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Medford MA Apartment Rental Market Supply Report

Rental properties in Medford have seen a hit in both demand and prices like many of the neighborhoods in Metro Boston. While things are improving in some neighborhoods of Boston, Medford has not seen a full recovery of demand just yet.  A good marker of this is Availability Rate and Vacancy Rate.  The availability rate is calculated by adding the total number of vacant apartments and apartments which are not yet vacated but available for rent, and dividing the sum by the total supply of apartments. The vacancy rate is calculated by dividing the number of vacant apartments by the total supply of apartments.

If we look at the current real time availability rate of Medford MA apartments, it stands at 4.07%. This is almost double the availability rate in Boston. Medford has the highest percentage of apartments available to be occupied when compared to any other suburb of Boston. None of the neighborhoods report as high an availability percentage. Next on the list are Salem, Belmont and Somerville which have 3.49%, 3.08% and 2.72% apartment availability rates respectively. The real time availability rate of apartments for rent in Boston is 2.02%, while that figure is 2.23% for the greater metro region.

At face value, this looks as if Medford is a long way from seeing its demand back.  However, apartment availability typically hits its cyclical low in February in Medford, as the market for off campus housing near Tufts University drives demand well into Q4, while in Boston it typically bottoms out in October and November.  This is a sign of optimism for Medford’s market, as it still has a few months to absorb the available apartment inventory before February.

Medford has experienced a rise of +38.44% in YOY RTAR% over the past year. The city of Boston has seen a relatively low rise in RTAR% by 4.66% year-over-year. The average YOY change % in all areas in Metro Boston is +13.44%. Though Medford has more available apartments when compared to last year, towns like Melrose and Watertown have been the worst hit. Their YOY RTAR% changes are +233.33% and +134.85% respectively. On the other hand, towns like Framingham and Newton have seen a decline in RTAR% YOY by -100% and -32.57% respectively.

When it comes to real time vacancy rates, there is not much difference in the real-time vacancy rates of Medford apartments and Boston apartments. The vacancy rate in Medford is 1.89% whereas it is 1.58% in Boston and 1.63% in the towns outside Boston. This is fairly less than Belmont which has the highest real-time vacancy rate in Metro Boston (3.08%). Towns like Waltham, Brookline, Chelsea and Watertown have lower real time vacancy rates than Medford at 0.82%, 1.34%, 1.55% and 1.32% respectively.

The YOY change % in real time vacancy rate is seen to be +36.96% in Medford. Though this is not among the towns that have the highest RTVR% change since last fall, it’s still higher when compared to Boston, which has YOY changes in RTVR% of +3.97%.

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