The other day an article was published in Boston Magazine with the title, “Boston’s other Housing Crisis:  The Cemeteries”.  It is a full length feature article that gets into the costs associated with being buried at cemeteries inside the city of Boston as well as the options for burial in suburban and farther rural areas of the Bay State.    You can read the article here.

These city cemeteries can be profitable, but the limited space for earth burial in them will be expensive if you want to be buried there.  However, if these cemeteries wanted to be open for years to come, they realized that they needed to limit sales.  Two ways that they have done that is stopped selling pre-need spaces and raised prices.

At Mount Auburn Cemetery the most expensive plot for sale lists for $350,000 and the “routine” plots go for between $4,000 and $6,500.  The article points out that in the historical section of the Forest Hills Cemetery plots start at $20,000.

Funeral director Christopher Goulet, President of the Hamel-Lydon Chapel and Cremation Service of Massachusetts, located in Quincy, is quoted as saying about these cemeteries, “The cemeteries’ costs of doing business are ever-increasing, and with fewer people having traditional burials and opting for cremation, their revenues are decreasing.  The net result is that people who are going to use those cemeteries in the future are going to pay more”.

A quote that is probably on the money, but one of the things I noticed from the article is that cemetery space in Boston is somewhat scarce that those that want to have earth burial are paying quite a price tag and cemeteries are making profits on that and on their cremation niches.  As a rural funeral director, all of the prices mentioned for Boston interment in the article are somewhat eye-popping for me. At Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston, according to the article, even the least expensive niche for an urn is said to cost $2,700 and in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston they can go for up to $8,500.  However, 12 miles outside of Boston, a niche for two urns started at $1,300 and a burial lot for a cremation started at $350. . . . now that is more what I am used to.

The article continues somewhat on this bent. . . that if you don’t mind being buried or having cremated remains rest somewhat out of the city proper, you can get more reasonable prices.

The article goes on to mention a group that believes that they can create more space for public use by combining grave spaces with public parks via the green burial method.

Funeral Director Daily take:  This article really opened my eyes as to the cost of earth burial in America’s east coast heritage cities.  As the article points out, the City of Boston’s population is ten times what it was in 1831 when Mount Auburn Cemetery opened yet the cemetery space is finite, putting a premium on what is available.  To me it turns out to be a simple supply versus demand curve when it comes to pricing.  However, that pricing can get so high that it ends up turning traditional funeral families into cremation clientele and exacerbating the revenue issue for funeral homes.  This is not an easy business fix for metropolitan funeral homes going forward.

Related Story:  Here is an article from the Buffalo (NY) News concerning the Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls.  This cemetery, which dates back to 1852, is spending $227,000 to build a new facility for cremation.  According to the article, more than 22,000 people are buried at Oakwood Cemetery and there are only 700 burial plots left.  The article states that there is plenty of space for cremation burial and the cemetery is trying to convince people who have cremation urns on a shelve, on a mantle, or in a closet that it will be economical to bring them for permanent disposition to Oakwood.

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