"I know we've got to be quick on this," Healey said about building housing. "Everybody's got to lean in. People are counting on it. Our economy is depending on it. I know Massachusetts, together we can get this done."

BOSTON — Promising relief for first-time homebuyers, Gov. Maura Healey on Thursday announced expanded mortgage-rate and down payment assistance programs as she framed housing as the state’s most urgent affordability challenge.

"It starts with housing," Healey said during her State of the Commonwealth address. "It's got to, because we've got to be a state where your teachers and your nurses and your recent grads can afford to actually live."

Healey put housing at the front of the affordability crisis, something she spent considerable time unpacking during her annual address in front of Massachusetts' legislature. She announced the expansion of two first-time homebuyer programs and touched on the big changes and growth of the last three years.

"For the thousands of families out there right now, looking for that first home, help is on the way," Healey said.

The administration is expanding a program that will provide lower mortgage rates for qualified first-time homebuyers, Healey said.

The program will be run through MassHousing — an independent, quasi-public agency that provides financing to low- and moderate-income homebuyers in the commonwealth — and it will lower mortgage rates by 0.55 percent, according to a press release from the state.

This rate decrease would save the average homebuyer $42,000 over the lifetime of the loan, the press release said.

Healey also announced $25 million in funding for the state's down payment assistance program for 2026, nearly doubling the number the program served last year. It will offer no- and low-interest loans of up to $25,000 to moderate-income, first-time homebuyers, and the program will also be run through MassHousing.

She also pointed to her administration speeding up the environmental approval process for developments from over a year to 30 days, laying out plans to reuse abandoned office space and state-owned properties, doubling the monetary support given to seniors, now up to $2,800 a year, and establishing funding opportunities for low- to moderate-income homeowners to build additional dwelling units.

"We're going to build more and build faster," Healey said.

Healey said there are 100,000 homes that have been built or are in various stages of progress, close to halfway to the state's goal.

"Experts said that we had to build about 220,000 homes by 2035," Healey said. "I'm telling you, right now, we're not just going to meet that, we're going to beat it."