5 Neighborhoods With the Lowest Vacancy Rates in Boston - The List Will Surprise You

The year of COVID has flipped the local housing market on its head during 2020. Neighborhoods that once were the hardest to get into now have soaring vacancies, while other neighborhoods previously held as an afterthought in the local housing economy now boast some of the tightest inventory in the City.

At this point, the towns with the lowest year over year vacancy rate increases are as followed:

Roxbury: +63%
Mattapan: +56.79%
Hyde Park: +42.66%
West Roxbury: +0.51%
Roslindale: -28.65%

While some of those numbers might look high, there not when put in context with other neighborhoods in Boston. For example, Downtown apartments saw a 1,373% increase in vacancy rate year over year. Beacon Hill noted a 972% increase, while Back Bay marked a 412% increase since December of 2019.

At this point all 3 of those popular neighborhoods have a vacancy rate over 7%, while the list of 5 previously mentioned all have a vacancy rate under 3%. If someone were to tell you last year that it would be harder to find an apartment in Roslindale than Downtown, you wouldn’t have believed it. But that’s been 2020 in a nutshell, you have to be here to believe it.

So while the trend continues, we’ll see if there’s any relief in site. If the current state of the pandemic is any indication, it appears that Universities will extend remote learning for the spring semester which will provide no relief for the apartment rental market.

Recent increases in total number of cases have also brought up the idea of another mandatory lockdown which will do more to uproot the local rental markets in some of the city’s most popular neighborhoods. The pandemic has shown its effect on city life as the population disperses away from the crowded city centers in Boston and elsewhere. What will be interesting to see beyond the pandemic, is this may be a trend that’s here to stay?