What kind of buildings Lynn renters live in

Of 18,892 ±938 renter households in Lynn, the largest single group — 24.7% (±3.9 points) — lives in a building the Census files under "3 or 4" units: the three-decker and the converted four-unit. Here is the full split by building size from the U.S. Census Bureau, citywide and by ZIP, with every margin of error printed — because in Massachusetts several renter-law exemptions are drawn by exactly this number.

Renter households by building size, citywide

The Census asks each household how many separate units the building it lives in contains. These are the renter-occupied rows of its table B25032 for Lynn, 2020–2024 ACS 5-year; the ± on each count is the Bureau's published margin of error, and the ± on each share is derived from the counts with the Bureau's formula for a proportion (see the methodology).

A row with a small count and a margin larger than the count (for example the mobile-home row) means the survey could not distinguish that number from zero; read it as "very few", not as the printed figure. The shares in this table are of renter households, not of buildings: a 50-unit building counts fifty times, a two-family once or twice.

The same figures in four bands

The law pages on this site turn on a handful of cut-offs — one or two units, four, five, six, twenty — so here are the Census rows grouped into the bands those pages use. Each band's count is the sum of the published rows above; its ± is the Bureau's approximation for a sum (the square root of the summed squared margins), which the Bureau itself calls an approximation that ignores how the rows move together. No band here sums more than four rows.

Two cumulative cuts the exemption rules ask about directly: 52.4% (±4.6 points) of Lynn renters — 9,906 ±1,004 households — live in a building of four or fewer units, the federal owner-occupied line; and 38.1% (±3.5 points) live in a building of ten or more. Neither figure says whether the owner lives in the building — the Census table does not ask — so the first is a ceiling on how many homes an owner-occupied exemption could reach, never a count of exempt homes.

By ZIP code

ZIP shares are rounded to whole percentage points and their ± figures run wider than the citywide ones — the smallest ZIP's margins can be as large as the shares themselves, so read the ZIP rows as rough proportions. ZIP figures use ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, which approximate but do not exactly match postal ZIP boundaries. Each ZIP's own page carries its renter share, rent and income figures.

Why building size matters for a Lynn renter

No rule below is new on this site — each is quoted on its own page. What this page adds is the denominator: how many renters each size-based line can actually reach.

Fair housing: the owner-occupied exemptions are drawn by building size

Massachusetts's owner-occupied exemption in c.151B §4(7) is written for a two-family where the owner lives in the other unit; the federal one, 42 U.S.C. §3603(b)(2), reaches buildings of up to four families with the owner in one. The table above says how many Lynn renters live in two-unit and in three-or-four-unit buildings — it does not say whether the owner lives downstairs — so those shares are a ceiling on how many homes either exemption could touch, not a count of exempt homes. Paragraph 6 of the state law (publicly assisted, three-or-more-family and contiguously located housing) has no owner-occupancy exemption at all. The fair-housing page quotes the text and the one rule even an exempt owner must obey.

Smoke and CO alarms: c.148 §26E sorts buildings by unit count

Chapter 148 §26E sets the smoke-detector rules for buildings of one to five units — one tier for one- and two-family dwellings, another with common-hallway detectors for three-to-five-unit buildings — and larger buildings fall under other sections of the chapter. Every renter in the single-family, 2-unit and 3-or-4-unit rows above lives inside §26E's reach; the Census 5-to-9 band straddles its five-unit line, so this page cannot say how many of those renters are on which side. The alarms page quotes the section, tier by tier.

Pests and bed bugs: two or more units puts elimination on the owner

Under the State Sanitary Code, 105 CMR 410.550(B), the owner of a residence with two or more dwelling units must keep it free from infestation and is responsible for pest elimination; in a residence with a single dwelling unit, 410.550(A) puts that duty on the occupant unless the building itself let the pests in. Read against the table: every renter outside the single-family rows is in a building where elimination is the owner's by code. The bed-bugs page has the clocks and the exception.

Snow, shared stairs and the exits you share

The sanitary code makes the owner clear every shared way out of the building at all times — the front steps of a three-decker, the back stairs, a fire escape — and lets a lease move only an exit nobody else uses, a shift that is common in single-family and owner-occupied two-family rentals. The single-family and 2-unit rows above are where that written shift is most likely to appear in a Lynn lease. The snow-and-ice page quotes 410.452.

Building age is the other dimension

This page sorts Lynn's rentals by size; the lead-paint rules sort them by age, and the same survey answers that too. The lead-paint page prints the share of renter-occupied homes built before 1980 — the closest Census cut to the 1978 federal ban — citywide and by ZIP. In Lynn that share is 76% of renter-occupied homes.

What this page does not say

• Whether the owner lives in the building. B25032 records units in structure and tenure, not owner-occupancy of the building. Every exemption that depends on an owner living downstairs is bounded, not measured, by these shares.
• How many buildings there are. The counts are households. Lynn has far fewer 50-unit buildings than two-families, even where the two rows hold similar numbers of renters.
• What a unit is. The category is what the respondent reports; a house carved into three apartments is "3 or 4", a townhouse that shares a wall is "1, attached", and a condominium apartment is counted by its building's size, not its ownership form.
• Anything about listings. These are households already living here, 2020–2024 ACS 5-year, not units on the market. For today's asking rents see the Lynn rent overview; for who rents, what they pay and earn, the who-rents page.
• One more honesty note on the window. 2020–2024 ACS 5-year includes 2020, the pandemic year, when the Bureau collected about two-thirds of its usual responses and re-weighted the data; margins of error for 5-year estimates containing 2020 run wider than before. The methodology quotes its documents.

Source & caveats

Every number on this page is from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (2020–2024 ACS 5-year), table B25032, Tenure by Units in Structure, renter-occupied rows, pulled through the Bureau's public API for Lynn (MA) and its ZIP Code Tabulation Areas. Margins of error are the Bureau's, at its 90-percent confidence level; shares and band totals are derived here with the Bureau's own formulas, as the methodology explains. The legal lines in the section above are described, not quoted, on this page — the pages linked carry the statutory text and its sources.

Page last updated November 8, 2026 · rent index data through September 2026.