How COVID-19 Changed the Rental Market
The apartment rental process has always been a necessary evil. In Boston, the renting season starts months before a lease will actually start. Apartments will come on the market and then be taken off within a day. The first step to the dreaded process is messaging the real estate agent in hopes of seeing the apartment that is available. You may hear back from the agent in 15 minutes, asking if you want to see the apartment in a half hour. You may never hear back from the agent. If, in some way, can see the apartment in a half hour, you are ubering, biking, running to the unit. The agent will then whisk you around the city showing you other available spaces. This excursion will take hours. If you see an apartment you like, in that moment you must be ready to put down a month’s worth of rent to take it off the market while you actually apply for the lease. The application is to confirm your income is 30–40x the amount of rent annually. If your income does not match or exceed this amount, you do not get approved for the lease. Tough, right? Yet, this is the process year after year.
Boston’s rental market is unnecessarily horrible by having all apartment leases rollover on the same day. Think of an entire city having to move to other apartments on the same day. This makes it extremely competitive to find an apartment. As a result, rent prices are higher and the renting season starts almost half a year before the lease commences.
When I realized I wanted to move apartments at the end of my current lease my heart sank. I did not want to run around the city trying to find a new apartment. Then, the first cases of coronavirus popped up in January. My dread for finding a new apartment was replaced with shock and disbelief that I was going to be able even find another apartment to rent. You cannot go into occupied apartments anymore. You cannot be near random people, the agent, inside anymore. So, the process for finding a new place became void. In some ways, the creative solution agents came up with have been detrimental to renters, while others have helped the renter. From my personal experience, this is what I noticed.
Who though this process could get any more difficult? Never say never! If the apartment available for rent is occupied or you are not allowed in the building, you are only allowed to see a video of the apartment. You would think a video would suffice. However, if there was not furniture in the apartment, you may not be able to understand the dimensions or the space to the room. Can my couch actually fit through the front door and in the living room? You may not know until you move in. A friend of mine signed a lease of an apartment after only seeing a video. They were allowed into the apartment a week ago…..The minute she walked in, she realized the video was taken a couple of years ago. She said it was much more weathered and honestly grosser than the video conveyed. She was completely disappointed because she had already signed the lease. She’s locked in for a year.
Another detriment to the process is the barrier to the actual application and taking the apartment off the market has become lower. Therefore, renters can reach this step even faster than before. Instead of having to wait to see a place after work, the agent can send you the video during your lunch break and 10 minutes later, you can apply. So, being in constant contact with agents about apartments has become integral. I was absolutely more distracted from work while trying to “see” apartments during this rental season than in the past. Yet, you can argue that the process was over more quickly than it was in past rental seasons.
There were positives, for the renter, to this whole process though. Since, many landlords were focusing on keeping their current tenants, landlords were not as aggressive and proactive asking these current tenants if they wanted to resign their lease. My landlord usually asks if I want to resign my current lease for September in March. She asks me 6 months in advance……and that is later than my friend’s landlords ask them! As someone who is in their mid-20’s, knowing where I will and want to be in 6 months is much less clear. Therefore, having to make a decision of where I am going to live for the next year and a half is much more of a serious commitment. However, this year, she did not ask my roommates and I if we wanted to resign our lease for September until June. Three extra months may not seem like much of a difference, but when you are trying to build the foundation for your adult future, it counts.
Another positive in this new renting experience was the monthly rent pricing not being inflated and in some cases it actually going down! You read that right! Landlords have made a habit of raising the price of rent for a unit year in and year out. However, if your microeconomics class taught you anything it is that product pricing is heavily influenced by demand. If people do not want to move or many people are moving away from the city, the demand for the apartments goes down and the landlords have to make rent catered more to what the renter wants to pay. Especially in Boston, which is filled with college students, landlords are seeing much less demand for apartments because many students will not be in-person this next semester. Some property management companies are keeping rental prices the same as last year but crediting the renters a month’s worth of rent. Therefore, the renter is going to pay less for the apartment month-to-month.
At the beginning of the pandemic, everyone froze in place. In Boston, you usually start looking for apartments in January. However, even in April, there were barely any apartments on the market. Only in June did people start putting apartments on the market. Agents and landlords have started to scramble in order to find renters for apartment units. They have become much more motivated to work alongside a renter. This is something I have never seen in this city before.
At first, it seemed like it would be more difficult to find and rent an apartment in a time when you could not physically be close to a stranger. However, the real estate industry adapted quickly and did so in favor of the renter. If you are looking to move apartments, financially, this may be a good time to do so.
