Updated Boston Apartment Price Maps

January 29th, 2013
housing, map
In June 2011 I made a map of Boston-area apartment prices. I've made an updated version: $/room, $/bedroom. As before the data comes from the (awesome) site padmapper, which means it's pretty close to all Boston-area apartments currently on the market.

6/2011 1/2013
per room
per bedroom

This is a different time of year (note to self: repeat in June) so I don't know how much of the change is seasonal. Last time I had 4471 listings with an average of $767/room and $1141/bedroom, now I have 3405 listings with an average of $895/room and $1314/bedroom. This is a much greater increase than inflation: the CPI in June 2011 was 225.922 while the December 2012 one was 229.594, so you would expect $767/room then to turn into $780/room now instead of the $895 we actually see.

(The code is on github.)

Update 2013-01-31: Someone was wondering if combining different sized apartments into one map might be misleading. So I made a version that's just two-bedroom apartments. (That's the most common size, at 986 listings.)

Update 2013-02-01: Someone adapted my code and made maps for Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago, and Detroit.

Update 2013-02-02: I regenerated the maps after manually cleaning up some bad data.

Update 2013-02-09: I made ones for Atlanta and Baltimore. Someone else made one for Washington DC.

Referenced in: Apartment Prices Over Time

Comment via: google plus, facebook, r/boston, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

You will not be a member of the permanent underclass

I see some people worrying about being in the “permanent underclass.” AI will be better than humans at everything, and automate all the jobs, and then no one will be able to earn money through their work.

via Thing of Things April 5, 2026

Microfictions

A few microfictions, very much inspired by Quiet Pine Trees. I hope to add more over time. No LLMs.

via Evan Fields March 27, 2026

Daycares and the Brown School

As someone in Somerville I notice that there are quite high prices regarding childcare. The average family in Somerville pays $1,100 to $3,500 for daycare per month, and I want to make the costs more affordable. I have also noticed that housing is quite …

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts March 22, 2026

more     (via openring)