Some have already noticed this fall’s high rate of apartment vacancies in some Boston neighborhoods.

But it’s also a national problem, as the apartment vacancy rate rose in the third quarter to 7.8 percent, the highest since 1986.

The most commonly cited reason: high unemployment. Normally, people flock to rental properties during recessions. But this isn’t your typical recession, with the jobless rate at 9.8 percent nationally (for September) and 9.1 percent in Massachusetts (for August – updated number apparently not available yet).

Experts think vacancy rates will climb higher as we enter the traditionally slower winter rental months.

Rent prices may be lower these days in some Boston neighborhoods. But the Boston-area market still ranks fourth highest in prices after New York, San Francisco and Fairfield County, Conn., for apartment building rentals.

This morning I was reading the  Small Property Owners Association Newsletter and I came across this story.

An East Cambridge owner of a two-family property reports that she rented out her three- bedroom unit upstairs to a single man who truned around and re-rented the unit to four students, charging them in total more than the rent he paid the owner downstairs.

The initial tenant agreed to pay a rent of $1650, which included parking and all utilities. He turned the dining room into another bedroom, charging each student $450.00 a month for a private bedroom as advertised on craigslist.org. He also charged $125 per month for the parking space. The initial tenant is receiving  a total of $1925.00 per month in rent.

Perhaps worst of all, the landlord wanted a single or couple living in her unit upstairs and now she has “I have drinkers, smokers and partyers who dance until two o’clock in the morning, keeping me up at night.”

The initial tenant told the students that he was doing this same arrangement in many other places in Cambridge and Boston and is “teaching” them how to do it, too via Craigslist.org.

The eviction process has begun…..

If your a landlord or a tenant and have a story please email me or leave a comment.

File under: The joys of being a landlord

From the Boston Courant:

Suffolk University will house 270 students at the Holiday Inn on Cambridge Street in Beacon Hill and Hyatt Regency Hotel Inn in Downtown Crossing, where school officials say more supervision of incoming students is possible.

The school will pay about $5,000 per student to house 150 at the Holiday Inn and 120 at the Hyatt.

The school offers on-campus housing to more prospective students than it has beds because there is no way of knowing how many students will attend and the school wants to be sure to fill its 1,048 dormintory spaces.

File Under: Hey Dude, You wanna go to a Holiday Inn Toga Party!

The nation’s apartment market deteriorated in the first quarter as rising unemployment dashed landlords’ hopes that the housing downturn would create a soft landing by bringing former homeowners back as renters.

The vacancy rate for the top 79 U.S. markets jumped to an average 7.2%, a full percentage point increase over the past two quarters and the highest level since the first quarter of 2004, according to statistics from Reis Inc., a New York real-estate-research firm.

The jump in vacancies came even as landlords reduced rents. Asking rents, which exclude concessions and are often the starting point for rent negotiations, …

Source: Wall Street Journal

Boston University and its students were at the forefront of a City Council meeting as members discussed the city’s undergraduate housing limitation.

City Council President Mike Ross (Backbay, Fenway, Kenmore) proposed an ordinance that will increase the enforcement of a law that prohibits more than four unrelated undergraduates from living together. Ross co-sponsored the restriction, which was approved by the Zoning Board in March 2008.

If passed, the council’s proposal will require universities to submit the names of students who violate the law to the Boston Inspectional Service Department, which enforces housing regulations.

Colleges already must figure out where their students live and are required to come up with charts representing this data every six months, according to Ross’s Chief of Staff.

As of 2004, universities must file a “University Accountability Report” that has the number of students, and the number of students that live on and off-campus, according to the City of Boston website. This new ordinance will take the 2004 enforcement further by requiring schools to submit actual violator names.

If the ordinance passes, universities would have to go through the accountability reports to find names of all students who share the same address with more than three of their peers, and report it to the ISD.

Do you think this plan will work?

Source: Daily Free Press