Local Protections for Tenants Facing Condo Conversion
Notas finales
The state condo law allows towns and cities to adopt, by a 2/3rd vote of their local legislative bodies, local ordinances or bylaws regulating condominium conversion that are stronger than, or which otherwise differ from, the statewide law.26 To get a copy of your local ordinance or bylaw, contact your city or town hall. What follows are brief descriptions of each of the local condo ordinances in Massachusetts.27
26. Chapter 527 of the Acts of 1983, Section 2 (approved November 30, 1983). Even if local legislation is adopted, certain of the statewide baseline protections cannot be altered. Thus, a city or town cannot extend protections to properties not covered by the statewide law, and additional protections for certain classes of properties—housing accommodations converted from non-housing to housing uses after November 30, 1983, or which were constructed or substantially rehabilitated pursuant to any federal mortgage insurance program, without any interest subsidy or tenant subsidy attached thereto, or financed through the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, with an interest subsidy attached thereto—are prohibited. Chapter 527 of the Acts of 1983, Section 2 (approved November 30, 1983)
27. Cambridge formerly had local condominium conversion laws that were based on special rent control authority. When rent control was phased out in 1994-1996, Cambridge no longer had any basis for these protections. Cambridge has not yet adopted a local condo ordinance under the authority of the statewide condo law. Although an attempt was made in 2001 to pass a local ordinance, it did not obtain the necessary 2/3rds vote of the Cambridge City Council. Therefore, condo conversion protections in Cambridge are the same as those under the statewide law. Haverhill also had a condominium conversion ordinance in the past. Haverhill, Mass., Ordinances, c. 255 § 255 99A (2016). The condominium conversion permit system that had been established in 1985, however, was left out of the Haverhill Zoning ordinance (Chapter 255) when that law was overhauled in 2020. Similarly, Malden had eviction protections for tenants facing condominium conversion and has strong rules presuming that a conversion was taking place when certain conditions were met. Malden, Mass., Rev. Ordinances, c. 3 § 3.11 (2016). However, those protections are no longer included in Malden’s Municipal Code.
28. See Chapter 35, Article 3 of the General Bylaws of Abington. The Abington bylaw extends to buildings with three or more units; coverage of 3-unit buildings may exceed the enabling authority granted by the state condo law. Chapter 35, Article 4 of the General Bylaws of Abington.
29. See Chapter 128 of the Acts of 1981 (approved May 8, 1981), as amended by Chapter 548 of the Acts of 1987 (approved December 8, 1987).
30. Authorities on Massachusetts condominium laws have come to the same conclusion. See Brown & Keenan, Massachusetts Condominium Law, §9.04-H (2nd ed. 1996) (Somerville and Acton condo conversion enabling laws probably survived abolition of rent control).
31. Adopted at Amherst Town Meeting on March 29, 1984, as Article 1. Amherst, General Bylaws, Art. IV, Condominium and Cooperative Conversion, §§1-7.
32. See Chapter 797 of the Acts of 1969 (approved August 24, 1969); Chapter 863 of the Acts of 1970.
33. In 1985, Boston attempted to establish a removal permit system. The Supreme Judicial Court found that this system was not authorized by the city's rent control enabling law as it would provide protections which were not related to tenant displacement. See Greater Boston Real Estate Board v. City of Boston ("GBREB I"), 397 Mass. 870 (1986). Boston subsequently obtained additional home rule authority allowing it to regulate the conversion of apartments to condominiums. See Chapter 45 of the Acts of 1987 (approved May 6, 1987).
34. G.L. c. 40P, often referred to as "Question 9," which was the number of the ballot initiative in 1994; see also Ash v. Attorney General, 418 Mass. 344 (1994) (finding that abolition of rent control in more than one community was a subject that could be put to statewide initiative); Massachusetts v. Tobias, 419 Mass. 665 (1995) (refusing to invalidate referendum results despite balloting problems).
35. Chapter 282 of the Acts of 1994 (approved January 4, 1995).
36. Both G.L. c. 40P and Chapter 282 of the Acts of 1994 (approved January 4, 1995) provided that condominium conversion protections authorized by Chapter 527 of the Acts of 1983 (approved November 30, 1983) were not barred by their general prohibitions on rent control and other tenant protections, so long as they were not part of a rent control scheme (i.e., laws that required below-market rents). Similarly, the Boston Housing Court found that Boston might be able to provide protections under Chapter 527 of the Acts of 1983 (approved November 30, 1983), as rent control protections ended. See Greater Boston Real Estate Board v. Boston Rent Equity Board, Boston Housing Court, 95-CV-00475 (Daher, C.J., June 26, 1995). “Moreover, the City and the Rent Board retain their authority to continue to regulate condominium conversions. The Rent Board derives such authority from St. 1983, c. 527, which statute expressly is excluded from the definition of ‘rent control’ in [c. 282]… . the City derived its authority, should it become necessary, from that Act as well as from the City’s original enabling statute. The provisions of [c. 282] that limit the powers of cities and towns to impose or enforce ‘rent control’ to ‘covered units’ and for prescribed periods of time do not apply to condominium conversions authorized under c. 527.…”
37. In Greater Boston Real Estate Board v. City of Boston, Boston Housing Court, 96-CV-0087 (Daher, C.J., Feb. 1, 1996), the Housing Court indicated that an ordinance adopted by the city in late 1995 (Chapter 9 of the Ordinances of 1995 of the City of Boston) might be invalidated on vagueness grounds. The City then withdrew that ordinance and adopted another in the spring of 1996 (Chapter 3 of the Ordinances of 1996 of the City of Boston). This ordinance was invalidated by the Housing Court (see Greater Boston Real Estate Board v. City of Boston, Boston Housing Court, 96-CV-00752 (Daher, C.J., Nov., 22, 1996)), and subsequently by the Supreme Judicial Court, because it extended protections to tenants who had moved into condominium units after they had been converted. This was found to be beyond the authority granted by Chapter 527 of the Acts of 1983 (approved November 30, 1983). The Supreme Judicial Court found that the remaining provisions of the ordinance could not be severed. See Greater Boston Real Estate Board v. City of Boston ("GBREB II"), 428 Mass. 797 (1999).
38. See Chapter 8 of the Ordinances of 1999 of the City of Boston, as extended and revised by Chapter 12 of the Ordinances of 2004, Chapter 9 of the Ordinances of 2009, Chapter 16 of the Ordinances of 2014, and Chapter 3 of the Ordinances of 2021 (current version at . Municipal Code c. X, §10-2.10 (2006).
39. If an owner converted the property between the end of rent control and November 1999 and gave proper notice to the tenants under the statewide law, the notice period might be limited to the statewide period, but only if the owner filed papers saying this with Boston's Rental Housing Resource Center by January, 2000. See Municipal Code, c. X, § 10-2.13.B (1999).
40. Relocation benefits were increased in An Ordinance Extending and Enhancing Protections for Tenants Facing Displacement by Condominium or Cooperative Conversion, Ordinances 2021 - Chapter 3 (Adopted by the Boston City Council, March 3, 2021 and approved by the Mayor, March 8, 2021).
41. The 2014 amendment to Boston’s condo ordinance changed the designation from the Rental Housing Resource Center to the Rental Housing Center. In 2021 this responsibility was shifted to the City’s Office of Housing Stability.
42. See Chapter 601 of the Acts of 1981 (effective November 27, 1981).
43. See Article XXXIX and XXXIX-A of the Bylaws of the Town of Brookline, Conversion of Multifamily Rental Housing and Condominium Conversion Protection for Non-Controlled Tenants (1986).
44. See Chapter 282 of the Acts of 1994, Section 3 (approved January 4, 1995), which defined, as part of rent control, "the conversion of such housing accommodations to the condominium or cooperative form of ownership," and specifically included Chapter 601 of the Acts of 1981 (approved November 27, 1981) as part of the regulatory scheme being eliminated. On the other hand, the non-rent-controlled conversion permit system would not appear to have been barred by G.L. c. 40P.
45. See Brookline, Mass., General Bylaws §5.2 (2020).
46. Lexington, Mass., Code c. 63 (2015) (adopted May 13, 1987, and approved by the Attorney General, August 17, 1987). This was amended in 2019 to allow the Select Board itself to serve as the Condominium Conversion Board which they were doing as of November 1, 2024.
47. See Chapter 270 of the Code of the City of Marlborough, Article IV (formerly Chapter 63, §§132-134 and 136-140, including §127A as added in July 2005, of the Code of the City of Marlborough).
48. See New Bedford, Mass., Code of Ordinances, c. 13, §13-5 (2016) (enacted by Ordinances of Jan. 14, 1988, §1).
49. Newburyport, Mass., Code of Ordinances, c. 5, Art. VIII (2016).
50. See Chapter 847 of the Acts of 1974 (approved August 14, 1974). Special permits are usually required where housing development is denser than is usually permitted under local zoning laws. See G.L. c. 40A, §9; Middlesex & Boston St. Ry. Co. v. Board of Aldermen of Newton, 371 Mass. 849 (1977).
51. An Act relative to a condominium conversion ordinance in the city of Salem, Chapter 228 of the Acts of 2024 (approved on and effective as of November 8, 2024).
52. This legislation, Chapter 218 of the Acts of 1985 (approved July 31, 1985), was obtained through a home rule amendment and took the form of an amendment to Chapter 37 of the Acts of 1976 (approved March 31, 1976), which was a prior rent control enabling law for Somerville. However, the 1985 enabling act provided authority independent of rent control, which survived the abolition of rent control in 1994.
53. Somerville Ord. No. 2019-06 (March 2019) as amended by Somerville Ord. No. 2020-12, codified at Somerville Code of Ordinances, Part II, Chapter 7, Article IV (section 7-61 through 7-71). It was further amended on July 13, 2023 by Somerville Ordinance No. 2023-17 (which is not yet codified but available on the city’s website).
54. Bremis v. City of Somerville, Middlesex Superior Court No. 1981-CV-2114 (Sarrouf, J., July 26, 2022). Section 7-64(4)(1), paragraph 2 and Section 7-64(4)(b) (relating to the city or its designee’s right to purchase) were declared invalid and were removed by Ordinance 2023-17.
55. Section 7-64(a)(2)(B).
56. The definition of elderly (age 65 or older), disabled (physical or mental), and low-to-moderate income (at or below 80% of the area median income) are found in Section 7-63.
57. Section 7-64 (a)(2)(B)(I) [5 years] and (G) [two year extension].
58. Section 7-64(d). This does not apply where owner intends to transfer condo unit to certain relatives.
59. Section 7-64(e).