Boston’s Rental Market Starts Year In Deep Freeze

We’re less than 2 months into 2022, and the apartment rental market in Boston has yet to come out of hibernation. Historically, Boston’s rental market cycle begins to kickstart in the first few weeks of January as students return for the second semester. We typically see apartment availability start the year between 2-3%, and it usually doubles in the first two months of the year.

That is not the case so far in 2022. We began the year with record low apartment availability at 1.67%. Since then, availability of Boston apartments has increased to 2.81% in the city, which is still well below its pre-COVID level in February of 2020 (4.03%). Even vacancies are down by similar margins. The current vacancy rate of 0.63% is half that of its February 2020 level (1.28%).