Somerville is a suburb of Boston with a mature apartment rental market, yet in the last two years, things have been very erratic. The global pandemic has stagnated or caused the decline of the Somerville average rent prices. Other useful metrics such as the real-time availability rate (RTAR) and the real-time variable rate (RTVR) have also been negatively affected. We will be providing an insight into the current situation of the rental market and how it is affecting average rent price for Somerville apartments.
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Somerville’s Average YOY Rents Have Decreased
The data shows that it is a renters market when you take a look at the year-over-year average rents in the region of Somerville. To give a bit of context, the average rent in Greater Boston collectively dropped by -4.66%. Furthermore, the City of Boston saw a change of -4.67% and the Outside of Boston a similar drop of -4.46%.
Somerville’s reduction in average rent over the past year was just -0.03% larger at -4.49% than the Outside of Boston average. Every single apartment category in the neighborhood of Somerville saw a drop in YOY average rents. The biggest drop was noted by the Studio apartments in Somerville which saw a reduction of -10.44% compared to the last year. None of the other home categories experienced a double-digit drop in average rent prices.
Studio apartments are generally rented out by students and young adults, therefore a large proportion of them would have not been able to meet their rent obligations. Furthermore, they would not have had an incentive to rent in the inner city due to the closure of universities and the introduction of remote work.
All in all, Somerville had the 8th biggest decrease in average rents compared to the year before. Somerville had a similar performance to those of Revere and Everett at -5.03% and -5.34%. Somerville and these two other town neighborhoods do not have similar average rents, Somerville has an average rent of $2,628 while Revere has an average rent of $2,150, and Everett had an average asking price of $2,288. This means that Revere and Everett’s YOY average rent fees were more volatile despite being lower.
In this part of the article that we have included underneath, we will create a brief comparison of Somerville and other districts with similar rental performance:
1. Somerville
- Average Rent: $2,628
- Average Rent %Change YOY: -4.49%
- RTAR Change YOY: 71.21%
- RTVR Change YOY: 102.75%
2. Revere
- Average Rent: $2,150
- Average Rent %Change YOY: -5.03%
- RTAR Change YOY: 20.40%
- RTVR Change YOY: 31.44%
3. Everett
- Average Rent: $2,288
- Average Rent %Change YOY: -5.34%
- RTAR Change YOY: -9.22%
- RTVR Change YOY: 3.95%
4. Cambridge
- Average Rent: $2,894
- Average Rent %Change YOY: -6.67%
- RTAR Change YOY: 45.81%
- RTVR Change YOY: 93.33%
5. Chelsea
- Average Rent: $2,252
- Average Rent %Change YOY: -2.13%
- RTAR Change YOY: -18.89%
- RTVR Change YOY: -49.86%
6. Waltham
- Average Rent: $2,081
- Average Rent %Change YOY: -7.33%
- RTAR Change YOY: -2.50%
- RTVR Change YOY: 392.86%
Somerville Apartment Vacancies Are Driving the Rent Drops
The RTAR and RTVR rates in comparison to the previous year in Outside Boston were +61.32% and +88.74%. Both of these metrics were lower than the year-over-year (YOY) changes of RTAR and RTVR in all of Boston that currently stand at +78.89% and also +121.05%.
Statistics show that the neighborhood of Somerville registered a YOY RTAR change of +71.21% and an increase of +102.75% for the RTVR in year-over-year terms. Both of these figures are above the average rate for the town neighborhoods that are located in the metropolitan area of Boston. Somerville’s RTAR increase was the 5th largest in Outside Boston while the RTVR increase was overall 6th in its overall size compared to the past year.