I recently attended an advocacy event at the State House in Boston. The subject matter? Crumbling concrete foundations in Massachusetts, caused by pyrrhotite. It’s not a glamorous topic, and most people have never heard of it, yet it’s financially devastating to every single one of the affected homeowners. Two people who spoke at the State House event called this a ‘natural disaster’ because it’s caused by a mineral in the concrete aggregate. I’ve made it a personal mission to enlighten at least one person every day on the realities of crumbling foundations in Massachusetts. It truly is a natural disaster.
If you need to get up to speed, here’s a story I wrote in September 2024 that I called Pyrrhotite: The Scariest Word in Real Estate Right Now
If any of these questions come to mind for you, I encourage you to read my story and help be an advocate for change.
What is Pyrrhotite anyway?
The answer there is that pyrrhotite is a natural occurring mineral in concrete foundations, which reacts with oxygen and water, causing cracking and deterioration with a long term consequence of structural issues.
Why should I care? I don’t know anyone who has the problem, so why should I pay attention? I have homeowners insurance, that would cover it, right? Can’t the state do something about it? Are there other states with this problem that we could model our response from? I have so many questions!
I don’t want to pretend, or attempt, to be the smartest guy in the room about pyrrhotite, the natural villain behind crumbling foundations in Massachusetts. I just want to use my reach to educate people that they need to start paying attention and putting pressure on their legislators.
The good, yet very bad, news is that the problem is getting closer to Boston than just a cluster of towns in the western part of Massachusetts along the Connecticut border. In July 2024, it was published that the Winding Brook condominium complex in Dracut, a development with 260 condos, has tested 100% positive for pyrrhotite in the concrete foundations. Here’s a news story with video about that complex.
At this point, I visualize the Massachusetts crumbling foundations problem to be some kind of opposite day lottery. It might only happen to one or two homes in your town, but it could be yours. If you go down into your basement, which I suspect most of my attentive readers will, and you see the tell-tale cracking, your reaction, like many, might be to put your head in the sand, or assume that your homeowners insurance will help with that. Head in the sand = bad idea, since the problem will only continue to worsen. If you do have the problem and if you don’t happen to have $200K+ sitting around with nothing to do, a home equity loan won’t help, because your home no longer has the value it did when it had a foundation that wasn’t crumbling. Your insurance company? Another no. Not covered, and in a recent policy declarations page on my own homeowners insurance, I saw now that any mold, mildew or fungi caused by a non-covered event (foundations are not covered) are also not covered.
I’ve been following this for a while now, and having gone to the State House in April 2025 to sit in the audience in support of these homeowners, I’ve decided that one way I can help is to raise awareness. Crumbling foundations in MA is truly a natural disaster.
This crisis has hit 43 towns in MA to date (that we know of). The map below shows a wide swath of affected towns through Central MA, all the way from the NH border to the CT border. I just heard that Paxton will be added to the map, leaving only Princeton with no crumbling foundations yet identified in an entire north-to-south swath of Central Massachusetts. Eventually it will hit some fancier towns closer to Boston and then those legislators will wake up.
As a realtor, I’ve seen some foundations with obvious significant cracking, and they tend to call themselves out, prompting buyer questions and concern, so they are easy enough for attentive buyers to know to steer clear of. However, not all foundation cracks are pyrrhotite. It has a specific look to it. Another part of the problem altogether is that there are foundations that look fine now, but it could take 20 or 30 years from the year of construction to show itself. I believe the oldest foundation found to be affected by pyrrhotite to date is from 1983.
The first step is a visual inspection but if the tell-tale cracks are not showing, a homeowner could get a core test. It costs a few thousand dollars and I think the reality is if a homeowner doesn’t see any visual evidence, then they aren’t likely to spend the money to test, and would prefer to assume they don’t have the problem. There is a partial reimbursement program in Massachusetts for testing costs if done by the sellers, but again if there is nothing to see, I can’t imagine a seller willing to test and risk proving that their home is practically worthless.
As far as home buyers go, they could plan to test as part of their inspection but the inspection period is typically 10 days, where the foundation core testing takes weeks to get results. In this market, if a buyer offered on a house and asked for a 5 week home inspection period, the seller would tell them to get lost.
My hope is that Massachusetts will adopt the Connecticut model for dealing with this, but for a couple years now many MA legislators have voted against any significant interventions, or really any at all. Here’s a FEMA reference source:
FEMA: Connecticut’s Crumbling Concrete
If I was talking with a potential seller who had visible foundation cracking and they wanted me to hide it in any way, I would not work with those sellers. I’ve listed one house so far known to have the issue (in Winchendon), and it sold for about half-price and we disclosed the hell out of it. There is a concrete disclosure form that my office requires us to have sellers complete as to what they know about additions to the property and foundation inspections, but not all real estate offices require the form yet.
The potential of a crumbling foundation affects potential buyers, but most of the people I’ve encountered are on the other end of the problem–they’ve worked hard their whole lives, saved for retirement, and might want to downsize and sell their house, but can’t because no bank will finance a house with a known crumbling foundation. These homeowners are having to drain their retirement, borrow as a personal loan at very high rates, or are stuck in their homes with no way to pay for the project. Left uncorrected, these homes will eventually become unfixable.
Another way I think this issue will get attention is when enough homeowners in an affected town have requested tax abatements because their properties have a significantly reduced value–then the towns will be hurting due to loss of tax revenue needed to fund their municipal budgets.
Want to learn more and help raise awareness and affect change?
Visit the Massachusetts Residents Against Crumbling Foundations website as a first stop resource.
Follow Massachusetts Residents Against Crumbling Concrete Foundations on Facebook
Follow Foundation Solutions of New England on Facebook for videos of the process of removing and replacing a residential foundation.
Watch the short videos on the Foundation Solutions of New England page
Share the information on your own pages, and with your own personal sphere. Crumbling concrete foundations in Massachusetts need to be addressed at the state level!
FROM MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS AGAINST CRUMBLING FOUNDATIONS:
“Contact Governor Healey – email her Deputy Legislative Director Patrick Brown at Patrick.J.Brown@mass.gov – tell him you want the Governor to use her power of executive order to start the Crumbling Foundation Assistance Commission that would make recommendation to the legislature on how best to move a foundation replacement program forward and how to fund it. We need this commission to get it’s report to the legislature early in the next session so we don’t have yet another 2 year process waiting for a stand alone bill to be passed. 7 years is long enough to wait for something to be done about his crisis!”
CONTACT THE GOVERNOR AND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
EMAIL
CALL 617 725 4005
MAIL Governor Maura Healey’s Office of Constituent Services
Massachusetts State House, 24 Beacon St., Office of the Governor, Room 280, Boston, MA 02133
The video below is from 2024, so the legislation timing isn’t relevant. Unfortunately, in April 2025, the state senate rejected all except a modest testing reimbursement program.
H890/S580 An Act Relative to Crumbling Concrete Foundations.
This bill creates the Crumbling Concrete Assistance Fund to support homeowners with foundations damaged by pyrite or pyrrhotite. The fund will provide financial aid for repairs, and will mitigate municipal impact.A working group will be established to recommend funding models, provide agency oversight, and offer consumer protections by February 1, 2026.
Budget Asks
Amendment 76 – – Concrete Testing Reimbursement Program to assist homeowners in identifying this issue in their homes. Requesting $50,000Amendment 1310 – – Crumbling Foundations: adds an outside section to establish the fund and working group
Amendment 1330 – – Crumbling Concrete Assistance Fund: proposes creation of a new fund with $100 million requested.
APRIL 30, 2025: A post by Michelle Loglisci, founder of Massachusetts Residents Against Crumbling Concrete Foundations:
HOUSE FAILS TO PASS AMENDMENT 1310 – starting the process of determining the way forward for crumbling foundations in MA. We must have more people step up and demand this be done!
Amendment 1310, as Michelle noted above, was to establish a working group to begin to officially brainstorm and propose solutions. They didn’t even get that.
Here’s the FIND MY LEGISLATOR tool on the Mass.gov website.
