Here is a chart you will see quoted, usually as evidence that Western Massachusetts has stopped building houses. In 1988 the federal Building Permits Survey recorded 3,668 new housing units authorised across the region. In 2021 it recorded 12.
A ninety-nine percent decline would be one of the most dramatic collapses in American housing. It also did not happen, and the reason it did not is sitting in the same file as the units.
Count the towns, not the units
The Building Permits Survey is a monthly return filed by permit-issuing places. Filing is, in practice, patchy. So alongside the units, count how many of the 101 towns filed anything at all:
- 1988: 40 towns filed, 3,668 units recorded
- 2010: 28 towns filed, 312 units
- 2021: 5 towns filed, 12 units
- 2025: 22 towns filed, 324 units
The units series and the coverage series move together almost exactly. That is the signature of a measurement artefact, not a market event. Coverage partly recovered after 2022, to 22 towns, and the units recovered with it.
We are pointing this out because the raw series is published, freely available, and quoted without the caveat in planning documents, news articles and market reports. If you have read that construction here fell off a cliff after 2014, you have read this chart without its denominator.
What the data can still tell you
Two things survive the coverage problem.
Who is building
Among towns that did file, 33 recorded at least one permitted unit since 2020. The most active are SPRINGFIELD (278), AMHERST (275), LUDLOW (168), AGAWAM (159), BELCHERTOWN (128). These are real permits in real towns, and the comparison against the same towns in the late 1980s is instructive: SPRINGFIELD authorised 1,443 units across 1985 to 1989 against 278 since 2020.
What it costs to build
Every permit carries a declared construction value, and cost per unit is immune to how many towns filed. In 1990, the average permitted unit here declared $86,432 in construction cost. In 2025 the figure was $379,212, roughly 4.4 times higher.
That is the number to hand somebody who asks why nobody builds starter homes any more. The declared cost is materials and labour before land, before the septic system, before the well, and before anyone's margin. At current figures a builder needs a substantial sale price to justify a modest house, and in most of these towns the comparable sale prices do not reach it. The maths does not work, and it fails before the zoning board is even involved.
Every town that filed, since 2020
Sortable and filterable. Read the units column together with the years-filed column: a town showing zero units across one filed year is telling you far less than a town showing zero across five.
Permitted Housing Units by Town, Since 2020
Download CSV, same columns, same definitions
New housing units authorised in each town that filed with the federal Building Permits Survey since 2020, how many years it filed, and the same town's total across the late-1980s boom for scale. Absence from this table means the town did not file, not that it built nothing.
| Town | Units Permitted Since 2020 | Years Filed Since 2020 | Units 1985 to 1989 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPRINGFIELD | 278 | 3 | 1,443 |
| AMHERST | 275 | 4 | 293 |
| LUDLOW | 168 | 4 | 283 |
| AGAWAM | 159 | 4 | 267 |
| BELCHERTOWN | 128 | 4 | 371 |
| NORTHAMPTON | 124 | 3 | 165 |
| WILBRAHAM | 79 | 4 | 85 |
| GREAT BARRINGTON | 60 | 3 | 0 |
| CHICOPEE | 58 | 4 | 396 |
| MONSON | 48 | 4 | 133 |
| WARE | 48 | 1 | 0 |
| EAST LONGMEADOW | 43 | 3 | 124 |
| GREENFIELD | 40 | 4 | 0 |
| ORANGE | 39 | 4 | 0 |
| SOUTH HADLEY | 37 | 4 | 133 |
| EASTHAMPTON | 30 | 1 | 90 |
| HADLEY | 26 | 4 | 0 |
| WESTHAMPTON | 23 | 4 | 0 |
| HOLYOKE | 22 | 4 | 234 |
| WILLIAMSTOWN | 19 | 4 | 0 |
| BECKET | 15 | 3 | 0 |
| GRANBY | 12 | 1 | 117 |
| PALMER | 12 | 2 | 120 |
| STOCKBRIDGE | 12 | 2 | 0 |
| WEST SPRINGFIELD | 11 | 1 | 398 |
| MONTEREY | 8 | 3 | 0 |
| WHATELY | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| DEERFIELD | 7 | 3 | 0 |
| WORTHINGTON | 6 | 2 | 0 |
| CONWAY | 4 | 2 | 35 |
| SOUTHAMPTON | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| MIDDLEFIELD | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| LONGMEADOW | 1 | 2 | 33 |
| ALFORD | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| TOLLAND | 0 | 1 | 0 |
What These Columns Mean
- Town
- The municipality, as the federal survey names it.
- Units Permitted Since 2020
- New housing units authorised, summed across the years the town filed.
- Years Filed Since 2020
- How many years the town filed at least one month with the federal survey. A low number means the units column understates, not that nothing was built.
- Units 1985 to 1989
- New housing units authorised across the five years of the late-1980s boom, for scale.
Cite: RE413. “Permitted Housing Units by Town, Since 2020.” Updated August 5, 2026. https://www.re413.com/news/new-construction-western-mass/, underlying sources at https://www.re413.com/sources/.
If you are actually planning to build
The permit record tells you what happened. What decides whether you can build on a particular piece of ground is slope, soil, wetland, water and the town's own bylaw, and those are parcel-level questions. Check the address for terrain, soil percolation suitability, wetland proximity and zoning district, and check whether the town has a public water and sewer connection anywhere near the lot, because in most of these towns the answer is no and a well and septic are part of your budget.
If you are still choosing the ground rather than the design, what makes cheap acreage cheap here works through slope, wetland and water in the order they tend to kill a deal. And if the project you have in mind is larger than a single house, the permit that can override a town's own zoning is Chapter 40B, which applies in 89 of the 101 towns.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau. The Building Permits Survey, annual place-level files. Coverage varies by year and by town; the years-filed column states it per row.
"Figures through" is the period the publisher's data describes; "checked" is only when we last asked. The full sourcing: sources and method.