iStock photo illustration
Boston rents continued to rise while nationwide asking rents stabilized.
A recent Redfin report showed that the median Greater Boston rent rose 4.3 percent year-over-year to $2,794. This gives the Boston metro area one of the highest median asking rents across the country.
“Rents remain stable nationally, but could look very different depending on where you live in the country,” Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari said in a statement. “On the East Coast and in the Midwest, there hasn’t been as much building activity, so asking rents are rising. Meanwhile, if you’re in a Sun Belt city where construction boomed following the pandemic, rents are now falling pretty fast.”
While Boston rent has increased year-over-year, asking rent has decreased 0.6 percent month-over-month. The stabilization of prices can be attributed to an increase in apartment availability as apartment availability is up 45.13 percent compared to a year ago according to rental listing service Boston Pads. RentcCafe, citing data from parent company Yardi that covers larger, professionally managed buildings, reported that the Boston’s area’s supply of apartments increased by 0.75 percent in recent months.
Brokerage Berkadia reported that developers had 16,413 units across 91 projects under construction in Greater Boston as of mid-year, and had delivered 3,787 in the first two quarters. The brokerage’s researchers estimated a further 4,923 would be delivered over the remainder of 2024. If the brokerage forecast comes to pass, it would mean one year had delivered just over 25 percent of all the units that came online in Greater Boston between 2019 and 2023.
Still, Boston remains one of the tougher locations across the country to find an apartment. The occupancy rate (94.9 percent) is higher than the national average of 93.7 percent, according to RentCafe.
Nationwide, rents appeared to stabilize as rent ticked up 0.6 percent year-over-year while decreasing 0.2 percent month-over-month, Redfin reported, amid a huge surge in multifamily construction in Sun Belt markets during the pandemic. Washington, D.C. posted the biggest rent increase, up 12 percent year-over-year.
