Picture this. You are 22 years old, fresh out of college, and ready to move to Boston, one of the best places to live for career growth, quality of life, education, professional sports teams, you name it. You’ve just signed your first ever real job offer, and are buzzing with excitement about figuring out where you will live. You head to the internet to see what advice people have to say online. As you scour blog posts and reviews, your heart drops. Staring out of the screen at you are the words expensive, costly, unaffordable, over and over again.

But why? The following paper will explore just how expensive Boston’s housing market is right now, historical trends that have led its current state, and variables that explain how unaffordable the city metro area is right now, especially for new college graduates.

For anyone growing up in the Greater Boston metro area, one thing that has been abundantly clear about the area is simply how expensive it is. This, combined with the fact that it is well-documented how expensive housing has become in the city over the last twenty years, has made it increasingly unaffordable for new graduates, many of whom are already grappling with crippling student loans, to find affordable places to live.

To truly understand the scale of just how expensive housing is in Boston, the following figure displays the average property price in 2021 by zip code in Boston and its surrounding areas.

With a median rental price of $2,950 a month according to Zumper’s National Rent Report, Boston ranks fourth amongst all cities for a one-bedroom rental, and fifth amongst all cities for two-bedroom rentals. Ranking higher than notably expensive areas such as Los Angeles and the Northern Virginia area, it is clear that not only is Boston flat out an expensive area, it is also incredibly pricey even amongst other areas in the United States.

This trend continues when comparing the city to other urban areas around the globe. The next figure explores the costs of several indices that characterize how expensive a city is in general based on general cost of living.

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One thing is clear from the plot above. That no matter the comparison to another area, or whether it is the cost of living or cost of restaurants, Boston is expensive. In clicking any amount of cities or looking at any index measurement, the city measures up quite similarly to some of the most expensive regions in the world, such as the two Swiss cities of Geneva and Zurich, Reykjavik, and Singapore. All of these areas around the world are known for their expensive cost of living, extending from rent to restaurants, and highlight that even when stacked up with the most expensive cities, Boston is positioned right up there with all of them.