They will get people to buy these homes. It's asinine but they will sell.

There was a home for sale in Wakefield a couple of years ago that had <1 acre lot. Some construction company bought the house, tore it down and built not one but two large houses on that lot. I should say squeezed two houses in. They are right on top of each other. They are located very close to the highway, on a very busy street with commercial trucks going down regularly. They both sold for over 1 million each. When they were listed, I laughed at the price as who would spend that money to live on a constantly busy street, no front yard, no privacy, but it sold. The neighborhood is made up of older 3 bed homes that are at least half the size of them.

Massachusetts is going to look like Silicon Valley in the years to come. People are going to priced out very soon and cities and towns are doing nothing to prevent this. All they see is the almighty dollar sign. The greed and gluttony has no bounds and families that have raised children for generations are finding it difficult to impossible to stay.

So what you are seeing is the changing from working class family suburbs to multimillion homes. Take pictures because it won't be here for long

They will sell but they will likely take longer to sell than cheaper houses so they will be disproportionately represented on Zillow. Affordable homes sell quickly if there is nothing wrong with them.

Imho this is about creating new or transformed properties in a town that is not getting any larger, so as to get more profitable results for the builder/developer. The goal is to attract people in that market moving to the region and to dissuade them from equivalently priced properties in Newton or equivalent north/south shore places.

There is a steady stream of people looking to move to one of the ‘W’ and ‘N’ towns around Boston. They may not go as fast or receive as many offers but they will sell. These towns saw almost no decline in prices after 2008 and have only slowed down in hyper ncreases in recent months due to signs of inflation and recession.

Your last sentence implies that the balance of money, pre-COVID, was in the city. Sure, there has always been plenty of money in Boston but the suburbs haven't been hurting and I would argue the aggregate of the suburbs always trounced the city. Weston. Lincoln. Dover. Wellesley (as you were eyeing), Lexington, Concord, etc. Not to mention the ocean communities both south & north of the city (Cohasset, Situate, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Marblehead, etc) always had plenty of pricey homes.

Are they making the move to suburban towns or making the move out of the state to avoid the new taxes?

Your error is assuming that people are buying those properties with W-2 money. We had a decade+ of stock market run-up and lots of people getting wealthy from corporate stock plans.

The $5 million plus home market sells to business executives, pro athletes, lawyers, and senior bankers.

Their earnings have never been higher than they are now. Regardless of what happens in the economy, their incomes will be even higher next year, and the year after that.

Wellesley will be just fine.

If there was a glut of $2 million new construction homes in Dedham or Walpole, those might see some softness.

But Weston and Wellesley are two of the most exclusive towns in America, and there is no shortage of massively wealthy people to buy those homes.