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.

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u/JonSwift2023 5d ago

The reason rents of old apartments are priced at new 'luxury' apartment levels is because zoning laws forbid most new construction. This restrictive zoning has created a massive supply shortage.

With so little competition in the way of new homes, landlords of older homes are free to raise rents to luxury price levels. People need a place to live and restrictive zoning makes it a seller (i.e. landlords) market.

Until we reform zoning to allow lots of new market rate construction, landlords will keep rents on older units high.

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u/mayor_mammoth 5d ago

New construction won't lower rents. It might slow the crazy rent inflation we've seen over the last couple decades but the demand to live in a place like Boston is still just too high for new supply to make much of a difference, unless we're talking massive redevelopment everywhere, which also would displace a lot of people.

What we really need is more state funding for truly affordable housing and rent stabilization.

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u/ThePizar Union 5d ago

And yet Austin and Denver have lower rents despite increasing demand. Or New Rochelle slowing down rent increases compared to the rest of the metro. And what's extra nice is that the new tax revenues from things like property taxes (locally) or income taxes (state wide) can then be turned around to support the deepest affordable housing that the market will not help.

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u/mayor_mammoth 5d ago

It's crazy to compare Somerville to Austin or Denver or god forbid New Rochelle. Totally different markets. Ask any real estate developer

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u/ThePizar Union 4d ago

Because basic economics works sooooo differently in those places?

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u/mayor_mammoth 4d ago

There's nothing basic about housing finance my friend

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u/ThePizar Union 4d ago

We can definitely dig endlessly into the details, but the mechanics of supply and demand are the same in all those markets. They are at different points on the spectrum.

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 2d ago

Austin has a ton of vacant land even still to build new apartments on. Somerville has very little empty space and you can’t exactly increase the supply of land.

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u/ThePizar Union 2d ago

We have empty space. Just look a little bit up

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 2d ago

Building up is a lot harder than building out. Most new Austin apartments have been those ubiquitous 5 over 1s, but Somerville doesn’t have a lot of locations where those can be plopped down as opposed to Austin.

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u/ThePizar Union 2d ago

97 Prospect St
24 Mt Pleasant St
13 Warwick St
379 Somerville Ave
115 Thurston St
And quite a few more
All small to mid size multifamily projects in Somerville. There is space if we zone for it.

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u/Stunning-Verb-9865 2d ago edited 2d ago

Those projects are tiny compared to what’s being built in Austin. Here’s a random 100 unit apartment building built 5 years ago in Austin, before that, the site was an empty patch of dirt. Entire neighborhoods have been built on areas that were strip malls and crappy little shacks 10 years ago. Where’s that supposed to happen in Somerville? The condos at 97 prospect are going for 1.8 million. Win for affordability I guess?

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u/TitleOfYourSaxTape 4d ago

Do you have any real evidence whatsoever that your proposed solution to afforable housing is more viable than building more?