Boston struggles with soaring rents

[Smuttynose1]

Boston rents rise even higher
By Dan Adams, Boston Globe
http://boston.com/realestate/news/20...zyL/story.html

Rents for apartments in Boston­ are soaring, and a dearth of construction of less expensive apartments is making it increasingly difficult for tenants to find affordable places to live.

The average monthly rent jumped more than 7 percent to $1,881 in the past year, according to Rental Beast , a brokerage that follows the rental market in Boston neighborhoods. A two-bedroom apartment in the Back Bay now rents for $2,857 a month; in Jamaica Plain, for $1,536...

Even finding an apartment is getting tougher. The vacancy rate, already low last year at 3.8 percent, has dropped to 3.1 percent, said Rental Beast. In high-end neighborhoods such as the Back Bay and South End, barely 1 percent of apartments are vacant, making it nearly impossible to find rentals there...

The higher rents add fuel to a long-running debate over whether the region’s housing is just too expensive — for renters as well as the businesses that depend on them.

[Centropolis]

some line that sean penn said in Mystic River like (paraphrasing) man what are we going to do about this gentrification stuff comes to mind.

i'm a sucker for blue-collar boston references.

[mhays]

Those rents don't sound that outlandish. We're talking about two bedrooms.

But it's easy to imagine Boston going San Francisco's way...lots of people want to live there, good density, not much room or willingness to grow.

[Capsule F]

Damn, paying that much to be that normal.

[CyberEric]

JP is still somewhat reasonable.

I was reading this thinking, I could put San Francisco in for every single sentence of the article and it would be completely true.

[mhays]

Living in a great neighborhood at the center of a great city will generally be expensive. That's normal. Big units will always be expensive in these areas.

[volguus zildrohar]

YIKES!

I'm not all that familiar with much of Boston but our rent is half of the least expensive number I see on that map and we're in a 2BR in a gentrifying area. I suppose space matters - Boston proper is pretty small - but those numbers still seem a bit shocking.

[the urban politician]

Those rents aren't that bad. By all means they are not cheap, but certainly not ourtageous.

I love Boston

[Crawford]

Those rents seem high, but not crazy.

Keep in mind that Boston city proper houses like 10% of the region's population. Even if the city was completely unaffordable (and most of those rents seem perfectly affordable for those with middle class salaries), there are many other options.

[Centropolis]

yeah, this is less interesting than a look at the regions rents.

[Shasta]

I moved to the South End in 1996. I officially moved to Houston in 2011. The changes that took place over that time were mind boggling. While some were for the better, many were not. One negative side effect is the sheer number of apartments that vanished in the South End as wealthy folks began to turn the Victorian bowfronts back into single family homes. The neighborhood feels like it has less critical mass now than it did when I first moved there and the interesting businesses have given way to the mundane (my Puerto Rican barber shop became a high end baby store and the gay book store became a Hingham Savings Bank to name a few...)

[MolsonExport]

what will Daquan13 do?