2021 Boston Apartment Rental Market Predictions
We’ve been doing these for 5 years now, and each one keeps getting bigger! Check out our 2021 #Boston #apartmentmarket #report and see what’s in store for all the #vacancies near #Downtown.
Last year marked one of the most turbulent years on record for the local Boston apartment rental market. It saw a pandemic reshape the local multi-family and residential housing market. In February of last year, we predicted another banner year for the Boston rental market amid record low vacancies and record high rent prices. In a mercurial twist of fate, we intimated that ‘short of a cataclysmic event hitting Boston’, our great city would be facing intense legislative pressure for both price controls and delivery of significantly more housing. Four weeks later we were going into lockdown with more questions than answers.
We are now witnessing what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object. Disruption occurs when a pandemic slams into one of the hottest real estate markets on the planet. Now that we have the data, it’s time to analyze the mayhem of 2020, and even take a crack at predicting what will happen in 2021. Full disclaimer here, this is our least confident prediction ever.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: the apartment vacancy rate in Greater Boston. At present we’re seeing a Real Time Vacancy Rate (RTVR) of 5.44%, which marks a 413.21% increase in the city of Boston from exactly one year ago. Meanwhile, in the suburbs, the current RTVR of 4.21% marks a 259.83% increase since March of 2020.
