Boston Rents Have Fallen for 13 Straight Months as New Supply Loosens the Market

While rents hit records in New York and San Francisco, Boston is quietly moving the other way. The average rent in the city has fallen to $2,930, down from $3,054 a year earlier, marking 13 consecutive months of year-over-year declines, according to Realtor.com data collected for the Boston Business Journal and reported by Boston.com.

The reason is the oldest one in housing: supply is catching up to demand.

New construction is loosening the market

Boston has not built at the pace of Sun Belt boomtowns, but it has built enough to matter. More than 37,000 units in buildings of five or more apartments have been added since 2021, and the vacancy rate has climbed to 3.2%, up from 2.6% in 2022. Jiayi Xu, an economist at Realtor.com, tied the slide directly to that new supply arriving just as demand softens.

On the demand side, two forces are pulling at once: a drop in international student enrollment amid a visa clampdown, and a cooling job market. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows employment across the Boston metro down about 2% over the past year, with statewide employment off a comparable 1.9%. Boston has one of the largest shares of international students of any major US metro, about 11% of its student population, so their absence ripples outward. "Elevated rents combined with a cooling job market could push young professionals toward other, more affordable or job-rich metros," Xu said.

What our data shows

Our numbers confirm the cool-down. Measured across all unit types, the median rent in Boston is about $3,454 and down roughly 0.8% over the past year, one of the few big cities in negative territory. The nuance is that the easing is uneven across the metro. The pricey inner suburbs are still climbing, with Cambridge up about 7.3% to $3,621 and Somerville up 10.9% to $3,635. And even after 13 months of declines, Boston is not cheap: it remains up about 34% over five years and nearly double the national median rent of about $1,951. This is relief from a very high baseline, not a bargain.

Part of a national shift

Boston is riding a broader wave. Asking rents across the 50 largest US markets have fallen year over year for 35 straight months, and Xu pointed to a single cause. "The big-picture driver is the wave of new multifamily construction," she said. It is the same force cooling markets like Austin, and the mirror image of supply-starved cities like New York and San Francisco, where construction has lagged and rents keep setting records. The lesson repeats: where the cranes go up, rents come down. See the full Boston rent data or track the broader trend in our look at where rent dropped the most.

Sources

Reporting, rent figures, and quotes: Boston.com, Boston rents are down again (2026), reporting Realtor.com data collected for the Boston Business Journal, plus U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figures. All-unit rent figures: RentDataNow, June 2026, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index.