Homeowners In Boston: A Case Study

Drawing on a combination of data, this paper aims to identify how second homeowners in Boston make their locational choices and how they engage in Boston, its neighborhoods, and its institutions. Over the past 10 years, second homeownership has increased by almost 92% across the city and is heavily concentrated in central city neighborhoods. While popular media has drawn considerable attention to this phenomenon, the growing presence of second homeowners and their corresponding role in urban change has receive little systematic analytic attention. This analysis seeks to begin to rectify this neglect by documenting two waves of second homeowners in Boston—city speculators and city specters—who maintain diverging orientations to and engagements