2023 Brighton Apartment Rental Market Forecast
Based on the most recent apartment data in Brighton, MA, it appears like rent prices are highly unlikely to reverse course in 2023. Quite the opposite, it seems nearly all data points suggest rents increasing for the foreseeable future. Apartment supply is just too tight to envision any situation where rent prices will come down. Unless a seismic economic event happens that causes widespread unemployment in the metropolitan area, rent prices will continue to push upwards throughout 2023 in Brighton and elsewhere in Boston.
Brighton’s seasonal apartment vacancy cycle appears to have been disrupted during the pandemic. Now instead of seeing a spike in vacancies in September, Brighton is holding a low vacancy rate year-round similar to neighborhoods that have less turnover such as South Boston. This could be evidence of a shift in the typical makeup of Brighton renters. It appears that Brighton is slowly evolving into less of a shorter term student market and into more of a longer renting young professional demographic.
Regardless, Brighton is a neighborhood in desperate need of new apartment inventory to help ease the burden of skyrocketing rent prices. The city must do more to pave the way for builders and even existing Brighton landlords to increase the rental supply. What’s being done currently simply is not going to get the job done. Last year we saw the lowest number of new housing units hit the market since 2014. This is not a sustainable course of action, and if something isn’t done to address the housing shortage, the renter will bear the burden. We will continue to monitor these trends as they develop.