WELLFLEET — As house prices become increasingly unaffordable on the Outer Cape, interest is growing in ways that individual property owners could help create opportunities for year-round residents to own homes.

One novel approach, a community land trust, has been discussed but not yet tried on Cape Cod — until now. Chris Durbin, who lives and works in Newton but spends significant time in his Wellfleet house, has taken the first steps toward creating such a trust here.

Durbin is building a two-bedroom house and one-bedroom accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on a lot he owns at 99 Pole Dike Road. He chose Backyard ADUs LLC, a Maine-based specialist in modular houses with offices in Barnstable, as the builder to keep the costs of construction low, he said. And he is selling the buildings at cost, he said, to a young family that, looking to settle in Wellfleet, found it could not otherwise afford a house here. The median sale price of a single-family house in Wellfleet this year to date is $1,075,000, according to a Cape & Islands Multiple Listing Service report.

The couple, Ben Woods and Constanza Leal, whom Durbin met through retired Wellfleet real estate broker Kathleen Nagle, will be buying only the buildings — not the land they’re standing on. That’s another part of what will make the house price accessible for them.

For now, Durbin will continue to own the land through his Newton-based limited liability company called 6 Sargent Street LLC. But he, Woods, and Leal have agreed to the land’s eventual transfer to “a community land trust or similar organization established for the purpose of providing homeownership opportunities for year-round residents of Wellfleet,” according to a copy of the lease reviewed by the Independent.

The next step, Durbin said, is to identify a nonprofit organization that will accept the land as a donation. “As soon as there is a good third party to take the lease and the land, I will donate it,” Durbin said. “That is the goal.”

Durbin received a permit on July 7 to start building the house and ADU; foundations have already been installed. He has also requested a variance from local requirements to install a best-available nitrogen-reducing septic system because the property is in the planned sewer district; the board of health was scheduled to consider the request on July 9.

 

‘Middle Market’ Solutions

Durbin, a managing director at the investment management company Vestar, has owned a house with his wife on Chequessett Neck Road since 2015, and he credits his neighbor, the late Susan Spear, with sparking his interest in affordable housing in Wellfleet.

After watching plans for units at Maurice’s Campground and Lawrence Hill inch forward, he said, he found himself thinking of ways that residents could help develop housing more quickly. He said he is especially interested in solutions for year-round households whose incomes might exceed 80 percent of area median income — a figure that frequently determines affordable housing eligibility.

“There’s a lot of ‘capital-A’ affordable housing, and there are people who maybe wouldn’t qualify for that who still can’t afford a place to live,” Durbin said, adding that he thinks this is where private citizens’ participation could help.

Durbin began working with Nagle to identify parcels in town that could be converted into “middle-market” housing as well as potential buyers. A listing for the 99 Pole Dike Road lot caught their attention in 2024. Durbin purchased the undeveloped lot that August for $300,000 with plans to construct and sell the house and ADU and prepare a ground lease to define the land use, he said.

Woods said he and Leal anticipate paying $750,000 for the house, pending costs for septic installation.

Had the land value been included in the sale, the more than $1 million price would have been unaffordable, he said.

The ground lease stipulates that future buyers of the units must be year-round residents of Wellfleet and that the lessor will own the land for 99 years.

The fact that the land will not be sold during that period, Durbin said, also limits the property’s appreciation in value. “Any gain is just in the house itself, and that gain is shared between the owner of the house and the land trust,” he said. “The land will theoretically never be sold again.”

Woods, who grew up in Brewster, said he understood that the ground lease meant the house would appreciate less over time than a house with land might. “If this opportunity for us can also somehow contribute to more affordable housing for other people down the line, that’s a big win-win,” he said.

 

Making It Easier

Though the progress has been promising, the project “would be much easier if there had been an established land trust that had a ground lease,” Durbin said.

The Cape Cod Commission set up a series of meetings in October 2024 to establish such a trust, but implementing that plan “must largely be undertaken by volunteers from the community,” said the commission’s chief planner, Chloe Schaefer, in an email.

Durbin appeared before the Wellfleet Affordable Housing Trust on June 23 to ask whether it could be the recipient of the land donation. Though members cautioned that town officials’ input was needed, they responded enthusiastically to the idea.

The project was “an important pilot,” said Trust member Carl Sussman: “I’m completely behind this. More and more, we have to think about these in-between forms of homeownership.”

“This is exactly what this Trust exists for,” added new member Josh Yeston, who also serves on the select board.

It’s possible the land trust could work across a broader area. Former Provincetown Health Director Morgan Clark said she was one of several people in Truro interested in setting up a potential “Outer Cape Land Trust.”

Clark said she consulted with Philippe Jordi of the Island Housing Trust on Martha’s Vineyard about the idea and attended a meeting of the commission in February to learn whether a trust could potentially be used on the Walsh property in Truro, where she was a member of its ad-hoc advisory committee.

“I’ve watched my kids’ classes just disappear because people can’t find housing,” she said. “The towns are doing a lot, and I think that community members need to help create these solutions,” she added.