “high prices and sparse construction” were common in states with the the lowest scores.
Realtor.com estimates a nationwide housing shortage of over 4 million homes, and the online real estate sales organization said southern and western states where large and growing populations create more demand for housing are building the most homes. Texas, Florida, California, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and South Carolina accounted for more than half of all construction permits in 2024, the report said.
“The only real solution to housing affordability is to build more homes,” Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales said. “Some states are making progress, but too many others are stuck in a cycle of soaring housing costs and limited inventory. With this report and the Let America Build campaign, we’re shining a spotlight on these gaps. We need bold solutions, and we urge federal, state, and local leaders to step up and take action now.”
Among states with failing grades, Rhode Island had the lowest grade, at 12.2, followed by Massachusetts at 12.6. New York, Hawaii, California, Connecticut and Oregon also received failing grades. South Carolina got an A and secured the highest total score at 75.2. The company said its scores reflect “a weighted average of percentile ranks across two affordability metrics and two new construction metrics.”
The report did not award any A+ grades, which it said “says a lot about how far we still have to go to make homeownership truly attainable.”
“Massachusetts, which received low scores in both affordability and homebuilding, serves as an example of how zoning can get in the way of delivering affordable housing,” the report said. “Of Massachusetts’ roughly 7 million acres, 76% of them are subject to zoning, according to the National Zoning Atlas, a project dedicated to digitizing, demystifying, and democratizing U.S. zoning codes.”
Massachusetts is implementing a housing production law approved in 2024, but officials warn it will take years to make a big dent in the housing shortage due to years of low construction rates, limits on the supply of buildable land and local zoning rules that inhibit production.
The law authorizes the modernization of the public housing system, boosts programs that support first-time homebuyers and homeownership, incentivizes more housing for low- to moderate-income residents, allows accessory dwelling units, and supports the conversion of vacant commercial space to housing. When she signed it in August, Gov. Maura Healey estimated the Affordable Homes Act and related initiatives will support the production, preservation and rehabilitation of more than 65,000 homes over the next five years.
The Healey administration has a goal of increasing the statewide supply of year-round housing by 222,000 units over the next decade, a 7% increase in supply.
A plan offered by the Healey administration in February calls this goal the “minimum number of additional homes needed to ensure that an absolute shortage of housing is not the main cause of high costs.”
In the first three months of 2025, single-family home sales in Massachusetts were up 3% compared to the same three months of 2024, according to The Warren Group, and the median single-family home sale price rose 5.3% year-over-year to stand at $585,000 year-to-date.
