Look Up One: Frame or Masonry
The assessor's record carries the construction type, and this is the single largest determinant of what a fire left you.
Wood frame — the triple-deckers, the three-families, most of the outer neighbourhoods — rarely leaves a usable shell once fire reaches the framing. Brick, brownstone and stone frequently do, and a sound shell removes both the demolition and most of the structural rebuild.
Frame construction dominates in the triple-decker belt and the dense waterfront neighbourhoods. Masonry and frame sit side by side in the mixed brick and frame belt, which is why offers there vary more than anywhere.
Look Up Two: The Year It Was Built
Same record, and it answers a question with a timeline attached. Article 85 demolition review applies to every Boston building 50 years or older, and to everything in Downtown or Harborpark regardless of age.
Below that threshold, a demolition permit is an ordinary application. At or above it, the Landmarks Commission gets 10 calendar days to decide whether the building is significant, and a significance finding brings a community meeting, a hearing and up to 90 days.
Significance findings are most common on the older and more architecturally distinctive stock, covered under the Victorian and larger frame belt and the oldest mixed stock in the city.
Look Up Three: How Many Units
This one changes the value rather than the process, and it is where Boston differs most from the single-family markets.
Three dwellings on one lot produce a finished value a single house on the same footprint cannot approach. That is what makes a full rebuild viable on land that would not otherwise support it, and it is why a multi-family investor pricing rental income over a long hold frequently outbids somebody pricing a resale.
Unit count also determines whether the smoke certificate requirement under section 26F applies — it reaches buildings of one to five dwelling units — and how many tenancies survived the fire.
Detached and semi-detached single-family housing, where none of the multi-unit arithmetic applies and clearance is genuinely straightforward, is covered under the outer detached belt.
What Does Not Vary
Inspectional Services permits every address in the city. Article 85 applies citywide on the age threshold rather than by neighbourhood. The smoke and carbon monoxide certificates are a statewide seller obligation. The deeds excise is the same everywhere.
So a page that told you the rules were different in your neighbourhood would be wrong. What is different is your building, which is why this page is a list of things to look up rather than a list of places.
Areas We Cover
- BostonArticle 85, the fire department certificate, triple-decker economics
- DorchesterThree-family wood frame, and why three units change the maths
- East BostonBuildings close enough that fire reaches the neighbours
- South BostonBrick and frame side by side, producing opposite answers
- Jamaica PlainVictorians and larger frame houses, significance findings likely
- RoxburyThe oldest mixed stock, where the review question comes first
- Hyde ParkDetached and semi-detached, where clearance is ordinary
If Your Neighbourhood Is Not Listed
We buy across the city. These pages exist where we hold enough detail to say something specific; the three questions above apply to your building wherever it stands.
Send the address and we will look all three up and tell you what they say. The statewide layer is set out once on our page covering Massachusetts certificates, claims and excise.