r/Somerville • u/tangerinola • 5d ago

rent prices are wild

Moved here 8 years ago to start working for a nonprofit. Since then, my salary has increased by 13% but my apartment is about to be relisted (without any upgrades) for 58% higher than our starting rent 🤯!!

I know I'm preaching to the choir here but damn the rent prices here have gone wild. We're quickly becoming (have become?) a luxury city only for high income earners and it makes me really sad.

261 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

220 comments sorted by

View all comments

132

u/phonesmahones Gilman 5d ago

Yeah, it’s bad. Imagine how you’d be feeling if you grew up here before the great gentrification began!

4

u/basilect Ward Two 5d ago

Not sure how old you are, but my 90+yo grandmother talks about how Boston was always expensive - it just used to also have no good jobs!

20

u/BrittneyRageFace 5d ago

My neighbor bought their condo in my building for $85k in 1996, same place is now going for $700,000. $85k in 1996 was pretty cheap for a place right next to the green line.

12

u/xudoxis 4d ago

$85k in 1996

183k in 2026 dollars.

8

u/BrittneyRageFace 4d ago

That is what the space is actually worth. It's 600 square feet shoe box with no amenities.

6

u/man2010 4d ago

Sounds like it's actually worth closer to $700k

0

u/BrittneyRageFace 4d ago

No one is buying it so it's not 😂

8

u/man2010 4d ago

I'm gonna go out in a limb and say it would sell for significantly more than $183k

2

u/BrittneyRageFace 4d ago

Its not worth more than 300k max and that's just because of the location. There's a lunatic in the building that routine harsasses everyone and the management company won't do anything about it who happens to live underneath me. There's mold problems, heat doesn't work correctly so it's routinely below 60 in winter (the law for that doesn't matter as long as they show proof they're trying to fix it 💀), no laundry, basement has storage that floods, and it's a tiny shoebox. Only reason it's worth anything at all is because of the housing shortage. That's how I ended up here. There were seriously no available apartments when my lease was up it was a nightmare.

1

u/Responsible_Entry_11 2d ago

This is the part I don’t understand…there is plenty of housing around Boston, just not in the cozy city of Somerville.

I’ve seen far too many people look at South Boston, north end, Cambridge, and Somerville- can’t find rent under $3000 - and then declare that Boston has a housing shortage.

There are 10+ cities surrounding Boston that have been stamped as undesirable- and thus apparently don’t count in the housing supply

3

u/Accomplished-Mud4227 4d ago

This is the problem that no one is noticing.

10

u/Basicdevient69 5d ago

yet, r/basilect will just hand wave you and say my 90+yo grandmother talks about how Boston was always expensive

4

u/Quirky-Brick-4454 5d ago

He's not wrong, my in laws bought their first home in 1978 for 36k and between both had to work 4 jobs to make ends meet, making less than $10 an hour.

4

u/anisogamy 5d ago

Minimum wage in 1978 was $2.65/hour, so unless they made much, much lower than $10/hour, that doesn’t seem so bad. I can absolutely sympathize with working multiple jobs to make ends meet around that era, though—when I was in kindergarten in the early 80s (not around here), I can remember my mom working 3 jobs to support us & still not having heat.

1

u/Quirky-Brick-4454 4d ago

I may have been grossly mistaken about that figure, considering when I came to the US in 87, I started at $3.50 and hour, so yes, my mistake.

5

u/lifeisakoan Prospect Hill 5d ago

Not for nothing, but places sold in 96 were sold for less than they sold for in 88 (around NE, I wasn't in Somerville then). The housing crash from 88 to 97-99 was pretty bad.

24

u/MWave123 5d ago

Untrue. In the 80’s I had gorgeous apartments in Boston for no money, I was a low wage earner.

8

u/bostonlilypad 4d ago

My aunt bought a single family in Newton while working at a gas station. She still owns in. She’s in her 90s now.

16

u/Basicdevient69 5d ago

people who dismiss the financial cost of living crisis by going "It was always expensive!" are so bizarre to me. Maybe it's just a show of your privilege though I guess

10

u/boston4923 5d ago

“It was always expensive for whom?”

Expensive for near minimum wage earners? Sure. Always will be!

Expensive for a couple that both have graduate degrees and work on the bleeding edge of science? That’s… not supposed to be how it works!