Boston rent is falling while every other New England city rises

Boston rent fell 2.2% over the past year. That's the good news, and it's the only city in New England where the number went down.

Everywhere renters have been going instead is rising, some of it fast. Springfield is up 13.5%, Portland, Maine up 10.9%, and Manchester, New Hampshire up 8.7%.

The escape valves are filling up

For years the New England move was simple: get priced out of Boston, take the commuter rail line to Worcester or Providence, keep the job. That worked because those cities were much cheaper but not anymore.

The cities absorbing the most pressure are the ones climbing fastest, which isn't a coincidence. Springfield's 13.5% jump is the steepest in the region and it's the cheapest city on the list, which is what happens when a market gets discovered. Portland, Maine at 10.9% is a different story, driven more by remote workers and second-home demand than by Boston commuters.

Worcester and Lowell, the two classic Boston alternatives, are the calmest here at 2.1% and 1.4%.

Hartford is the last real bargain

At $1,632 typical and $1,193 for a one-bedroom, Hartford costs $1,782 a month less than Boston. Over a year that's $21,384, which is more than most people's entire moving calculation.

Hartford is also rising 6.5%, so it isn't standing still, and Springfield right behind it at $1,836 is climbing twice as fast. The window on the cheap end of Connecticut and western Massachusetts is narrowing rather than closed.

The thing to take from the table is that Boston's decline doesn't mean New England got cheaper. It means the gap between Boston and everywhere else is compressing from both directions at once, which leaves fewer places to run. We found the same compression nationally in why the cheap cities stopped being cheap.

Sources

• RentDataNow rent data for New England cities, by bedroom size, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, June 2026