By Andrew Brinker | The Boston Globe | March 12, 2026
Ever since advocates last year unveiled a ballot question that would bring one of the strictest rent control regimes in the United States to Massachusetts, real estate groups have been sounding the alarm about what they warn would be devastating impacts on the state’s housing market.
Now, they say, they have the evidence to back it up.
A new study — commissioned by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, one of the real estate supergroups behind the rent control opposition campaign — found that the rent cap policy on track to go before voters in November would, if passed, shrink the expected growth of theresidential property tax base by between 6 and 9 percent in communities across the state, losses that would mount over the course of a decade.
Beyond the hard numbers — a projected loss over 10 years of $300 billion worth of real estate value — the report underscores a broad, critical point the real estate industry will attempt to communicate to voters this fall: that rent control will harm property owners of all kinds.
“We care about the housing crisis deeply,” said Greg Vasil, CEO of the Real Estate Board, which hired the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University to conduct the study. “But this question is so poorly drafted and has so many issues, it’ll impact not only people and homeowners, but it’s really going to impact cities and towns in ways that I’m not sure that people fully understand.”
Real estate groups hope the study will bolster their push to defeat the rent control ballot question, which would cap rents on most residential properties in Massachusetts at the Consumer Price Index or 5 percent, whichever is lower. Under the policy, the average annual rent increase allowed over the last two decades would have been 2.6 percent.
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