Is Greater Boston’s rental market getting hotter?

Is Greater Boston’s rental market getting more competitive? A new RentCafe report says yes, even though fewer renters are competing for apartments.

The apartment search website reported that the share of newly-built apartments in Greater Boston has dropped from a market share of 0.54% to 0.19%, meaning there’s fewer new-builds available. But, eight renters—down from 10 last year—are competing for an apartment here, and units are staying vacant for longer, according to the report.

Jennifer F. Murphy, a Massachusetts Apartment Association director and the vice president for marketing at Chestnut Hill Realty, said the industry is pushing for more production. She reported that her company is building 250 units in Brookline right now.

“We have a housing crisis in the Boston market,” Murphy said, “and we need more apartments, in particular, more affordable apartments.”

RentCafe used data from market research firm Yardi Matrix to calculate a competitiveness score based on the length of apartment vacancies, occupancy rates, competition for units, rental renewal rates, and share of new apartments built:

Greater Boston’s score rose by 5.1 percentage points between the first months of 2023 and 2024, ranking as more competitive in the Northeast than Philadelphia and Manhattan, but cooler than Portland, Maine, and Providence. Greater Boston’s score, 77.5, is higher than the national figure: 73.4.

Doug Ressler, the manager for business intelligence at Yardi Systems, RentCafe and Yardi Matrix’s parent company, said Greater Boston has about 8,000 new units entering the market this year compared with 6,000 in 2025.

The average number of days apartments stayed vacant swelled from 38 to 41 in Greater Boston between the first months of 2023 and 2024, and the vacancy rate has dropped slightly from 95.3% to 94.9%, according to the report. Chestnut Hill Realty’s units are around 96% to 97% full, Murphy said. 

The median asking price for an apartment in Boston on March 7, $4,200, was up 23% year over year, according to a Boston.com analysis of datasets provided by ApartmentAdvisor, an online marketplace.

Ressler pointed to the conversion of office spaces to apartments, which is occurring on a smaller scale, as a sign that the government and the private sector in Greater Boston are working together to increase affordability. 

“We think that affordability will begin to increase over the course of ’24 and ’25,” Ressler said, “so that there will be conversions and there will be more space available for affordable budgets, especially in gateway cities like Boston,” where he said immigrants need access to affordable housing.

Murphy suggested that renters start their apartment search as early as possible and said developers need to focus on building apartments and affordable housing.

“It’s supply and demand,” Murphy said, “so the more supply there is, you know, it will alleviate this pressure that we have on the Boston housing market right now.”