The overall apartment vacancy rate in Boston, now at 3.8 percent, will cross the 6 percent mark in 2016, Hans Nordby, a managing director for CoStar Group, told an audience of real estate developers and brokers gathered at the Seaport Boston Hotel.
In fact, there are already signs the bloom is coming off the rose.
Here’s a quote from Nordby, which I’ve lifted from the BT piece.
“We’re starting to see a slowdown in new projects, as some of the projects do not meet their pro formas. We’re starting to see more concessions,” he said.
Some luxury apartment builders are even offering several weeks or even months of free rent, as I noted in this blog post earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the number of new apartments coming online is staggering. More than 1,200 new apartments are under construction in Boston, with another 8,000 in the pipeline for 2015 and 2016, BT reports.
Rental boom or rental bubble? What’s your call?