Topic

Counting Brookline's homes

How many homes has Brookline been adding, of what kind, and what does the forecast assume?

About 105 net new homes a year since 2016, by the Town's own building permits, up from about 40 a year before, nearly all of them in apartment and condominium buildings, with assisted living counted separately. The forecast assumes the same pace and the same kinds of homes.

Five ways of counting

Each source answers a slightly different question.

The permits. The Town's permit files from 2008 hold about 1,700 to 2,500 building permits a year. Every one that could create or remove a home was read and coded: homes created and demolished, the kind of building, and the project it belongs to, so a project with several permits counts once. Assisted living is kept separate, since it brings no school children. By the year each project's main permit was issued, net of demolitions and without assisted living:

The step up from 2016 came with the large rental buildings approved under the state's comprehensive permit law (Chapter 40B). Assisted living adds about 150 more, nearly all of it Fisher Hill in 2022.

The Planning Department's 166. Its June 2026 development look-ahead counted 252, 190 and 57 net new homes in permits issued in 2022, 2023 and 2024, 499 in all, or 166 a year. The count here comes to 262, 150 and 34 for the same years, 446 in all. The differences most likely come from which permits are netted against the homes they replaced (one Housing Authority building's 115 senior apartments replaced 60 older ones) and from two 2024 permits that do not state their number of homes. Matching it exactly would take the Planning Department's project list. The three years are also unusual: 2022 was the busiest year in two decades.

The assessors' rolls. They need cleaning before they can be read as new homes. Their total rose 2,144 from January 2016 to January 2025, but much of that was records rather than building: hotel rooms recorded as homes, a condominium parking lot, and the first unit counts for several tax-exempt housing complexes that had stood for decades. Without those, and with assisted living counted separately, the rolls show 1,082 more homes, arriving unevenly. Of the projects permitted from 2016 to mid-2023, all but one show up on the rolls, a median of about ten months after the permit, and permits issued from 2015 to 2023 net 1,214 homes against 1,194 on the rolls, counting assisted living in both.

The Census. The two Census counts differ by about 1,500 homes, about 150 a year, but the permits that could have been finished by April 2020 add up to about 350, and the federal permit survey agrees. The gap most likely lies in how the two Censuses counted rather than in building nobody permitted. This site uses the Census only to compare Brookline with other towns, which only the Census allows; for Brookline's own record it uses the permits.

What kind of homes were added

Net new homes in permits issued from 2016 to 2025, without assisted living, with each demolition counted against the project that replaced it:

The houses include 44 townhouses that are part of a rental Chapter 40B development; without them, houses added about 85 homes in ten years.

Houses add value but barely add homes. Of the 264 new single-family houses permitted from 2008 to 2025, most replaced a house that was torn down. A house rebuilt as a house counts here, and in the forecast, as renovation; a house rebuilt as a two-family adds one home.

Homes still to come are harder to count. The Town's 2024 Housing Plan lists 1,221 homes approved since 2016 through Chapter 40B. As of February 2024, 396 were built, 473 under construction and 352 not yet started, and none of the not-yet-started projects had a large building permit by September 2026. Recent permits are few: 34 net new homes in 2024 and 24 in 2025, well under the forecast's about 105 a year. Since homes reach the roll about a year after their permits, the next two years will very likely fall short of that pace, and the permits for all construction point the same way for new growth (Navigating the next few years).

What each kind of home adds to the tax base

Each project permitted from 2015 to 2022 that added homes, followed onto the assessment rolls through FY2026: the increase in its assessed value on each roll after its permit, net of market change and in FY2026 dollars, counting increases only. That is how state new growth is measured, parcel by parcel against the year before; a demolition does not reduce it.

A house that adds a home carries the whole new building's value, which is why houses come to several million dollars per home added. Age-restricted homes add little: one of the two buildings measured is affordable senior housing and the other was not finished, and a third, a Housing Authority building, pays no tax. The apartment and condominium samples are small, and large buildings take two to four years to reach their full value on the roll, so these are best read as rounded figures.

What the forecast assumes

How many. The forecast keeps total residential new growth at its recent rate, about 0.84% of the levy a year. Since 2009 that rate has stayed between 0.74% and 1.02%, whether about 40 or about 180 homes a year were being built: when fewer homes are built, renovation fills in. Within that total, the forecast counts about 105 net new homes a year, the permits' pace since 2016, plus the 384 proposed at Chestnut Hill, about 30,700 homes in all by FY2040. The rest of residential new growth is renovation, including houses rebuilt as houses. The Forecast Explorer's New homes built setting tests fewer: half the expected new homes, which leaves $6.9 million less room in FY2040, or none at all, with renovation and commercial growth at their trend, $13.7 million less. That setting does not let renovation fill in for the missing homes, so it shows the most they could cost the budget.

What kind. The homes the forecast adds are apartments and condominiums, in their 2016 to 2025 proportions, about four to one. It does not forecast more age-restricted homes, and houses and conversions, which mostly rebuild homes that were already there, sit with renovation. Each forecast home adds about $585,000 of assessed value, rising with home values after FY2026, and brings 0.244 school-age children, from the per-bedroom rates in RKG Associates' fiscal study for the Town applied to the bedrooms of recent new homes. The Town's own count in ten buildings opened since 2015 is lower: about 0.21 a home, and about 0.13 in the five with the smallest homes.

What would change it. A different mix changes both sides of the budget. A family-sized home pays several times the tax of an apartment and brings more children. A zoning change that lets new houses go up on split lots, with nothing torn down, would add a kind of home Brookline has hardly built; testing it would mean counting what each new home replaces as well as what it adds.

What could be built in the next ten years

Where the list comes from. The Town's website shows every project that would add homes and is under construction, approved, in review or awaiting a zoning vote: the Chapter 40B page, the Site Plan Review and Major Impact Project Review pages, the Special Town Meeting warrant and the Building Department's permit portal. The list below was compiled from those pages on October 15, 2026. Net new homes are the homes a project builds less the homes it demolishes, where the Town states them; where it does not, nothing is subtracted. Town pages can lag events, so a project may have moved on since.

On that list are about 1,650 net new homes in 25 projects. Three of the four under construction are already on the January 2025 assessment roll, because the assessors record homes while a building is still going up: Eleven80 at 1180 Boylston Street (50), 45 Bartlett Crescent (24) and 603-619 Boylston Street (12). Those 86 homes belong to the record above, not to the years ahead. The rest fall into four groups.

Moving: about 350 homes. Under construction, or approved recently with no appeal pending.

Approved, not started: about 350 homes. Most were approved under Chapter 40B between 2019 and 2023 and have no building permit yet.

In review: about 490 homes. Proposals still before a Town board or Town Meeting.

Chestnut Hill Office Park: 384 homes. Special permit review has begun for the project the spring 2026 rezoning was written for: 384 homes, a 187-room hotel, shops and medical offices.

What the base case already counts

Over the ten years 2027 to 2036, the first ten after the Comprehensive Plan's expected adoption, the base case adds about 1,430 homes: about 105 a year, the permits' pace since 2016, plus all 384 at Chestnut Hill. Of the 1,049 net new homes permitted from 2016 to 2025, 853 were in projects of ten or more homes and 196 in small projects (houses, conversions, small buildings). Carried forward, that is about 850 homes from larger projects over ten years, about 200 from small ones, and Chestnut Hill on top.

Set against the list. Weighting each project by how often projects at its stage have been built gives about 1,400 homes, within about 35 of the base case.

The weight for projects approved but not started comes from the record. Of the 1,221 homes approved under Chapter 40B from 2014 to 2023, listed in the Town's 2024 Housing Plan, 845 (69%) have since been built, a median of four and a half years after approval. That may be generous for today's group: none of the eight private 40B projects approved since 2019 has been built, and they make up most of it. Net new homes permitted fell to 34 in 2024 and 24 in 2025. Projects in review are weighted at half and projects already moving at 95%, both judgments. A project in review today would likely finish around 2030 or later, still inside the ten years.

Chestnut Hill is counted in full, as the base case counts it, though its special permit is still in review: the spring 2026 rezoning was written for this project, and review has begun. It is the largest single assumption in the count. Weighted at half, like the other projects in review, the expected count would be about 1,200.

What would be over and above it

• The rest of the list. If every project on it were built, about 330 more homes than the base case counts, for about 1,750 in ten years.
• Bigger versions of listed projects. The Coolidge's 40B version would add 156 homes over the version on the list.
• Projects not on the list. A separate Chapter 40B eligibility letter at Chestnut Hill covers 784 homes (540, plus 244 for residents 55 and over); so far it is only that letter. The Town is studying its own land at Fisher Hill West and the Centre Street lots, with no home counts yet. And projects proposed in the next few years can still be finished by 2036.

The base case's pace sits within what the list supports. The years will not be even: with only the 12 homes at St. Paul Street and Sewall Avenue still to come from buildings under construction, the next two or three years should run below about 105 a year, and the years after that above it if the approved projects get built. The signs to watch are building permits for the approved 40B projects, each fall's permit count, and the homes on each January's assessment roll.

Which figure the site uses where

• about 105 a year is the forecast's pace and the permits' since 2016.
• about 1,250 homes is what the permits added from FY2011 to FY2025, used when comparing homes with Town staffing.
• 166 a year is the Planning Department's count for 2022 to 2024, cited only as theirs.
• About 150 a year is the Census decade, used only for comparisons with other towns.

Go deeper

• New homes and the budget: is there room?: When Brookline adds homes, does the budget follow, does the Town have room for them, and what would show that it needs more?
• New homes and Brookline's budget: What does a new home cost the Town, now that enrollment is falling?
• Growth: when a new home pays for itself: When does a new home, or new commercial space, add more tax than it costs the Town?
• Growth: renovation and what faster growth is worth: Where does Brookline's new growth come from, and what would faster growth be worth?
• Enrollment: three forecasts compared: Why do the enrollment forecasts disagree, and which one does the base case use?

Last updated 2026-10-31. What has changed.