|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
On a recent sunny afternoon, power tools buzzed inside Bria De Sousa’s new house.
She and her husband are about to move into their first home, a ranch-style house in New Bedford’s North End. They’ve come in nearly every day after work over the last month to “bust butt,” in De Sousa’s words — ripping up carpets, painting walls, and replacing trim.
As a professional kitchen designer, De Sousa was willing to do some DIY remodeling to live in a neighborhood she loves, in the city where she grew up. But she almost couldn’t afford to buy this home at all because she didn’t qualify for traditional first-time homebuyer assistance in New Bedford.
“There were more programs available for people who made less than me,” she said. “But I feel like I just barely made enough money to buy a house.”
As homes in New Bedford have become less affordable, the profile of a typical homebuyer in the city has changed dramatically in just a few years, a New Bedford Light analysis of federal mortgage data has found.
The median income of homebuyers in New Bedford nearly doubled between 2018 and 2025. Even adjusted for inflation, the shift represents a 47% increase in homebuyer incomes. It far outpaced growth in incomes for the city as a whole. The buying power of the typical New Bedford income has stagnated.
To Hailey Oliveira, De Sousa’s realtor, it’s obvious why homebuyer incomes have shot up: home prices have increased, and that raises the bar to qualify for a mortgage.
She said the most noticeable change in the market has been the increase in prices for “entry level” homes. An annual income of $111,000, now the median for homebuyers in New Bedford, is roughly the minimum it takes to qualify for a home in the $300,000 to $400,000 range, Oliveira said. The Light’s analysis shows there are now very few mortgages being granted for properties valued anywhere below that.
“I definitely see a lot of people who have been renting for a long time and are discouraged,” Oliveira said.
Digging deeper into the data
Even accounting for inflation, The Light’s analysis shows that New Bedford homebuyers face very different prices compared to several years ago. In 2018, the vast majority of homebuyer mortgages were paying for properties valued at less than $400,000 (in 2025 dollars). By 2025, those properties were in the minority.
In 2018, properties under $250,000 (around $315,500 in 2025 dollars) were the most common category for homebuyers, but by last year, homes at or below that price point had nearly disappeared from the market.
“It’s sad, but not surprising,” said Elise Rapoza, a housing researcher at the think tank MassINC.
Soaring housing costs are a national problem. New Bedford’s local housing market faces the same challenges as the rest of the country: high interest rates and a limited supply of housing that hasn’t kept up with population growth.
MassINC’s research has found that New Bedford ranks low on homeownership affordability among other mid-size urban centers in Massachusetts. Just 16% of households in New Bedford have an income high enough to afford a typical 30-year mortgage.
At the same time, the research shows the city has significant unmet demand for homeownership. Compared to other cities, New Bedford has a particularly high number of middle-income renters who could afford to pay more for housing — a sign they might be ready for homeownership, if there were affordable homes available to buy.
A significant part of the city’s population has been boxed out of homeownership by the rising costs.
Eight years ago, nearly one in four homebuyers were making less than the city’s median household income. Most were taking out loans worth at least 90% of the home’s value, a sign that they were entering the market as first-time buyers without any equity.
By 2024, less than 3% of New Bedford homebuyers made less than the median income. And even among that 3%, most were borrowing at levels that suggest they already had equity from a previous home.
Are out-of-town buyers outbidding locals?
While the incomes of New Bedford homebuyers have increased substantially, other characteristics, like age, race, ethnicity, gender, and single or joint borrowing status haven’t changed much.
So, if the characteristics of New Bedford homebuyers haven’t changed, then why are their incomes outpacing the rest of the city? Is the money coming from somewhere else?
Anecdotal evidence suggests that some homebuyers might be coming to the South Coast from more affluent parts of the state, attracted by relatively lower home prices.
Colleen Keefe, a South Coast realtor, said she’s concerned about gentrification. She said she has worked with homebuyers from the South Shore who started out with no intention of moving to the South Coast.
“Then, they see a house in the North End of New Bedford,” she said. “They kind of come around to it, because they literally can’t afford other places.”
Keefe added that this area has a lot to offer for newcomers beyond low prices: a major fishing port, great restaurants, and buzzing cultural events.
But there isn’t much data to show that this kind of migration to New Bedford is happening on a large, market-changing scale.
Housing researchers doubt that rich movers are flocking to the South Coast and point to other, more obvious factors driving up prices here. Research shows there’s a shortage of housing compared to the size of the growing population.
Rapoza, the MassINC researcher, said the increase in incomes could be coming from existing residents getting better jobs and making more money. If that increase is coming from locals, she said, that would be a good sign for the city’s economy.
“New Bedford has long struggled with, when people get to the phase of life where they’re ready to buy a house, they move to the suburbs,” she said. “We want people from New Bedford who start making money to stay in New Bedford.”
Assistance programs show middle-income buyers feeling the squeeze
Oliveira, De Sousa’s realtor, said most of the homebuyers she has worked with in the last few months have used some form of down payment assistance. It made all the difference for De Sousa.
She and her husband were planning to leave New Bedford when they caught a lucky break. State officials announced they were temporarily expanding zero-interest down payment assistance to include middle-income households, making well above their county’s median income.
De Sousa’s broker told her she just barely qualified in Bristol County under the new criteria.
“He was like, ‘Bria, you need it,’” she said. “We went for it.”
They acted quickly and closed on the ranch house at the end of June, securing $25,000 in down payment assistance from MassHousing. It was just in time. Two days later, the initiative ended a month early because of high demand.
The expanded program helped 1,200 middle-income Massachusetts homebuyers in just two months. Now that it’s over, the income limit for zero-interest down payment assistance has fallen from the expanded limit of 135% of area median income, back to traditional limits that cap eligibility at 80% of area median income.
In Bristol County, that meant the income cap dropped from $153,090 to $90,720.
MassHousing, the state agency that provides first-time homebuyer assistance, has seen more interest from people making more than that 80% benchmark. It shows “a huge need in the marketplace,” said Goretti Joaquim, leader of the agency’s homebuying team.
“We’re talking about schoolteachers, we’re talking about municipal workers,” she said.
While middle-income families in New Bedford may need an extra push to buy a home nowadays, those with more modest incomes can rarely get their foot in the door anymore, other assistance providers say.
New Bedford’s housing crisis has been brewing for years as the city’s housing supply has failed to keep up with increasing demand from a growing population. But the pandemic was a major turning point, said Lori Moring, the city’s deputy housing director who oversees homebuyer programs.
“There were more programs available for people who made less than me. But I feel like I just barely made enough money to buy a house.”
— Bria De Sousa
Housing prices exploded nationwide in the early 2020s. Low mortgage interest rates and the rise of remote work drove demand for homes, while construction stalled. That meant more buyers were competing for fewer homes on the market. Then, interest rates rapidly rose to their highest levels since the Great Recession. That further limited the available housing supply by preventing many homeowners from moving, because they didn’t want to get a new mortgage at a higher rate.
“Definitely, the market has changed,” Moring said. “With the increase in prices, it has become more difficult for people to purchase homes.”
Demand for New Bedford’s main first-time homebuyer program has declined. Before 2020, about eight to 10 households received assistance each year. But applications have dropped to a “sporadic” one or two per year since then.
Under the current federal limits, which depend on household size, a single person applying for the program can’t make more than $73,650 per year. A family of four can’t make more than $105,200. But city officials say that rising prices have put a typical mortgage out of reach for many of those families.
“They might not qualify, even with the help,” said Josh Amaral, the city’s housing director.
That’s why the city temporarily expanded the program in 2024, with some of its one-time federal pandemic relief funding. Under the expanded income limits, a single person could make $110,400 annually and a family of four could make $157,800.
The “enhanced” program has helped 23 households, only three of which would have qualified under the standard criteria, officials said. Many of them stacked the city assistance with other state programs, including affordable mortgages.
Officials said in mid-July that they had enough money left to help one more family through the expanded program, and they expected to give it out any day now. Once the program sunsets, they said they would go back to helping middle-income homeowners by directing them to other state-level programs.
Rising prices are impacting the options available to would-be homebuyers. As home prices have risen, housing staff say they are seeing fewer first-time buyers applying for help with purchasing three-family properties, which historically have been a pathway for families to build wealth through rental income.
The Light’s analysis found that homebuyer incomes increased the most in parts of the Near North End and South End, two of the neighborhoods most dominated by triple-deckers. Only loans for traditional homebuyers planning to live at the property, not property investors, were analyzed.
Two-family properties are still relatively common purchases for households seeking assistance, city officials say. But homebuyers have gotten more creative with how they structure those purchases.
Staff say they’re seeing pairs of family members, like a mother and daughter or brother and sister, pooling their income to share a two-family home.
Although homes have become less affordable, city officials said there are lots of assistance programs to help close the gap, and the office tries to help homebuyers stack as many of them as possible.
We need more homes, MassINC researcher says
Massachusetts has a shortage of for-sale housing, driving higher prices that make it too hard for many people to afford the home they want. There are lots of tax breaks, loans, and grant programs to incentivize rental housing construction, Rapoza said, but relatively few programs are geared toward creating properties meant to be sold.
Increasing the supply of those homes doesn’t have to mean building standalone single-family houses, she said. In Holyoke, a local housing nonprofit is building duplexes, creating for-sale and rental units at the same time. It’s even possible to build a duplex that can be jointly owned by both occupants, Rapoza said.
Creating more for-sale housing can even put downward pressure on rents by turning tenants into homeowners, she said.
“Addressing the unmet demand for homeownership is going to address the demand for rental households, because they don’t have to compete with them anymore,” she said.
Homeownership has other societal benefits, Rapoza said. Research shows that it increases people’s sense of pride and participation in their communities. And, of course, it has financial benefits for homeowners.
You can do it
The housing market is starting to cool off. Realtors say properties aren’t getting snatched up as quickly, and sellers are making more concessions. Rapoza’s analysis of Zillow data shows that New Bedford home prices have been stagnant over the last two years when adjusted for inflation. City housing officials say homebuyer assistance programs are starting to catch up.
That’s all good news for homebuyers.
De Sousa, the first-time homebuyer renovating her North End ranch, said she’s grateful for the help she got from her broker, realtor, and MassHousing. As she watched prices increase during the past few years, she started to feel like she might never be able to own a home. Now, she can’t stop telling her friends to try calling a realtor.
“Like, ‘Guys, you can do it,’” she said. “You really can.”
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
