Why does everyone in Boston move on September 1?
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 ‘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, wh...
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 macroe...
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.
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