Hi everyone,

I'm a journalism student at Northeastern University collecting data to learn about the phenomenon of renters in the greater Boston area bidding on rental apartments to make their applications more competitive. From my personal experience apartment hunting over the past couple of months, my roommates and I were having to bid hundreds of dollars over the asking price in order to secure an apartment. But, I want to know if this is a widespread phenomenon.

I created a short 12-question survey that will help me collect the data I need to answer my question. Demographic and geographic questions in the survey will help me see if this phenomenon affects certain groups or areas more than others. The survey should take no more than 3-5 minutes to complete. All responses will be anonymized when presented in news story data visualizations.

The Google Form survey is available here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfT5jdEe22iVDAwQ-tTQZzeYVfx4Jp_cFyktsQYSmXTR2ooFA/viewform?usp=sf_link

After you fill it out, please feel free to send it to anyone else you know who rents in the greater Boston area. I'll post the final results here for everyone to see once the research is complete!

Comments

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CC_Ramone t1_iqojngf wrote on October 1, 2022 at 10:53 PM

People who did pay above asking price are probably more likely to take the survey.

elijah_rm OP t1_iqotwri wrote on October 2, 2022 at 12:14 AM

I don't discount that as a possibility, but the responses I've received so far wouldn't suggest that to be the case.

PM_me_PMs_plox t1_iqq5m0j wrote on October 2, 2022 at 8:16 AM

You can’t tell based on this survey. All the data is already conditional on their taking the survey.

[deleted] t1_iqp2pw9 wrote on October 2, 2022 at 1:26 AM

And they suck.

pillbinge t1_iqpn36f wrote on October 2, 2022 at 4:29 AM

I've heard of it happening on Reddit but not in real life. The people I know renting in real life have some great deals. I wonder if people who are will be more likely to fill this out.

Mr-Chewy-Biteums t1_iqqzbjy wrote on October 2, 2022 at 1:49 PM

FWIW to your survey:

I have been managing a 3-family rental in western Mass for 20 years. Over the summer I had a vacancy on a 2-bedroom. I had 12 showings of which 10 applied. I had narrowed it down to 2 applicants when one of those 2 offered me more than I was asking.

I was kind of floored. I had never had that happen. After some initial hand-wringing, I gave them the apartment. It felt weird.

Thank you