Trust Fund Towers
By Kaydra Hopkins, Steve Hume, and Hannah Josovitz
JRNL6341: Telling Your Story with Data
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Across ten of Boston’s most exclusive condo towers, approximately 2 in 3 units are owned by out-of-state buyers, investment firms, or opaque LLCs. But what does this mean for the rest of Boston’s residents?
67% of luxury condominium units are not occupied by their owners, according to an analysis of property assessment data. This is a concentration of absentee ownership that housing experts say can transform residential buildings into investment vehicles and undermine the vitality of the neighborhoods around them.
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The definition of a luxury condo in this case is a building that contains a 24/7 concierge, high-quality amenities, premium finishes, and prime location. Some examples of the 10 highlighted in this data-driven article include pools and are nearly 4x the city’s average price per square-foot. More than 1,300 units collectively worth over $2 billion are owned by out-of-state investors, many using anonymous LLCs and trusts, with Florida addresses alone representing $350 million in Boston real estate. The concentration of absentee and anonymous ownership is transforming these buildings from residential communities into what critics call "vertical safe deposit boxes," with implications for neighborhood vitality, housing affordability, and the effectiveness of Boston's development policies.
Urban economists and housing advocates say this pattern, while concentrated in luxury buildings, has spillover effects on Boston's broader housing market: It removes supply from residents, demonstrates the treatment of housing as a financial commodity, and raises questions about whether development policies designed to build communities are instead enabling wealth storage for the global elite.
Top: Millennium Place Building
Bottom: Four Seasons Building
The Luxury Housing Market
Who's Buying These?
High-rise luxury buildings have transformed Boston's skyline in the past decade: Millennium Tower at Downtown Crossing, One Dalton in Back Bay, and The Sudbury at Government Center represent some of the city's most rarified addresses. While luxury development booms, average Bostonians struggle to find affordable housing.
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Who are these condos for? Due to Boston's educated population, biotech and finance strength, international airport access, and quality of life, the city attracts wealthy investors. Individuals buy multiple units as investments, living in one while renting others for passive income. International buyers use properties to diversify assets. Trusts and endowments invest when they don't need immediate cash flow. In some towers, investment firms own dozens of units generating rental income.
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Individuals may buy multiple units as investments, sometimes living in one while renting out the others to generate passive income and allow their investment to appreciate. International buyers often use these properties to invest their wealth in safer, more developed markets such as high-end American real estate. LLCs provide a safety cushion for individuals buying homes, allowing them to shield their personal assets from the risk of taking out a mortgage. LLCs may simply represent another form of an individual purchasing and occupying a home. However, when LLCs buy multiple units to rent them, leave them empty, or use them for short-term rentals such as Airbnb, this significantly affects what it means to live in these communities and the level of investment in upkeep.
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In some high-end Boston towers, a private investment firm may own a block consisting of dozens of units. These professional real estate investment firms most often use units to generate rental income, which ultimately compensates the firm’s clients. Jim Gasperoni, CFA, real estate investor and faculty member at Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business, explained: “In the luxury market, investment firms get in for the upside. Luxury housing investments are return-seeking; in an attractive market such as Boston, Manhattan, or San Diego, the prices are likely going to appreciate. Investment firms often fund the development and construction of these projects and hold a block of units that they will operate for rental income long-term.”
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The influx of investment properties being purchased impacts developer strategy and new construction in Boston. When wealthy investors and private funds buy up luxury apartments and condos, demand inflates, and developers respond by building more of these properties. They disproportionately invest in luxury buildings due to their strong profitability potential.
The average cost per square foot of the 1900+ units analyzed is $1,580, which is $800+ more than the city’s average price per square foot. The most expensive is the pent house at 300 Pier Blvd in Seaport, which is $4,967 for each of its 3,200sqft, and owned by a family trust from a wealthy family from Canada.
Image: Millennium Tower
The Impact on Residents
When LLCs buy multiple units in a condo building, property management priorities shift from resident comfort to maximizing investment value. "If you own 1 of 100 units and someone else owns 70, how would you feel about your 'neighbors'?" asks Gasperoni. "...At the end of the day, the quality of upkeep and the nature of who is living next to you is much better when they're all individual owners who pay the entire sum rather than someone who is just renting them out. Renters are deemed less invested than owners. It makes it feel less stable. If you own and occupy, there's just more care."
Myers, who has experience in legislation, explains that large corporations do not necessarily share the same goals as individual owners regarding restorations or updates. Condo associations already face challenges getting approval for renovations because they require agreement from all owner parties and proof of financing, but when investors prioritize returns over resident quality of life, building improvements become even harder to approve. The result is communities once built as hubs for social life now functioning as vertically siloed investments, where empty units and rotating renters replace stable neighbors.
A Boston Case Study
Whole Foods Market at Ink Block
Jamaica Plain (JP), once Boston's largest Latino neighborhood in the 1970s, illustrates how gentrification transforms historically low-income communities. In 1974, community organizer Richard Wise arrived in a JP with 31 abandoned buildings and cars burning beneath the elevated train line nearly every week. Banks refused to loan money to anyone in the area, trapping residents who couldn't sell or improve their homes. Wise organized coalitions to fight this redlining, pressuring banks and eventually helping pass federal legislation like the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. His efforts succeeded in bringing investment back to JP, but the outcome proved paradoxical. As Wise reflected in 2024, "Now, a good sociologist would say, oh, well, you know, it gentrified. So what happened? The people you were trying to help essentially got pushed out of the neighborhood." Median house prices more than doubled from $241,750 in 2000 to $375,000 in 2011.
The 2011 arrival of Whole Foods in Jamaica Plain perfectly illustrates what researchers call the "Whole Foods effect." When the beloved Hi-Lo Foods, a Latino supermarket, was replaced by Whole Foods, property investors recognized that a neighborhood was transitioning from socioeconomically depressed to affluent and racially homogenous. Real estate prices jumped between 5.8% and 29.3% in similar cases across American cities. This pattern creates ripple effects: By 2024, JP's median rent for a one-bedroom apartment exceeded $2,800, and the median sale price for a single-family home topped $1 million. Historian Rebecca Marchiel notes that local banks leading urban reinvestment after anti-redlining legislation favored what newspapers called "urban pioneers," young professionals moving into newly fashionable urban neighborhoods. Renters and those unable to become homeowners were left behind.
Boston ranks as the third most gentrified city in the United States, with the phenomenon spreading across every neighborhood from the North End to Dorchester. What emerges is a city increasingly divided into what Jamaica Plain residents call "the two JPs": one with higher income, better housing, and greater access to amenities, and another with struggling families in subsidized housing forced to navigate a landscape where even basic necessities have become unaffordable. As resident Tia Wheeler explained about recent redevelopment, "They're not fixing it up to help the people living here. They're fixing it up to attract a different class of people." Yet as Richard Wise's experience shows, the seeds of displacement were planted even in efforts meant to save the neighborhood from abandonment.
Summary
The 1,312 non-owner-occupied luxury units in Boston's top buildings represent more than empty towers. They signal a broader shift in how housing functions in American cities with high-demand real estate markets. Research from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council shows that between 2004 and 2018, investor activity accelerated across Greater Boston, with 21% of all residential transactions made by investors.
Policy solutions exist but require political will. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council recommends requiring beneficial ownership transparency for LLCs purchasing residential property, a measure that would shine light on the anonymous entities controlling $3.5 billion in Boston real estate. Massachusetts could follow New York's lead in establishing beneficial ownership registries or Vancouver's approach of taxing vacant properties.
The question is not whether Boston can afford to act, but whether it can afford not to. As Richard Wise's experience in Jamaica Plain demonstrates, the seeds of displacement are often planted in policies meant to revitalize neighborhoods. When Twenty Two Liberty opened in the Seaport in December 2015 as the district's first ultra-luxury complex, it set a precedent. Now, across three Seaport buildings alone, nearly 65% of units are not owner-occupied.
Boston's luxury towers stand as monuments to a housing system that increasingly serves capital over people. The glass facades reflect a city at a crossroads: continue down a path where housing is treated as a commodity for global wealth storage, or redirect toward policies that prioritize residents over returns, communities over capital.