The Lexington real estate market is booming despite the environmentally friendly guidelines

Real estate

An increase in the new housing construction is a challenge with many years of assumptions about green buildings and multi -family zoning guidelines, reported the Canary Media.

By Annie Jonas

September 24, 2025 | 4:57 p.m.

2 minutes to read

In the suburb of Lexington in Boston, an increase in the new housing estate is questioned in order to prove long-held assumptions about green buildings and apartment guidelines-and to prove that strict energy standards do not have to be growing or affordable in growth or affordability.

In the past two years, Lexington has been more than 1,100 new housing units – including 160 affordable units -, even when the city has implemented more than the environmental guidelines, is according to the city. Canarian media.

Nearly away from slowing down, the local managers informed the non -profit newsroom that the combination of future -oriented zoning reforms and fossil fuel restrictions actually contributed to accelerating them.

“The opponents said:” It will cost so much that they will stop developing affordable living space. “However, this was clearly not the case” Canarian media.

In 2023, Lexington passed zone reforms to enable more apartment building as part of a state law called MBTA communities. In the same year, the city passed a statute to prohibit the use of the fossil fuel in new buildings and requires high energy efficiency standards to join the program for fossil fuels.

The state -managed pilot program, which was launched by the Department of Energy Resources in 2022, enables cities to add or change city laws to require new buildings and important renovation work fossil -free. Lexington's Bylaw, which was adopted during his annual city meeting of 2023 (Article 27), came into force in March 2024. Minor changes that were approved in 2024 (Article 38) at the beginning of this year.

Critics feared that the combination of stricter environmental rules with zoning reforms would increase the construction costs and discourage developers – especially those who build affordable apartments. But that is not.

At his annual city assembly in 2024, Lexington Article 50 passed to change its zoning laws to demand that each development between 10 and 13 units make 10% of them integrated residential units or affordable – ie a household income that is limited to 80% of the medium income in the region. If a development has 14 or more units, it has to make at least 15% of the units affordable.

Since the changes to the zoning and energy policy, the Lexington planning authority has approved nine new housing projects. These range from small infilled and unused commercial space in a building with seven units to larger mixed use developments, including a proposal for 312 units with a retail range on the ground floor. Canarian media reported.

For Lexington, the results seem to be promising: if the zoning is opened and paired with intelligent, climatic-conscious politics, it is quite possible to increase housing stocks to increase and affordable units without relying on fossil fuels.