Don't move!

This year's housing market is tighter than ever -- and tenants are getting squeezed

by David Valdes Greenwood

CAMBRIDGE: Cozy 1 bed w/built-in bookshelves. Newish tub. Nice and clean. No pets. $1500. Credit check required.

When I saw my landlord's Jaguar pull up to the curb that June afternoon, I knew I was in for it: time to find out how much the rent would go up on my two-bedroom apartment in Davis Square. It's no palace. The bathroom ceiling is stained and peeling from a recurrent plumbing problem that has never been seriously addressed. In the bedroom, there's a broken window I asked to have fixed two years ago. Flies live under the kitchen sink, where a leak was fixed by tying a rag around the drainpipe and taping it in place. But I have called these 800 square feet of painted plywood home for five years, and I didn't want to move.

VOICE OF DOOM: "It's been tight before," says realtor Bob Imperato, "but I'm seeing less availability than in the past. . . . We [had] a three percent vacancy for Allston-Brighton in August."

When I first moved to this Somerville neighborhood six years ago, two-bedroom apartments rented for about $700 a month. Since then, most prices have doubled. But my landlord failed to keep pace with housing inflation, raising the rent in gentle increments of $50 or $100. I assumed it was because he was grateful that my partner and I had cleaned the place up. We did a lot of work in the back yard, which when we moved in was full of Japanese knotweed, fallen trees, and a decade's worth of debris. Now it's a lush green space, with flowers and a trim lawn. The two units above us have turned over twice since we moved in, and we've been told that the landlord uses our care of the property as a selling point. But on the sidewalk that June day, he warned me I wasn't going to like what he had to say. And I didn't: he was increasing our rent by $200 a month.

I panicked. I didn't know whether we could afford it. And I didn't want to move. I love my neighborhood. I enjoy my daily trip to the Diesel Café so much that I baked the owners a cake for the shop's one-year anniversary. I brought holiday cookies to my travel agent last year, and I bring irises from my garden to the copy-shop guy every spring. But $2400 a year more to live in the same run-down apartment -- even if it is located in a great neighborhood -- is a lot to swallow.

Once I recovered from the shock, I began checking out my options. I scanned real-estate ads. And I called Boston's rental-housing experts, whose advice can be summarized in three words: suck it up. That's right -- in a city with a rental vacancy rate around one percent, even apartment-rental agents are telling tenants to stay put. Let the paint peel, let the window crack, and think of the flies as pets -- at least for now.

VOICE OF DESPERATION: after Michael O'Donnell's apartment burned down in June, he called dozens of realtors. "I said immediacy was our number-one priority, and second to that was a place for $1000 to $1500," he says. "Most people just laughed at me."

BRIGHTON 2 BED. Brick bldg, street parking. No smokers. No pets. $1800. (More than two persons, increased fee.)

Last year at this time, the local media could hardly say enough about how difficult it was to find a place -- the Boston Phoenix ran a cover story titled "Apartment Hell" (see News and Features, August 25, 1999). The fall 1999 season was commonly accepted as the worst time ever to rent an apartment in the city. But the ongoing economic expansion has created a home-buying frenzy that fuels both condo conversions and outrageous mortgages on multiple-family units -- both of which make the rental market even more ferocious. Since last year, rents in Boston have increased nine percent, according to the city's Department of Neighborhood Development. The median rent increased $115, from $1350 to $1465. Incredible as it may seem, it's probably harder to rent an apartment this fall than it was last fall.

This became obvious when I called friends to tell them about the rent increase: instead of getting sympathy, I was one-upped with rental horror stories. One set of friends had just been told their rent was going up by half -- from $1000 to $1500. Other friends in Cambridge and Boston had also received $200 increases. It was as if the entire region had been possessed by a mania that turned once-generous landlords into rent-raising robber barons. Worse, our friends who were looking for new apartments had yet to find a single place in their price ranges. And when I sheepishly admitted that my rent was only going up to $1100 -- well, a few friends made me feel like an ungrateful bastard. Those who had already started hunting had seen the slim pickings: there was little to be had at any price. If my partner and I didn't want our place, an entire city did.

"It's been tight before," says Bob Imperato, president of Boston Realty Associates, "but I'm seeing less availability than in the past. . . . We have three percent vacancy for Allston-Brighton in August. That means even less by September 1."

Susan Polivy, a rental agent at Imperato's firm, says a search of her computer database by the second week of August showed only 75 units remaining for all of Boston, Brighton, and Allston. There's something damn scary about living in a major city where all the rental listings can be scanned at a glance. Worse, Polivy adds, "the landlords keep calling every few minutes to say they're out now."

Not everyone believes the most catastrophic reports. Matt Newman, owner of Just Publications and Matching Roommates, says he thinks the media are overhyping the problem. Channel 7 News correspondent Kim Khazei reported August 10 that there were only "150 apartments available citywide," the Boston Herald ran a front-page story August 13 headlined BOSTON RENTERS FACING BRUTAL MARKET -- and then there's the article you're reading right now. But Newman's own estimates aren't exactly optimistic. "After July 15, there's no market -- 95 percent is already gone," he says. Now is just not the time to look. "It's like walking into a hotel on a Friday afternoon: everything is booked," he says with an air of finality. "The year 2000 [rental] market is over."

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David Valdes can be reached at valdesgreenwood@worldnet.att.net.