All good points for someone choosing to move to the Boston area, but I think the main frustration comes from people who have lived and rented in Boston for years and have seen their rents go up considerably over that time. Yes, inflation factors in as well, but wages have not kept up with inflation or rent prices. Often times the choice for those people is to leave the city they've made a life in and start again somewhere else.
Interesting breakdown. I was a Boston suburb renter from 1986 to 1996, when I decided shoveling snow everyday from December to April wasn't fun, and moved to Dallas. The only "flaw" in your plan is....can you "afford" the rent? When I say that, I don't mean the numbers...they obviously work here. But if the apartment is $3190, the qualification income level has to match what's considered affordable level of income. So even though you are "paying something similar", your income level may not be the same to actually qualify for that downtown apartment. Not sure what landlords/brokers in Boston use as a multiplier of income for affordability, but in NYC, it's currently about 40X the rent on an annual basis. So if you make $130k a year, you might be able to afford this $3190 apartment. 40 x $3190 = $127,600. But, for the suburbs....it's 40 x $2300 - $92,000, meaning the landlord knows this number is much more doable in your income level, where as the Boston landlord may decide he needs people at $150k and up. Maybe I'm missing something? I haven't rented anything since 2010...so let me know if I'm wrong, which I could be. Cool video though!
This is a great point, and a real concern that I missed in the video. Since there isn’t typically an application fee for these types of apartments, I doubt it hurts to apply and see if one will accept
3100?? That seems like a nice underestimate. A lot of these downtown luxury apartments tend to be 4000-5000. The real issue here is that plenty of families are willing to live in the metro area, but you will never find an affordable two bedroom apartment (We're not even going to get into three bedroom apartments). Boston could really benefit with lowering some of the rents in these downtown multi bedroom apartments and stop building studios. There are endless amounts of studios in Boston and not nearly enough people in need of studios. Millennials are getting older, they're looking at having families. If the metro areas are incapable of offering multi bedroom apartments, they're going to move back to the suburbs. Owning a car isn't going to make a difference here because what they need simply is NOT available to them.
