Cambridge YOY Rent Price Change Back in Black

After 18 months of rental supply glut, the Cambridge rental market appears like its back on track. After surpassing Brookline in 2019 as Boston’s most expensive suburb to rent an apartment, rent prices tumbled during the pandemic on account of a surge in apartment vacancies and a drop in occupancy. Now the most recent rental data for Cambridge MA shows that the year-over-year change in Cambridge’s average rent price is back in positive figures, and in March it currently sits at +1.53% compared to 12 months ago.

The average rent price for Cambridge apartments was down year-over-year by -6.58% in May of last year. This was a result of a huge +534.88% year-over-year increase in vacancies that was recorded in March of 2021 in Cambridge. Since remote learning was nixed in March of last year, the market rebounded drastically and absorbed much of the vacant inventory in the months that followed.

Now, the current vacancy rate of 0.95% is closing in on the all-time low of 0.86% recorded in March of 2020, which has reignited landlord confidence. Now the current average rent price of $2,796 in Cambridge marks a 1.53% increase from a year ago. With 5 months to go until vacancies hit their cyclical low point, it looks like apartment occupancy will break records in 2022, which will inevitably push rent prices even higher.