Massachusetts did not just pass a law forcing you to sell your triple-decker to your tenants. I want to start there, because that is roughly the version of the news that reached me this week from owners of two and three-family buildings around Boston, and it is wrong on three counts.
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One, it is not law. It passed one branch of the Legislature. Two, even if it becomes law, it is not a statewide mandate. It is a local option, and your own city or town has to choose to adopt it. Three, even in a city that adopts it, the bill as written exempts most small owners outright. So before anyone panics or lists in a hurry, let me walk through what the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act actually is, what the House did with it on July 9, and what it means specifically if you own a tenanted multifamily in a place like Somerville, Dorchester, or Quincy.
What the House actually passed on July 9
On July 9, 2026, the Massachusetts House passed a $561 million economic development bill by a vote of 148 to 2. That bill started around $425 million and grew as members loaded it with earmarks and policy amendments. TOPA was not a standalone vote that anyone campaigned on that day. It rode in as one piece of a bundle of member priorities that the House folded into a handful of mega-amendments and adopted with very little floor debate.
That is worth sitting with for a second. This is a catch-all spending bill that also legalized betting terminals for historical horse racing and set aside $200 million in bridge funding for universities. A tenant right-to-purchase policy that has been fought over for years got adopted inside it, quietly, as part of a package. That is a big reason the coverage has been thin on the details that actually matter to a seller.
Here is the substance. The version the House adopted is a local-option TOPA, often called a tenant right of first refusal. An owner of a covered multifamily building would have to notify the tenants and the municipality when they decide to sell. The tenants would get the right to make the first offer. In a city or town that opts in, the tenants could also match a bona-fide third-party offer, and then get a defined window to do their diligence, line up financing, and close. It is an enabling act. It does not cap your price, sales stay at market rate, and the state describes it as revenue-neutral.
The local option is the whole ballgame
This is the part I keep repeating to clients, because it is the difference between a real concern and a non-event. TOPA is not something Massachusetts turns on for everyone. It is a switch that each city and town gets to flip for itself.
Right now, before this bill, a city that wants a tenant right of first refusal has to file a home-rule petition and get the State House to sign off, one municipality at a time. That process is slow, and it is why the local efforts have mostly stalled. Somerville’s City Council passed a TOPA home-rule petition back in December 2019, and it has been sitting on Beacon Hill ever since. Boston, Brookline, Concord, Provincetown, and Nantucket have all filed their own versions over the years.
The enabling act flips that dynamic. If it becomes law, any municipality could adopt TOPA by local ordinance without a separate trip to the State House for permission. So the real question was never “did Massachusetts pass TOPA.” It is “will my city adopt it.” The likely first movers are exactly the places that already tried the home-rule route. Boston and Somerville sit at the top of that list. I would not assume Cambridge is automatic, for what it is worth, because it has both explored a right of first refusal and voted a version of it down in the past. The point is that the map is going to be a patchwork, and your address decides which square you land in.
Does TOPA even reach your building? Read the exemptions first
Before any triple-decker owner loses a night of sleep, read the carve-outs, because they are large and they get skipped in almost every headline. The model bill this is built on, filed as S.998 and H.1544, exempts owners of nine or fewer units in a municipality, and it exempts sales to family members. Earlier drafts also carved out owner-occupied buildings. The whole design, per the sponsors’ own fact sheet, is to leave small landlords out.
Run that against a real building. Own one triple-decker in Dorchester? That is three units. You are under the line, so you are exempt. Own a pair of two-families in Quincy? Six units, still exempt. You do not bump into the threshold until you are holding roughly ten or more units inside a single city. The owner-occupant of one Somerville three-decker, the exact person the scary headline seems aimed at, is very likely carved out entirely.
| Your situation | Under the model bill |
|---|---|
| You own 9 or fewer units in the city | Likely exempt |
| You live in the building you are selling | Likely exempt |
| You are selling to a family member | Exempt |
| You hold 10+ units in a city that opts in | Potentially covered |
| Larger tenanted multifamily, no owner on site, in an opt-in city | Potentially covered |
Based on the standing model bill (S.998 / H.1544). One honest caveat: the version the House folded into the economic development bill came in as part of a mega-amendment, and its exact statutory text is not fully public yet, so the final exemption line could move. Every version of this bill for years has protected small owners.
What changes if you are covered: a party and a clock
For the owners who are above the exemption line, the multi-building investors and the larger tenanted portfolios, here is the real change. Your sale gains a new party and a new clock. You are no longer just marketing to the open market and picking the best offer. The tenants get a seat at the front of the line, and the calendar stretches to give them time to use it.
The tenants cannot do this casually. They have to organize into an association representing at least 51 percent of the occupied units, and they can only assign the right to a nonprofit, a co-op, a community development corporation, or a land trust. They cannot flip it to a private developer for cash. Details on that mechanism come from the sponsors and from opponents like MassLandlords, who track the drafts closely.
The practical effect is time. A financed multifamily sale in Greater Boston normally runs 30 to 45 days from accepted offer to closing. A covered TOPA sale can add a notice period, a first-offer window, and, if the tenants act, a months-long financing window on top. Most of the time tenants will not be able to pull together the money, and the sale proceeds close to normal. The cost is the uncertainty, and the fact that your buyer has to be willing to wait out the clock.
The Washington DC cautionary tale, and why the Massachusetts version is narrower
Whenever this bill comes up, opponents point straight at Washington DC, which has had a version of TOPA since 1980. The DC track record is genuinely rough. Critics say the process can stretch a sale to as long as 420 days, that any single tenant can allege the owner did not follow the rules and hold up a closing, and that title insurers get nervous about the exposure. One brokerage director said buyers “automatically crossed out DC” because they could not control their exit. DC eventually had to pass a 2025 reform to stop tenants from selling their rights to developers and to exempt newer buildings.
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Here is the fair part, and I think you have to say it if you are being straight. The Massachusetts bill was drafted to avoid DC’s worst features. It exempts small owners, where DC’s law reaches almost everything down to single-families. It keeps sales at market rate. And the tenant right can only go to a mission-driven buyer, not get flipped to a private developer for cash, which is the loophole that turned DC’s law into a cottage industry. Whether those guardrails actually hold the line against delay in practice is the open question, and it is a legitimate one. That is the real debate. It is not the cartoon version where either nothing changes or nobody can ever sell again.
Who is fighting over this, and why it keeps coming back
The Greater Boston Real Estate Board is against it, and their argument is process risk. A tenant right of first refusal, in their words, “would cause serious delays and impediments to the normal conveyancing process,” and they argue it works against fixing the housing shortage by making rental housing harder to finance and operate. GBREB has put real money behind that position, reporting close to $230,000 in lobbying in 2023.
On the other side, groups like topa4ma.org, the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, and Fenway Forward argue that TOPA preserves naturally occurring affordable housing, stops displacement when a building trades, and gives long-term renters a real path to ownership and to building wealth. The triple-decker is exactly the housing they are trying to protect. The Lincoln Institute has called Boston’s triple-deckers “next-level affordable housing”, and when one of those buildings sells to an out-of-town investor, the rents usually do not go down.
History is the tell here. This is not the bill’s first life. Governor Baker vetoed a version in 2021 when the session ran out of clock. The House put TOPA into its 2024 housing bond bill, and it got stripped in final negotiations. It has been cut twice, and it has resurfaced again. That pattern is exactly why I am telling clients to pay attention without overreacting. The policy is persistent, but it is also far from a sure thing.
Where this actually lands in Greater Boston
To understand who this reaches, you have to understand the housing stock. Greater Boston runs on the triple-decker. There are roughly 15,000 of them across the Boston area, most built between 1880 and 1930, and Dorchester has more than any other neighborhood in the city. These two-to-four unit buildings are the on-ramp for small investors and the backbone of the local rental market. Somerville made three-unit buildings legal as of right citywide in 2024. Quincy’s older two and three-families make up a big share of its rentals. This is the stock the policy is built around.
So let me be specific about who should actually pay attention. It is not the owner-occupant of a single three-decker. It is the investor holding several tenanted buildings inside one city that adopts TOPA, and the owner of larger non-owner-occupied multifamily. If that is you, and your city is a likely adopter, this is a real change to how you would run a sale, and it belongs in your planning now. If you want the broader context on how these buildings pencil out, I keep a running guide to investing in multifamily in Massachusetts that walks through the numbers.
Thinking about selling a tenanted two to four family this fall
If you are weighing a sale later this year, the policy is not a reason to rush and it is not a reason to freeze. It is a reason to get specific about your own building. Three moves make sense right now.
And keep an eye on the fork in the road. The bill still has to clear the Senate, and lawmakers have until July 31 to either pass major legislation or send it to a six-person conference committee. It could pass, it could get stripped again the way it did in 2024, or it could stall out. Nothing is adopted in any city yet. This is the moment to get informed, not the moment to react.
The bottom line
Three questions decide whether TOPA is ever your problem. Is my city likely to adopt it? Does my building clear the exemptions? Am I selling before or after any local adoption? If the honest answer to the first two is “probably not,” then this is a headline, not a change to your plan.
I am not in the camp that thinks this ends small-multifamily investing in Boston, and I am not in the camp that pretends it is nothing. It is a real process change for a specific slice of owners in a specific set of cities, and it is not law anywhere yet. The mistake I would hate to see you make is reacting to a statewide headline when the thing that actually governs your sale is your own address and your own unit count.
If you own a two-to-four family in Greater Boston and you are trying to figure out how this bill touches your specific building and your specific town, reach out. We will pressure-test the timing against your real numbers before you make a move. You can find me and the BMN Boston team at Douglas Elliman, and my direct line is 617-955-2224.
Sources
- WBUR: Mass. House passes $561M catch-all bill (July 9, 2026)
- State House News: Tenant purchase policy resurfaces in House eco-dev bill
- Banker & Tradesman: Tenant Right to Purchase Resurfaces in House Economic Bill
- Worcester Business Journal: Proposal giving tenants first right of refusal resurfaces in House
- TOPA4MA: What is TOPA?
- MACDC: TOPA fact sheet for S.998 & H.1544
- Massachusetts Legislature: Bill H.1544
- MassLandlords: Tenant Right of First Refusal (opposition analysis)
- Bisnow: How TOPA has affected DC’s multifamily sales market
- Lincoln Institute: Boston’s Beloved Triple-Deckers Are Next-Level Affordable Housing
- Three-decker (house): background on Greater Boston’s triple-decker stock
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