New York City. Los Angeles. But Medford?
Apartment prices have skyrocketed over the past few years, a nationwide phenomenon that has not left Medford and Somerville unscathed. Sophomores and juniors scour the neighborhoods surrounding Tufts for affordable housing each spring, an annual rite of passage that has become more daunting as rent prices reach all-time highs.
Many students look to the offices of Off-Campus Housing (OCH) and Residential Life for guidance, with mixed success. As Acting Director of Residential Life Lorraine Toppi explains, the service acts more as a guidance counselor than as a real estate agent for students. Her staff offers advice and acts as "substitute parents," but is unable to assist much beyond these roles.
With the clock ticking, and the housing lottery postponed until March, many students point to the OCH website as evidence that ResLife has had trouble changing with the times.
Sophomore Kapil Dargan has been rigorously searching for junior-year housing. His quest began with ResLife, but he was not satisfied with the assistance he received. "We went to ResLife and they pretty much directed us to the [OCH] website, which we had already seen," Dargan said. "It was not helpful because it was not up-to-date. We were pretty much on our own." According to ResLife staff, the site is temporarily being run by students, and has therefore not been updated since last spring.
Although the site does not include up-to-date statistics, OCH has not seen a stark contrast in rent prices since last year. However, even without OCH assistance, it is easy to see that prices for housing have gone up considerably. Dargan bemoans the fact that the monthly rent for a potential apartment on nearby Whitfield Avenue has risen from $450 to $550 to $600 in the last three years.
According to current renters, these statistics are not the exception. In recent years, such price increases have become the rule. Comparing statistics from the OCH website finds that the average monthly price per bedroom has risen less than $100 between May 2000 and Feb. 2001. Monthly rent for one-bedroom apartments then shot up $332 per month to a record-breaking $1213 in 2001.
In addition, all other-sized apartments made leaps between 2000 and 2001, including a rise in two bedroom apartments from $584 to $714 per month. Houses with the greatest number of rooms remained the least expensive per person, with five bedroom houses scraping by for $550 per bedroom. This was still a significant increase from the year before, when the same rooms averaged $473.
A large increase in property values may be to blame for some of the recent price hikes. Such increases effectively mean higher taxes for landlords and higher rents for their tenants.
But both the Medford and Somerville tax assessors' offices have cited little increase in taxes or property values around the University, although there has been a slight upward change since last year. In Medford, the office could only quote a tax change in the past year due to a previous revaluation. The average yearly tax rose very slightly, from $1252 to $1285.
But several local landlords say higher taxes contributed most to rising rents. Despite the reports from Medford and Somerville tax assessors' offices, most landlords say their taxes have risen considerably in the past few years.
Additionally, property insurance has always made local apartments more expensive, since students are considered a greater liability than normal tenants are. This cost, although valid, has not risen recently.
Another possibility for rent increases is the monopoly among a handful of landlords who can price-fix once they have knocked out competition.
But a monopoly in this market would be very difficult, explain several landlords. With land values already so expensive, buying a huge chunk of the market is simply impossible for most people, since they cannot afford the associated 20 percent up-front cost.
One final cost that landlords must endure is what is known as "residential exemption," where landlords that physically live in Somerville have a leg-up on those who simply rent homes there. Somerville landlords get a tax credit valued at $1,164 for living in the town; landlords from other towns must pay full taxes. This increases their costs, which are passed along to renters through higher rent prices.
In the midst of large hikes, there are still a few landlords who claim they have not changed their rents in several years. They are pleased with their customers, saying that they pay on time and in full, and are good about general upkeep.
But this constancy is the exception. Most local landlords say they have needed to raise prices significantly several times during recent years.
These hikes seem to be coming from previous property reevaluations and higher tax rates, which are only now being reflected in current rent prices. And while students may be able to receive some help from OCH, they will need to do much more solo work to find current housing availability and reasonable rent prices.
