Speculators and specters: Diverse forms of second homeowner engagement in Boston, Massachusetts

ABSTRACT

Drawing on interview data with second homeowners, this article identifies and explains diverging modes of second homeowner engagement in Boston, Massachusetts. Though recent scholarship suggests that second homeowners’ primary form of engagement is through financial transactions in real estate, this analysis uncovers 2 kinds of second homeowners—whom I call city speculators and city specters—who engage with the city in other, yet consequential ways. City speculators engage in city-building projects through direct civic and political participation and place-entrepreneurial activities and are motivated to do so by the pursuit and promise of economic capital. City specters more inconspicuously shape the contours of urban life through donations to and participation in elite, high cultural institutions. Specters suggest that they are not motivated by economic capital but by the high cultural value that their second home engagements afford. Documenting these differences sheds light on a growing group of urban dwellers, demonstrates and explains the heterogeneity of affluent in-migrants’ practices and variable place-making projects, and underscores the complex set of challenges that cities face today.

Acknowledgments

For helpful comments and feedback, the author thanks the editors and three anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Urban Affairs, Elyas Bakhtiari, Emily Barman, Robin Bartram, Japonica Brown-Saracino, Jessica Simes, and the Urban Workshop participants at Boston University.

Notes

1. I define second homeownership herein by drawing upon geography and tourism and mobility studies. Though “multiple homes” (Paris, 2010) is often more appropriate to describe some of the affluent participants in this sample who own more than two properties, most own only two, and I thus defer to the colloquial term “second home.” This is furthermore how the participants in this sample referred to their residences in Boston. For these residents, there was a hierarchy of dwellings. Hall and Müller (2004) loosely define second homes by acknowledging the variety of second home types: “recreational homes, vacation homes, summer homes, cottages, and weekend homes … the term ‘second home’ is used as an umbrella for these different terms, which all refer to a certain idea of usage” (p. 4). I adopt this similar approach by acknowledging the heterogeneity of second home types and usage but generally refer to second homes/homeowners as those who own a housing unit for vacation, leisure, and/or investment use but whose permanent, legal residence is elsewhere. This is also the language I used to solicit calls for participants.

2. For important exceptions, see Chevalier et al. (2012, 2013), Coppock (1977), Fernandez et al. (2016), Groth (1994), and Ong (2007).

3. For instance, social preservationists, a subset of gentrifiers who are driven by a quest for authenticity, actively work to prevent the displacement of “authentic” people and places in gentrifying neighborhoods through their social, cultural, and economic practices—effectively cementing the legitimacy of certain longtime residents over other local populations (Brown-Saracino, 2007, 2010).

4. Though second homeownership only makes up a small percentage of the housing stock in Boston, scholars have turned their attention to populations of the same size—for example, lesbian and gay populations, artists, etc.—to unpack how their in-migration helps to produce social, economic, and political changes in cities across the United States (Brown-Saracino, 2010; Hayslett & Kane 2011; Lloyd 2006).

5. To qualify as a second homeowner for this study, the owner either now uses or has at some point used the residence for leisure, investment, or part-time use.

6. I furthermore attempted to solicit participants through neighborhood and civic associations and luxury real estate agents; however, no second homeowners responded to my requests through this method. Through real estate agents, I actively tried to pursue international buyers; however, no real estate agents were able to connect me with buyers. Only one out of the five real estate agents I spoke with dealt with international buyers. The other four noted that their primary second homeowner demographic is U.S.-based retirees.

7. Successfully posted: South End, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Downtown, Jamaica Plain, and the North End/Waterfront.

8. This strategy has been used before (DeLaney & Pizzuti, 2005); however, it is difficult to parse intended use of each residential unit. Boston Assessor’s Office corroborated that though the city tracks nonresidents through the residential exemption, it is nearly impossible to decipher the differences between those who own homes exclusively as rental properties (that are occupied by tenants full time) and those who own them for vacation, leisure, or investment use (e.g., units that are vacant and unrented).

9. Several landlords responded to my request for interviews but were not included in this sample. My selection criteria included interviewing those who do not currently rent their properties to full-time tenants and own them for vacation, leisure, or investment purposes, closely matching the “vacant” category on the census.

10. The difficulty of soliciting second homeowners for interviews, coupled with the difficulty of setting up a time to meet in person—all opted to talk over the phone—reveals the often transient nature of these homeowners.

11. This mirrors the heterogeneity of Logan and Molotch’s (1987) typology of place entrepreneurs.

12. That is not to say that there are no speculators who purchased in Boston neighborhoods in the early–middle 2000s or today. However, today there are fewer neighborhoods that one might speculate on; second homeowners tend to concentrate today in the more affluent part of the central city. There are likely second homeowners in smaller numbers who are speculating on gentrifying neighborhoods; however, none responded to my calls for participation. It is possible that these second homeowners responded to my call for participants because of their much longer standing history with their homes and Boston.

13. Five out of the seven cited the Boston public-school system as a primary reason for not wanting to live permanently in the city during the 1980s and 1990s, mirroring the larger patterns of White flight that occurred in Boston during the latter half of the 20th century due to school desegregation (Allison, 2004; Kimelberg & Billingham, 2013).

14. Jamaica Plain, Downtown, Back Bay, the North End, the West End, and Dorchester.

15. Adjusted for 2017 inflation.

16. These data come from six speculators in the sample; one inherited the residence from his family member and thus his purchasing price is not listed. All data come from 2016 property tax assessment data and either self-reported cost of their residence or mortgage data from Suffolk County registry of deeds (City of Boston Assessing Department, 2016).

17. This is not to say that speculators do not derive their identity through their second home purchases. Where and how one chooses to live is always tied to identity work (Hummon, 1990). In fact, some in this cohort describe themselves as “city people” or a “city mouse.” In this case, however, second homeowners’ identities are tied to participating in and taming the “urban frontier” and amassing wealth in the process (Brown-Saracino, 2010; Douglas, 2012; Smith, 1996; Spain, 1993).

18. Sixteen of the seventeen purchased second homes after 2007.

19. Four of five luxury real estate agents I spoke with cited this type of buyer—domestic residents who wish to buy a second home for vacation or leisure purposes—as their primary, growing, and more lucrative market.

20. South End, Beacon Hill, Jamaica Plain, Bay Village, Back Bay, Charlestown, Fenway, Brighton, and Downtown.

21. They range from a small garden-level condo unit on Beacon Hill to studio units in professionally managed buildings in the Financial District or multi-million-dollar brownstones in Back Bay. The second home purchasing prices range from $303,567 to just over $2 million—over half fall under $600,000 and six are over $800,000, adjusted for 2017 inflation.

22. Though 6 specters out of 17 rent out their second home properties using Airbnb or VRBO, all except one cited using their home for vacation or leisure use and maintain an orientation to the city and their second home similar to that of the remaining specters—that is, profit is not the primary factor for their second home purchase, and even those for whom profit was at least in part motivating their second home purchase still preferred already gentrified neighborhoods for their immediate access to the city’s high cultural amenities.

23. Other second homeowners similarly began searches in gentrifying parts of the city but ultimately opted for more established neighborhoods; some looked at Fort Point or the Leather District but wound up in Back Bay or the Financial District.

24. Two in my sample who purchased homes in the South End cited the neighborhood’s reputation for being diverse as one of many factors. In Sylvie Tissot’s (2014) study of the South End, she finds that though gentrifiers do often cite diversity as a driving mechanism for living in the South End, it is linked to their abilities to control it.

25. East Boston, South Boston, and parts of Dorchester and Roxbury, for instance (Conti, 2016; Haigney, 2016; Teitell, 2016).

26. This type of cultural consumption is distinct from the cultural consumption practices of gentrifiers, who seek authenticity through oldtimers’ institutions and neighborhoods (Brown-Saracino, 2007, 2010); older industrial spaces, bohemia, and artist enclaves (Deener, 2007; Lloyd, 2006; Zukin, 1989); and minority neighborhoods (Hyra, 2017; Pattillo, 2007). Specters avoid these very spaces of consumption for the pursuit of high cultural amenities.

27. The rose beds are an important historic cultural destination in Boston, which relies on volunteers from the Friends of the Public Garden to work in conjunction with the city’s department of Parks and Recreation to maintain the gardens (Friends of the Public Garden, 2018)

28. There were two in the sample who cited attendance at neighborhood events. However, the events they attended were exclusively culturally, not civically, oriented (e.g., neighborhood wine tastings and cocktail hours).

29. Like David Grazian’s “daytime self” and “nocturnal self,” or the “special kind of presentation of self, associated with consuming urban nightlife,” some use their second homes as a way to confirm and reify their “city selves” (Grazian, 2003, p. 63). They are interested in how their second home can fulfill a particular type of urban fantasy firmly rooted in prestige and high cultural distinction and express this through their consumption patterns.

30. For an analysis of the power of nostalgia in shaping how people interpret, frame, and use space, see (Milligan (2003) and Ocejo (2014).

31. This singular vision of Boston life mirrors Chevalier et al.’s (2012) finding that foreign pied-à-terre owners in Paris seek out a particular kind of Paris; a Paris rooted in its historic sites and archetypical locales—an authentic, real Paris and “Parisianity.”

32. Of course, seeking prestige and avoiding minority neighborhoods are two sides of the same coin for specters.

33. Data are missing for three participants. All data come from Suffolk County registry of deeds. This number does obscure the variation in specters: the minimum purchase price was just over $200,000 for a studio unit in Fenway, and the maximum is a Back Bay townhouse that sold for over $2 million, not adjusted for inflation (Suffolk County Registry of Deeds, 2018).

34. Paris has considered increasing the property tax rate five times for second home properties to deter unused properties and make the city more affordable for permanent residents (O’Sullivan, 2016), and Barcelona is beginning to crack down on multiple property owners on Airbnb (Burgen, 2017).

35. Though the census designates “for seasonal recreational or occasional use,” it does not aggregate the data at the individual level and thus researchers cannot parse who second homeowners are (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010).

Additional information

Funding

The author thanks Boston University’s Initiative on Cities and Boston University’s Department of Sociology Morris Fund for research support.

Notes on contributors

Meaghan Stiman

Meaghan Stiman is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the College of William & Mary. Meaghan received her PhD from the Department of Sociology at Boston University in 2017. Her research interests include community and urban sociology, culture, ethnography, and inequality. Drawing on a comparative case study of Rangeley, Maine, and Boston, Massachusetts, Meaghan’s current project explores how the social, cultural, economic, and environmental practices of second homeowners—a growing group of affluent in-migrants—come to shape the contours of everyday local life amid large-scale social and economic restructuring of both urban and rural areas.