Why does everyone in Boston move on September 1?

September 1 is a day of moving truck madness, statuesque trash pile-ups, and not-so pleasant traffic jams. The day has even generated its own lingo (see: Storrowing, Allston Christmas). But despite local lore, the annual move-in phenomenon has largely gone unstudied by housing researchers and economists.

There’s a widely-held notion that Boston’s moving day falls on September 1 because of students starting the new academic year. But is this actually true? Has it always been this way, and will it ever change?

When did September 1 become ‘moving day’?

The earliest mention of September 1 as Boston’s “moving day” in The Boston Globe archives comes from a September 1, 1899 article titled “Getting Back To The City,” according to The Globe’s researcher and librarian Jeremiah Manion.

The article describes the end of summer vacation and the return to the city for work, school, and to prepare for the winter season.

“With people domiciled in the country, tradition has always fixed upon Sept. 1 as ‘moving day.’ It is thought to be incumbent upon them to get back into the city, prepare the children for school, and set things in order for the winter’s duties,” the article reads.

An article from September 1, 1925 titled “Much Greater Boston Furniture On Vans Today” also includes the date as Boston’s moving day, and vividly describes the chaos of moving.

The article explains that “a certain percentage of the furniture in the city is loaded on vans, en route between one home and another.” It goes on to describe the post-move mayhem of unpacking.

“By tonight, most of the loads will be unloaded. The parlor furniture will be upside down in the new kitchen and the family will be eating in the bedroom with a bedspring for a table. The bedding will be buried underneath rolls of carpets and rugs, concealed behind framed pictures, and otherwise a place where it will be impossible to sleep until everything in the house has been moved to its future location. When that is done no one will be able to sleep from weariness. Yea, verily, this is moving day,” the article reads.

Interestingly, the article says May 1 used to be Boston’s moving day, but the date was moved to September 1 to accommodate families’ summer vacation schedules and to prevent landlords from losing profits due to vacant housing.

“When it occurred on May 1, the family was quite apt to make a temporary arrangement of some sort in order to spend the Summer in a cottage at a beach or in the mountains or in camp, and with the increasing annual pilgrimage to these regions of coolness from the cities, and increasing number of houses remained vacant during the Summer, in some cases reducing the landlord’s profits to an unsatisfactory amount,” the 1925 article reads.

The ‘gravitational pull’ of students

As of fall 2023, there were about 163,000 students enrolled in Boston-based undergraduate and graduate degree programs, according to a Boston Student Housing Report. Among them, nearly 53,000 (32.5%) lived on-campus or in university-provided housing, while just over 39,900 students (24.5%) lived at home (4,546 of these students were studying abroad or in a co-op program). The remaining 69,836 students (42.9%) lived in private housing, primarily in the metro Boston region, the Student Housing Report found.

Experts like Barry Bluestone, a professor emeritus of political economy and the founding director of the Dukakis Center at Northeastern University seem to think these students are responsible for the Sept. 1 move-in date.

He said the pull of the academic calendar is the main driving force, as students of all ages and families return to the city for the start of the school year.

“Boston’s large college student population is number one, but classes for K-12 students also usually begin just around September,” he said.

Demetrios Salpoglou, Boston Pads CEO agreed, saying Boston is so heavily influenced by education that it is pulled to the academic calendar and a September 1 lease cycle in an almost orbital way.

“It’s almost as if the September 1 cycle is the sun, and even when we get off it, the gravitational pull brings us back to it,” he said.

But the academic calendar isn’t the only factor, according to Bluestone. The other driving force? Summer vacation.

“People will look to rent a place beginning around September 1 so that they don’t have to pay an extra month of rent when they’re not actually going to use the place,” he said.

People don’t move in cold weather

It’s possible that students aren’t the primary reason why Boston moves on Sept. 1, according to Douglas Quattrochi, the executive director of MassLandlords, a non-profit trade association for landlords.

He theorized that Boston’s cold climate, rather than its student population, is to blame for the Sept. 1 move-in date.

“Boston has a particularly difficult climate where we have these freeze-thaw cycles. It’s just dangerous to be moving heavy stuff in the winter,” Quattrochi said.

He pointed to real-time apartment listings data from Boston Pads to support his idea, which shows a peak in listings in March and a slow decline as September approaches.

“As soon as you get into March, April, May, those listings are down, leases are signed, and listings are low. It’s at the lowest point in September. People are trying to get in before the winter, and possibly before the school year as well. I think the winter is the main driver and the school year will be kind of secondary,” Quattrochi explained.

Landlords and tenants are searching in September

There’s an economic theory that offers a compelling theory as to why residents move on a single date, as opposed to a staggered lease cycle system of multiple dates.

According to Jaromir Nosal, an economics professor at Boston College who focuses on macroeconomics, the economic theory is called “search and matching.” Here’s how it works.

The idea of “matching” goes beyond traditional supply and demand - it thinks of supply and demand as something slightly more individualized. In the case of the rental market, both sides (i.e. tenant and landlord) are looking for a unique product: tenants want a specific apartment and landlords want a specific tenant.

In a market where all of the products are different (i.e. all of the rental housing is different and all of the tenants are different), how do both parties come together to find not just a good match, but the best possible match? This is why timing - meaning when landlords and tenants are searching - is important.

“Landlords don’t want any months of vacancy and want the most reliable tenant. Tenants don’t want to pay double for two apartments (or be without one) and want the best location,” Nosal explained.

How do they solve this issue of timing and information, of not knowing when the other is searching? The short answer is coordination.

“If we can coordinate on a single date, then [renters] don’t have to worry about when apartments become available and landlords don’t have to worry about renters becoming available, because they know we’re going to coordinate on a single date. So landlords know when to expect a bunch of applications, and renters know when to expect a bunch of apartments becoming available,” he said.

By coordinating on a single move-in date and working backwards from there, landlords and tenants search at the same time, have more choices in their search because everyone is searching together, and as a result of having more choices, both have the potential for better quality matches.

“Everybody’s happier in some sense,” he said.

But why September 1, specifically? The search and matching theory explains why it might be beneficial for landlords and tenants to coordinate on a single move-in date, but it doesn’t explain why we choose September 1 as opposed to any other date throughout the year.

This is where students and the academic calendar come into play, Nosal said. Small things can push the market towards a specific date. In the case of Boston, “it is the fact that we have so many universities,” he said. This nudge is called a “coordination device” in economics.

Essentially, even though students don’t account for the whole rental market in Boston, because they have to move-in by the start of the school year (i.e. by September), they help narrow down the coordination day and push the market toward a specific date.

For a landlord, the more tenants they have coming through to look at their vacancies, the more they can actually pick somebody, and there’s a better potential for a good match. The same is true for the tenant. If there are vacancies to look at, the very fact that they can choose from many is valuable.

Landlords, then, have a decision to make: do they pick September 1 as their lease start date to accommodate students who are inflexible and young professionals who are flexible on a move-in date? Or do they choose a non-September 1 date to get working professionals only, but no students?

By choosing September 1, landlords get more choices of tenants (students and non-students), the potential for better matches, and more value for being vacant. Renters follow the September 1 move-in date because landlords choose it. So, the city ends up coordinating on a date, and that date is driven by a small segment of the market (i.e. students), Nosal theorized.

Can we ever get off of the September 1 lease cycle?

For landlords and renters alike, September 1 is a chaotic and stressful day, and many might wonder if there’s a better way Boston can structure its lease cycles.

“It’s really hard to explain, from a landlord’s perspective, how it helps us to have a September 1 date,” Quattrochi of MassLandlords said.

From an economic perspective, it would take “a lot to knock this kind of market off from [September 1] to some other date,” according to Nosal. Such an event would have to be drastic (think Covid or a natural disaster, he said.)

But even though renters and landlords might not enjoy the annual phenomenon, Nosal said it works - and it’s extremely efficient - from an economic point of view.

“What theory tells us is, yeah, this is how it’s supposed to happen. It’s supposed to be coordinated. So we shouldn’t be worried about it. We shouldn’t be trying to break that outcome in any way,” he said.

He said structuring our lease cycle this way might mean landlords and tenants have better quality matches because they have more choices, as opposed to having a staggered lease cycle with fewer choices.

“At the end of the day, we see throughout the year fewer people moving because the match is better, because we have this coordination, because everybody has a choice and is maybe settling into an apartment that is a better match for their needs,” he said.