East Boston Vacancy Rate Surges 207% YOY — But Trending In The Right Direction?
What if I said a 217% YOY increase in #vacancies isn’t a bad thing in East #Boston? At least hear me out…
The vacancy rate in East Boston shot up a whopping 207% in the past 12 months. Now at face value that sounds pretty shocking and could be the story in and of itself, until you peel back the layers a bit more. So while it’s true that the current East Boston vacancy rate of 3.78% is more than triple the record low vacancy rate of 1.19% from February 2020, it doesn’t seem so shocking when you compare that to the 349% increase in the City-wide vacancy rate or the 2600% increase we’re seeing in Downtown Boston.
Even prior to the pandemic, the apartment rental market in East Boston had undergone some dramatic changes over the past decade. Bolstered by steady regional economic growth and increasing enrollment numbers at local Universities, the Greater Boston housing market emerged as one of the hottest and most expensive in the US. Soaring rent prices and record low vacancy rates in neighborhoods close to Downtown forced renters out, leading to slow and steady gentrification in East Boston.
Even though the market was growing in Eastie, demand for East Boston apartments just could not outpace that of neighborhoods near Downtown and local Universities. For that reason, vacancy rates in East Boston have historically always been higher than Boston’s city-wide vacancy rate. That all changed on September 1, 2020 when many of the student apartment leases expired in the city, and no new students came to town to fill those leases. The effect on the local housing economy was devastating, as Boston’s vacancy rate soared to over 9%.
