| 
Downtown Providence. Photo courtesy of Will Hart / CC BY-2.0
Boston renters may be looking to Providence for relief from the region’s high rents.
An analysis of its own search data by the Zillow-owned rental listings platform HotPads has found that renters in Boston were the outside group most likely searching for rentals in Providence, where the median rent of HotPads-listed units in Rhode Island’s largest city is $630 less per month. Downtown Providence is roughly and hour away from Boston’s South Station by commuter rail train, or longer by car.
In 44 of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, renters looking from outside the metro area are most likely to be searching from a place with a more expensive median rent, HotPads found. Meanwhile, in five of the other six metro areas, the share of renters searching from within the metro for homes and apartments to rent has decreased in the past year – indicating that fewer renters in these comparatively expensive places are searching locally in general.
Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C. all saw an increase in the number of renters searching for homes outside their area, and residents who did look elsewhere were most likely to look somewhere with a more affordable median rent. However, renters in New York were the most likely outside group to be searching for homes and apartments in Boston, where the median rent of HotPads-listed properties is actually $55 more per month.
In Boston, 70.8 percent of all searches on HotPads so far this year were local, down from 73.5 percent at the same time last year, while the median rent on HotPads-listed properties rose 3.1 percent on a year-over-year basis.
Greater Boston’s average effective monthly rent was $2,278 as of mid-year, multifamily researchers REIS Inc. reported, making it one of three communities with the highest rents in the nation. Boston-area rents rose 1.7 percent in the second quarter, according to REIS, while Banker & Tradesman reported last month that several major area landlords plan to hike rents by up to 3.5 percent on a year-over-year basis thanks to a tight market and a lull in the delivery of multifamily projects.
“Search behavior offers a real-time snapshot of where renters are looking and is one way to gauge where markets are headed,” Joshua Clark, an economist at HotPads, said in a statement. “Renters in more expensive markets may be able to find relief by looking elsewhere, but even in the country’s less expensive markets, affordability can be a challenge for locals. Renters fleeing expensive markets can potentially drive up demand in their new hometown, which in turn can impact prices – especially if there’s a noticeable difference in incomes between two nearby areas.”
