2021 Boston Rent Price Report

Last year in 2020, the city of Boston experienced its first decrease in average rent price since the housing crisis of 2008. Remote learning and the subsequent impact on the housing market sent landlords scrambling to fill vacant units. Broker’s fees were waived and rents were slashed in an effort to resuscitate the demand that was lost from the off campus housing market.

This year, remote learning was nixed by most of the area’s largest universities, resulting in one of the fastest market corrections in history. As a result, rent prices for Boston apartments have rebounded and the city avoided recording two consecutive years of rent price declines. The current average rent price in Boston is $2,594 across all apartment sizes, a slight increase of 0.35% compared to December 2020’s mark.

We still have some ground to make up before we reach the record high rent prices we were seeing prior to the pandemic. Compared to December 2019, when Boston’s average rent price was $2,642, the current average rent price is still down -1.79% city-wide. Still, considering that apartment supply numbers were at historic highs in March of this year, this drop is not nearly as large as it could have been.