The Boston area is under increasing pressure, akin to the tightening grip on a Beantown brownstone. A recent report suggests that one in five homes is being acquired by well-funded investors, reshaping the landscape of what constitutes a challenging real estate market. According to CBS News Boston, an investigation by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) raised the red flag that a significant chunk of property transactions occurred in the region from 2004 to 2018.

Hard cash deals have left many ordinary would-be buyers in the dust, as the report suggests. These investors play Monopoly with real neighborhoods; they scoop up affordable housing often at lower costs, and Boston's traditionally diverse communities are feeling the pinch the hardest. "The rate of investor activity is highest in lower-income communities of color," Jessie Partridge Guerrero, Interim Director of Data Service with the MAPC, told CBS News Boston, describing how their tenants find themselves booted out or buried under soaring rents when the investors circle like sharks.

Meanwhile, over at WHDH News,  approximately one-third of properties in urban communities of color are being gobbled up by investors, and this is according to the MAPC report's lead author, Jessie Partridge Guerrero, in an interview. 

The median sale prices of single-family homes in the region shot up to $714,950 this October, a sharp 10% increase from just a year ago, and the report warns that the stampede of investors is what's tightening the noose around an already extremely tight market. Guerrero remarked to WHDH News, noting how the low- or moderate-income households once eyeing these homes are now watching them slip through their fingers, resold at prices beyond reach.