2025 Tufts Off Campus Housing Market Report

The apartment rental market near Tufts University has officially entered its yearly peak in rental availability for 2025.  Apartments near Tufts began hitting the market earlier this year. Both Medford and Somerville Tufts markets saw availability trend upwards in June, a variance from the predominant August/September/October surges we’ve seen over the past decade.  Both apartment availability and vacancies are down slightly from last year, illustrating that demand for off-campus housing near Tufts remains high.

It is important to note that the Tufts’ area rental market follows a different leasing cycle than most of the rest of Medford and Somerville.  Whereas most of Greater Boston’s typical leasing cycle revolves around 9/1, Tufts’ rental market sees a majority of their leases signed for 6/1.  Similarly, as most of Boston sees apartment availability for September peak in early spring, Late September- Early October is often the height of Tuft’s market in terms of rental availability.  There will be years when surges can show up one month earlier and last one month later – but the general inventory leasing groove has been this way for quite some time.

While there are countless nuances that impact how inventory reaches the market- the real time trends expose the general patterns in a meaningful way.  What if things were to change?  Could the broker bill be impacting apartment leasing in the Tufts area?  Could the international student visa issue have impacted our current leasing season near Tufts?  Here are the some of the trends driving Tuft’s area apartment rental market in 2025 going into 2026.

2025 Tufts Off Campus Housing Supply

The current real-time availability rate (RTAR) is 5.65% in the neighborhoods immediately surrounding Tufts University, down -11.88% compared to last September.  Tufts Somerville currently has an RTAR of 6.59% while availability in Tufts Medford sits at 4.98%.  Mid-September is typically when Tuft’s rental market begins to contract, so we expect RTAR to tighten its belt over the next few months.

The current real-time vacancy rate (RTVR) near Tufts is 1.01%.  That figure is down -4.03% compared to a year ago.  Somerville Tuft’s RTVR is down -18.26% compared to a year ago while Medford’s vacancy rate is up +7.14%.  Somerville-Tufts’ RTVR has remained very low throughout 2025, even bottoming out to 0% for several weeks during the spring, indicating a supply shortage in this high demand micro-market.

Overall supply figures have remained relatively steady on Medford's side of the Tufts housing market while both availability and vacancies dropped by double digit margins in Somerville-Tufts.  While overall supply figures are up in metro Boston year-over-year, that trend is not prevalent in the rental markets near Tufts University.  The median days on market for apartments near Tufts University is 60 days in Somerville-Tufts and 55 in Medford-Tufts.  Look for those figures to fall over the next few months as demand for next year's rental supply heats up.

Average Rent Prices Near Tufts University

The average rent price for an apartment near Tufts University is $4,322 in Somerville and $4,129 in Medford.  It’s interesting to note that the gap between the two areas has shrunk over the last 12 months.  On 9/11/24, Somerville-Tufts average rent price hit an all time high of $4,415, +10.38% higher than Medford-Tufts average rent price of $4,000 at that time.  Now Somerville-Tufts’ average rent sits just +4.67% higher than Medford’s side of the Tufts market after dropping -2.15% year-over-year.  It will be interesting to see how price fluctuates this year as the broker bill is a new variable in the rental process.  Revisiting this market report with updated data points in 4 months will give us a better window of understanding the impacts of the new legislation if any.

So Tufts’ off campus renters can now find similar pricing in both Medford and Somerville, especially for 3 bedrooms and 5 bedroom apartments near Tufts.   Prices for 4 bedrooms and 2 bedroom apartments near Tufts remain about +10% higher in Somerville.

2025 Tufts Apartment Rental Market Forecast

The off campus housing market near Tufts University has demonstrated strong demand throughout 2025 despite supply figures loosening in many of Boston’s top student markets.  Still, the effects of the Trump Administration's crack down on international students may still have an impact as we enter the Tufts’ leasing season.  Generally speaking, the colleges that enrolled the most international students had the biggest impact in increasing vacancy and availability rates within a 14 minute distance of their respective university.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the available inventory near Tufts gets absorbed over the next few months.  Tufts University tends to have a lower overall percentage of international students than other notable schools in Boston.  International students make up 25% of students at Boston University and approximately 38% at Northeastern University, whereas Tufts reports their international student enrollment at about 13% of its total student body.  It will be fascinating to see how universities change or modify their international exposure to recruiting foreign students in 2026.

With this in mind, we don’t anticipate a significant year-over-year increase in apartment supply in the Tuft’s markets over the next 6-8 months.  The broker bill could swing some increases in rent to cover the costs of commissions and those data sets should reveal themselves shortly.  It would be safe to assume that we will see some smaller increases in rents than expected cover the costs of various brokerage commissions; but it is too early to tell if we will end up seeing 4-8% increase in rents that some people predicted.  Early indications are showing slightly higher asking rents but there is not enough data to conclude a solid pattern of price increases on rented apartments.

If we had to go out on a limb and say where the rents could end up it might be an increase of only 2-4%.  We will certainly know a lot more on this new paradigm of the broker bill in apartment leasing in the next 8-12 weeks.   We will continue to monitor these trends as they develop here on Boston Pads.