Photo Illustration: Glenn Harvey for Bloomberg Markets; Photo: Shutterstock
America’s Most Exclusive Suburbs Are Finally Building More Housing
States—and even historic towns like Lexington, Massachusetts—are easing real estate zoning to fight the affordability crisis. Will local support for the Yimby crowd last?
Perched on a gentle rise and bathed in sunlight, the 119-year‑old Craftsman-style home had wainscoting, leaded glass and gabled roofs. For 42 years, Henry Reiling lived here on Meriam Street in Lexington, Massachusetts. Reiling, who died in 2019, bought the four-bedroom house for $142,000 not long after joining Harvard Business School as a finance professor.
On a winter afternoon, Ben Finnegan, a real estate developer who lives in Lexington, pulls up to the property in a navy Chevy Suburban. Finnegan and his business partner bought the home and the carriage house next door from Reiling’s widow for $3.8 million. The compound will become 10 housing units in one of Lexington’s most desirable neighborhoods. The main building will be renovated and turned into two condos; the second has been torn down to make way for town houses and garden-style homes. “This is the first of its kind here. You can see the mansions in the background,” Finnegan says, above the roar of a rumbling excavator. “Ten years ago—condos in Meriam Hill—I would have thought that was impossible.”