Effective asking rent cuts deepened in Boston in December, capping off a trend of decline the market followed throughout the second half of 2020. Boston ended the year with rent cuts of 8.4%, one of the wort showings in the nation, besting only the dismal performances in San Francisco, San Jose and New York, which also got worse at the end of the year. Rent cuts became the norm across the nation in May 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but some markets have managed to recover at least some lost ground since then. Boston, on the other hand, started out with steeper than average cuts in May and has seen declines get increasingly deep since then. Before 2020, the last time Boston saw rent cuts was during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Back then, declines bottomed out at 4.8% and were softer than the price cuts seen in the nation overall.
