The apartment rental market in Malden, MA has not witnessed any kind of significant growth over the past year. In fact, the year-over-year changes in the real-time vacancy rate of Malden indicate that apartment demand is lower now than it was a year ago. While other suburbs like Quincy and Newton have registered healthy growth in demand, the same cannot be said about rental properties in Malden. While it’s true that the vacancy rate for Malden apartments is currently lower than the Metro average, it has still increased by 33% compared to November 2020.
Calculating the apartment vacancy rate (RTVR) is done by dividing the total number of vacant apartments by the total supply of apartments for an area. The availability rate (RTAR), on the other hand, is calculated by adding the total number of vacant apartments with those that are available for rent but not vacated, then dividing by the total supply of apartments.
The real-time Malden vacancy rate is at 1.28%, which is slightly lower than the vacancy rate of the city of Boston (1.33%). As we know, the vacancy rate is inversely proportional to the demand for rental properties. At 2.70%, the vacancy rate in nearby Melrose is much higher than that of Malden. Some of the other neighboring suburbs that have higher vacancy rates than Malden include Everett (2.88%) and Belmont (2.57%). Malden still registers a higher vacancy rate than many of the towns in its vicinity. At 0.00%, Framingham has completely run out of apartment inventory which is quite impressive. At 1.25%, Winthrop has registered a lower vacancy rate than Malden.
In terms of RVTR YOY change percentage, there has been a 33.33% increase in Malden’s RTVR over the last year. Many surrounding towns, on the other hand, have registered decreases in vacancies during the same time span. The RTVR of Newton, for instance, fell by -50.76%. Quincy registered a drop of -30.90% in its RTVR. In many areas, though, there was a significant rise in RTVR. Belmont experienced a rise of +221.25% YOY RTVR %, the second-highest YOY increase in Boston’s suburbs behind only Melrose, which experienced the highest YOY rise in RTVR at +233.33%.
At the moment, the real-time availability rate in Malden is 1.73%. It is quite close to the availability rate in Newton which is at 1.79%. Weymouth and Watertown also have similar real-time availability rates at 1.71% and 1.61% respectively. In Malden, the change in RTAR YOY% has been +20.14%. This % change has been close to that of Winthrop where the RTAR YOY change % stands at +23.68%.
Despite the increases in apartment vacancies in Malden, its position relative to the Metro average indicates that the rental market in Malden has become more desirable than before the pandemic. Malden historically held one of the higher vacancy rates in Metro Boston, but that has changed over the course of the last 2 years. We will continue to monitor this data to provide Boston real estate market updates.
