Don't move, continued

by David Valdes Greenwood

Five tips for those still looking Bring loads of cash -- think four months' rent -- and be willing to part with it. Jump at the first decent thing you see. Make peace with the bus routes; make peace with commuter rail. Admit that the city limits are not electrified. You can live outside, but nearby, for less. Hold out just a little bit longer. Break the cycle of September 1 leases and you'll never again be vying for the most competitive move-in date. -- DVG

Comm Ave prof F sks roommate to share 2BR, walk to pub trans, semi-furn. 9/1. Must like dogs. $950.

The premature end of the season is bad news for the newly graduated job seekers who move here every year at this time, and for many incoming college students -- including some who never expected to be looking at all. Because of a computer gaffe, Northeastern University admitted 600 extra freshmen -- and the school already houses some of its students in other college's dorms and has a waiting list of several hundred for on-campus housing. (Actually, Northeastern recently built 470 units of new dormitory housing. But one mistake in the admissions office has the school right back where it started.)

What are students supposed to do if the dorms can't take them in? The most common solution is bundling: getting multiple roommates to split costs. If you're willing to call any room a bedroom and put more than one person in it, you can transform a one-bedroom with a living room into a two-bedroom for four.

But that kind of student trick is illegal, and property owners no longer have to turn a blind eye to get top dollar for their rental housing. In addition, a rarely enforced city housing code limits the number of unrelated people who can live in a given space. A landlord who wants to raise the rent or replace students with professionals might suddenly choose to abide by the letter of the law -- and if that happens the tenants are stuck, as Claudette Bria just discovered. A recent graduate of Northeastern University, Bria went in with three roommates to rent a two-bedroom apartment in the Fenway for $2000 a month -- a good deal that afforded them a home in a great location for only $500 a month per person. But in April, they found out that as of September 1, no more than two unrelated parties would be allowed to live in the unit. The women looked for a new apartment together and eventually found a four-room place in Allston for $2400 a month. They didn't mind the extra $100 a month each. But they did have a problem with the up-front cash demand: $9600 down. To rent. In Allston.

CUTTING HER LOSSES: when Claudette Bria realized she'd have to pony up the equivalent of a down payment on a house to rent an apartment in Allston, she moved home to Long Island.

Bria passed on that option and briefly contemplated sharing a place with a friend in a government-subsidized apartment building for restricted-income tenants -- but even that was $1600 a month. In the end, she abandoned Boston for her hometown, where she'll have family and old friends nearby. "I found places on Long Island that were less expensive, so I'm moving there instead," she says. In Bria's case, housing trumps employment -- with her new communications degree, she has no job but trusts the hot economy to provide one soon enough. Meanwhile, she has a place to live.

It's a painful irony, but the very economy that gives people money to spend on a decent apartment is what's making it so hard to find one. "The Massachusetts economy is supercharged -- more students are enrolling here, more businesses coming in," says Matt Newman. David Scott, a rental agent for Apartment Rental Experts, notes that in addition to being a center of higher education, Boston is a hotbed for several industries. "High tech, medical, and law -- those are not going to be diminishing," he says. This means that even as rents are increasing, so is the demand for apartments. Landlords are discovering that they can ask once-unthinkable prices -- $1600 per month for a studio apartment, or up to $3000 for a two-bedroom in some parts of the city -- and applicants will step over each other for the opportunity to pay up. Suddenly being a landlord sounds like fun.

In fact, many people are buying multi-family homes for just that reason -- the giddy prospect of making big money off even a single unit. The problem is that home sellers, like landlords, can now ask just about any price they want. I looked at an almost light-less Jamaica Plain three-family that was listed for nearly $600,000. If the buyer wanted to live in one unit and pay the mortgage by renting the other two, that homeowner would have to charge nearly $2000 per month simply to keep up. A tenant might see such a rent as motivated by greed, but it would be fueled by fiscal reality.

If you're looking to rent, says Imperato, "the better values are going to be found in buildings with long-term homeowners whose costs are less." But that assumes those landlords have no desire to enjoy the full fruits of capitalism: the extra few hundred bucks a month that literally could be theirs for the asking.

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