Marc and Joan Hendel moved into their newly built retirement home in Bourne, Mass., in March 2025. A month later, the state informed them it would seize the property by eminent domain to make way for a new Sagamore Bridge β one of 13 homes and three commercial properties Massachusetts is taking to replace the Cape Cod region’s two aging spans.
By April of this year, Massachusetts had taken 11 of the 13 targeted properties, including the Hendels’ home, according to Realtor.com’s reporting. Public records reviewed by the Boston Globe show the state had paid at least $4.8 million for six of the homes β more than their combined $3.5 million assessed value β with records for the remaining five not yet public.
For the Hendels, the dollar figures don’t capture the disruption. The couple purchased land and a contract for a spec home in Bourne’s Round Hill neighborhood in December 2023, drawn by its proximity to family in Boston and Connecticut and to the ocean. They moved in that March. Weeks later, a hand-delivered letter informed them the property would be taken. “We were lost for words,” Joan Hendel said. “We said nothing. We have an excellent marriage, we communicate well, but that day, not at all. We didn’t know what to do.” The couple said disclosure forms the seller had signed explicitly denied any planned public use for the land.
The Sagamore and Bourne bridges are each nearly 90 years old and together carry more than 38 million trips annually, serving as the Cape’s only roadway connections to the mainland for residents, tourists, emergency vehicles and hurricane evacuations. The Army Corps of Engineers deemed the bridges “functionally obsolete” in 2020, and the state began public outreach on replacement plans that year β outreach the Hendels, still living out of state at the time, did not encounter before their 2023 purchase.
“People absolutely rely on these bridges,” said Luisa Paiewonsky, executive director of MassDOT’s Mega Projects Delivery Office, adding that the agency studied multiple alignments and chose the one with “the fewest residential property impacts.” She acknowledged the toll the takings exact regardless. “Even though we have very robust processes to make sure people are fully compensated β not only for acquisition of their homes but for all the relocation expenses, and we support helping them find a new home β we still recognize that it goes beyond a simple financial transaction,” Paiewonsky said. “To take someone’s home can be very disruptive and distressing for them.”
Massachusetts is a “quick take” state, meaning the government can assume legal title to a property before final compensation is settled, leaving owners to fight for what they consider fair value after losing their home. Eminent domain law generally entitles owners to “just compensation” β typically fair market value on the date of taking, plus relocation assistance β but critics argue that standard doesn’t account for what a property means to its owner. A paper from the Pioneer Institute, a free-market think tank, put it this way: “The courts have long recognized that property has unique value for its owners. Taking property for public purposes imposes costs on property owners such as emotional loss and move-related stress that cannot be quantified and recovered even through full monetary compensation.”
The Hendels argue fair market value understates their loss because no comparable replacement exists nearby. Barnstable County had just 1,402 active listings in July at a median price of about $946,000, according to Realtor.com data, and only 6.1% of those homes were built in 2024 or later β the newer construction the Hendels say they’d need to replicate what they lost. New builds on the Cape command roughly $654 per square foot, versus $530 for older homes. “Cape Cod is still in seller’s market territory, with a constrained amount of inventory relative to the pace of home sales there,” said Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner. “Buyers do not have many options to choose from, and what is available is very expensive. Homebuying is difficult on Cape Cod, which makes new construction all the more appealing β and all the more disappointing when it does not work out.”
Marc Hendel also worries a replacement home, even if larger, would carry higher property taxes and maintenance costs the couple hadn’t budgeted for in retirement. “What [the state doesn’t] understand is if they get us a house that’s bigger than this one now, for the rest of my life, I’m paying more property taxes than we had budgeted for,” he said. “Who’s going to make that up?”
What it means: The takings, compensation figures and named officials’ statements are verified through public records and on-record interviews. Whether “just compensation” can ever fully offset the loss of a customized retirement home is a genuinely contested legal and policy question β not one this reporting resolves, but one it illustrates concretely through a single family’s case. The broader dynamic β a tight, expensive Cape Cod housing market with too little new inventory to serve as a true replacement β reflects the same supply constraints RealtyWire has documented in nearby markets, including strong buyer demand pushing up prices in other Massachusetts suburbs this year.
