This issue started with spite. I fell into a rabbit hole about New England’s spite houses, actual buildings constructed specifically to antagonize a neighbor, and once I started, I could not stop. There are three of them within an hour of here, all still standing. We also have a real look at Newburyport this week, and a market update you should actually read before your next conversation with a buyer about rates.
Quirky Facts You Want to Know {#quirky-facts}
In 1874, a man came home from the Civil War to find his brother had built a large house on their shared inheritance, leaving him a 10.4-foot-wide sliver of land on Hull Street in Boston’s North End. His response was to build a four-story house on it anyway, oriented specifically to block his brother’s light and view. It still stands at 44 Hull Street. You have probably walked past it.
That house is one of three spite houses still standing within an hour of here. The oldest is the Old Spite House in Marblehead, built in 1716 by a sailmaker named Thomas Wood. Ten feet wide, reportedly constructed to block a neighbor’s view after a disputed inheritance. Still occupied today. Then there is the O’Reilly Spite House in Cambridge, built in 1908: 308 square feet total, 37 feet long and 8 feet wide, put up after a neighbor refused to sell Francis O’Reilly a strip of adjacent land. He built the narrowest legal structure he could get away with instead. As of 2009 it still housed a business.
New England turns out to be excellent at architectural grudges. The combination of colonial-era land disputes, stubborn individualism, and property laws that respected ownership over neighborly relations produced a handful of narrow, strange, deeply personal buildings that outlasted the original feuds by a century or more.
Town of the Week: Newburyport, MA {#town-of-the-week}
Newburyport has a reputation problem. People hear “waterfront, brick sidewalks, Federal architecture” and assume it is either out of reach or a tourist town that nobody actually lives in. Both assumptions are wrong.
The median home price is around $875K. That is real money. What you get for it is a genuinely walkable downtown, commuter rail to Boston’s North Station in about 60-70 minutes, and the kind of Saturday morning where you pick up coffee at Olive’s Coffee and Bakehouse (four consecutive “Best Coffee” awards from the local Daily News), grab something from Middle Street Foods, which has been a local staple since 1983, and are still at Maudslay State Park before the tourists have found parking.
Maudslay has 16 miles of trails through a former estate, one of the largest naturally occurring stands of mountain laurel in Massachusetts, and summer concerts at the Arts Center that locals attend with blankets and wine. If you want water instead, Plum Island is ten minutes in the other direction. The Parker River National Wildlife Refuge runs the length of the island. The birding is legitimately extraordinary in spring, bald eagles in winter, piping plovers returning in April. The beach itself is a proper Atlantic beach, no chairs for rent, no resort energy.
The commute works best for people with some schedule flexibility. The MBTA Newburyport/Rockport Line runs to North Station, and it is one of the longer rides on the North Shore. The housing stock is mostly Federal-period single-family homes in the historic district, newer construction near Route 95, and a condo market that can be volatile quarter to quarter. The historic district has exterior modification restrictions, which matters if you plan to renovate.
It is not a hidden gem. Everyone has found Newburyport. But the people who write it off based on the price tag alone tend to be the ones who eventually move there anyway.
Read more about what it is actually like to live in Newburyport.
New England Market Pulse {#market-pulse}
Rates are back up. After a gradual decline in late 2025, mortgage rates in Massachusetts jumped in March 2026, driven by global instability and rising oil prices. The 30-year fixed is running between 6.25% and 6.46% as of mid-April. If you have a buyer who got pre-approved in January, their purchasing power has shifted. Worth a five-minute call to their lender before anything goes under contract. (Boston.com, April 2026)
Spring inventory is growing, but buyers are hesitating. MAR’s March 2026 data shows new single-family listings up 1% year over year, with condo new listings up 17.2%. Closed sales dropped 2.2% for single-family homes and 1.3% for condos. More homes are coming to market. Fewer are closing. A seller who prices for today sells. A seller who prices for 2024 sits. (MAR March 2026, via Boston Agent Magazine)
Prices are holding. The statewide single-family median sale price rose 4.4% year over year in March 2026. Total active listings in Massachusetts are around 10,600, about 6% more than a year ago, but that is still roughly a two-month supply. Balanced is four to six months. This is not a buyer’s market yet. (Redfin Massachusetts Housing Market)
Full market data breakdown for North Shore MA, Southern NH, and Middlesex County.
Real estate conversations happen at dinner tables, not just open houses. If someone you know is in that conversation right now, I would be grateful for the introduction.
Tara Donahue-Scott TDS Real Estate | Keller Williams tarad@kw.com | tarashomes.com