A single-family home with a white picket fence has always been a hallmark of the American Dream.
Now it’s turning into something of a nightmare for some would-be home buyers.
Low inventory and sky-high prices have many people wondering if owning that type of home is still in the cards for them.
“I would love to be able to afford a single-family home. Like all millennials, have a nice yard for a dog,” said 37-year-old Tina Shukar who’s been looking for a home in the greater Norwood area.
The sales executive is frustrated by the situation she’s faced over the last two years.
“The problem is that I’m competing against companies that do home flips, and they have cash to buy properties, and can skip inspections, and all that stuff.”
Although more homebuyers are having trouble finding an affordable single-family house, this problem didn’t emerge overnight.
“We’re facing an extreme housing shortage in Massachusetts,” explained Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, an advocacy group focused on increasing the supply of housing.
“In the 30 years prior to 1990, we built 900,000 homes in Massachusetts,” said Kanson-Benanav. “In the 35 years or so since 1990, we’ve actually built about half as many, or 450,000 homes. And that’s at a time when our population has been growing steadily, our economy has been growing, and we’ve added thousands of jobs.”
As a result, demand continues to exceed supply, so prices keep going up.
The median price of a single-family home in the Boston area was $930,000 in March 2025. That’s up from 900,000 a year ago, according to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors.,
“No one is doing enough to meet that demand, and it’s staring to impact people from all walks of life,” added Kanson-Benanav.
One of the big problems, according to Realtor Marie Presti of the Presti Group in Newton and Stoneham, is “we have very little land available for developers to buy to build big developments.”
Developers are left to tear down an old house and then replace it with a bigger house.
“They have to build a big house to make the profit they’re looking for,” explained Presti. “It’s out of the first-time homebuyer’s price range.
Architect Mike Chavez of the Social Impact Collective says overall, houses have been getting much bigger.
“In the 1960s, the average home size was about 1,500 square feet. Now it’s about 2,500 square feet . . . and the interesting thing is household size has actually gotten smaller.”
In fact, many single-family homes only have one or two Baby Boomers inside.
Presti says more people in this demographic were expected to downsize, but they haven’t moved.
“They’re concerned about a couple of things. Number one, where are they going to go?”
Number two is capital gains taxes.
Many couples have seen appreciation beyond $500,000 on their house.
That means if they sold their house, they would owe the government money.
“They’d rather just stay put so they don’t have to pay those taxes,” said Presti.
The Healey administration recently released a report indicating the state needs 222,000 units of new housing in the next ten years.
Kanson-Benanav believes a mix of housing will be needed and that new approaches will be needed to meet that aggressive goal.
He said single-family homes will always be part of that mix but “what we’re saying is that we need different tools. . .and one strategy to address that is to say perhaps you can build 2, 3, or 4 homes on a lot that previously was only allowed to have a single-family house on it.”
Changes like that take time and often face stiff opposition.
In the meantime, Shuker is losing her optimism that owning a single-family home will ever be in her future.
“It seems like something that I could have easily afforded just a few years ago. I can’t anymore.”
Presti says more of her clients are willing to accept longer commutes to get the type of home they want.
She says it’s also helpful if a buyer is flexible about their “must-haves” and doesn’t shy away from a property that needs some work.
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