Real Estate

When the tension next door is building

If abutters want to be heard by developers, it’s in their best interest to get involved long before any shovels meet dirt.

By Megan Johnson

July 10, 2024

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Justin Harrington’s Boston-area basement was flooded with several inches of water.

After a freezing day in December 2022, plumbers discovered that a pipe had burst in the crumbling house next door. A developer had purchased the home and was trying to get approval to convert it from a two-family to a three-family home.

“They never shut the water off when they bought the home,” said Harrington, who lives with his wife and two children and works in merchandise buying.

The developer paid for the repairs to Harrington’s home out of pocket. By the following spring, he was asking Harrington for help to gain neighborhood approval for the conversion. He asked Harrington to speak to a neighbor resistant to the idea. Harrington obliged, but he was unsuccessful and relayed the news to the developer.

His response left Harrington in shock.

“He’s like, ‘Well, I’m going to put some people in there that you’re not going to like. I can’t make any money on a two-family home. So if I do a two-family, let’s just say you’re not going to like the people that rent from there,” Harrington said. “He’s, like, ‘And the other thing I can do, not that I would do this, but I could. I can put a meth clinic there instead.’”

As Massachusetts attempts to address the housing crisis, it feels as if construction sites have popped up on every corner. Some residents have found themselves at the mercy of developers, whose seemingly never-ending construction work brings noise and mess. Some residents will attempt to negotiate concessions, but as several Bostonians have discovered, getting them can be a challenge. And as Harrington discovered, they can come with complications.

Julie Sousa, a content creator known on Instagram as The Avant Garde, dealt with several issues caused by the developers of the building next to her Greater Boston home. She said that they drilled through her railing and that the structure was built so close to hers that it’s “literally touching.” During the end of her pregnancy last year, the crew blocked off her garage with their trucks, prohibiting her from hitting the road quickly in an emergency, she said, and Sousa’s dining room will face directly into her future neighbor’s bedroom. Her attempts at negotiating through lawyers were useless, she said, because the developer has the proper permits.

Of course, not all relationships between developers and abutters are negative.

In 2020, Mathieu Zahler of MPZ Development purchased a row house at 34 East Springfield St. in the South End from the Boston Housing Authority. It had been vacant for nearly 10 years. Zahler soon discovered that the façade, which was linked to a neighboring condo building via a party wall, was so deteriorated that it was falling off.

Believing that any good developer is in touch with the abutters, Zahler reached out. Zahler and the residents of 32 East Springfield signed an agreement saying they would fix the problem, each paying for their side of the deal. After each resident of 32 East Springfield vacated the building for about a year and a half, the property was completed. Zahler’s property now houses formerly homeless veterans.

“It’s just an example of when there’s a problem, if you have people that are willing, open, and able, they can join together and solve it,” Zahler said.

For some developers, making concessions to neighbors is simply par for the course.

Steve Siuda, a real estate developer at Avenue Capital Partners, said he frequently does so.

“If it is rare, then I’m unlucky because it seems to happen to me all the time,” Siuda said. “We don’t go out of our way to do it, but when it’s being asked of us, especially if we’re causing disturbances with noise or whatever it may be, we’re not opposed to it at all.” Siuda cites improvements to landscaping and fencing as the most common concessions he provides.

Occasionally, he gets other requests.

Last month, a neighbor to his Cambridge project claimed that nails from construction were responsible for two flat tires. Rather than arguing, Siuda footed the bill to have them replaced, saying the $487 price tag was worth having neighborly goodwill.

“The last thing I want to do is have a bad reputation from a neighborhood perspective, especially in cities like Cambridge, where neighbors are very vocal about development,” Siuda said.

Still, the increasing prevalence of people dipping their toes into real estate development creates a misunderstanding that all developers are careless.

“They think we just throw lipstick on a pig,” Siuda said. “We don’t.”

If abutters want to be heard by developers, it’s in their best interest to get involved long before any shovels meet dirt. Steve Holt, who has worked on behalf of his East Boston homeowner’s association on several abutting projects where developers were required to get neighbors’ approval due to zoning variances, has negotiated everything from time limits on when trucks enter and exit the area and dust control to pushing to hire surveyors to assess the damage caused by pile driving.

“There’s a whole song and dance that happens in these negotiations, where the developer comes to the association meetings,” Holt said.

Charlie Ring, an agent with Coldwell Banker Residential who frequently works with developers, said early interaction with abutters can help neighbors be “part of the conversation as opposed to just being subject to them.” That said, he noted significant concessions are not common.

“It takes a really special circumstance for there to be an actual concession of measurable and significant value,” Ring said.

As for Harrington, he “almost laughed off the phone” in response to the developer’s threats to put a “meth clinic” next door in a residential neighborhood.

Over a year later, the house next door is still dilapidated, he said.

Megan Johnson can be reached at [email protected].