Friday, February 5, 2016

Open secret: Developers make money in Cambridge, lots of it

While reviewing tax data in Cambridge, I came across this stunning realization: large landholders make money in Cambridge. Lots of it.

From 2010 to 2014, the top 10 tax payers in Cambridge, MA added $1.4 billion in assessed value to the city's tax rolls. That's a 31 percent increase in just four years, by any measure, a striking amount of wealth in a city as small as the 6.2 square miles of Cambridge.

Here are the numbers, from the city's data: