The Boston Apartment You Can’t Afford, but Will Probably Rent Anyway

All the Reasons We Make Outrageous Prices Our New “Budget”

By Marianna Gavurmadzhyan

Graphic by Yeyoung Jang

When my friend told me there were apartments with spiral staircases, I was sold. I was fully prepared, alongside my three friends, to spend senior year in a beautiful apartment with a spiral staircase to live out my princess dreams.

Flash forward two weeks, we were sitting in a realtor’s office filling out our budget. We thought $5,400 was decent for four girls, after all, the apartments we had inquired about didn’t exceed $4,500.

So imagine our shock when the cheapest apartment of the day was $5,800, in an area we didn’t want. And the spiral staircase? It led down to the basement, which included three out of the four bedrooms, one of which didn’t even have a window. A dungeon in the castle.

The worst part was had it not been for our friend’s dad talking some sense into us, we would have gotten one of the apartments listed at over $6,200. Why?

Because we weren’t just paying for an apartment, we were buying into the idea of it.

We had already pictured the life: the spiral staircase, our own rooms, senior year memories, that “princess” vibe. Once that vision sets in, it’s really easy to justify numbers that don’t actually make sense anymore. The details—price, location, a literal windowless bedroom (still not over that one)—start to feel secondary to the feeling of “this is what it’s supposed to be like.”

There’s also a bit of group momentum at play. With four people all excited, no one wants to be the one to say, “wait, this is a bad deal.” So instead, the conversation shifts toward “how can we make this work?” rather than “should we do this at all?”

And then there’s the classic trap: anchoring. We went in thinking $4,500 was normal, but once we started hearing $5,800, $6,200, those numbers slowly started to feel less crazy. Not reasonable, but less shocking than they should have been.

Then there’s context to take into account. At a school that costs nearly $100,000 a year, these apartments start to feel cheap by comparison. That kind of environment quietly rewrites what “reasonable” looks like. We hear crazy numbers, do the math, and find that it’s hardly any more expensive, if at all. Spending over $6,000 on rent doesn’t feel outrageous when everything is already priced at a premium. And more than that, it’s the standard. People were shocked that we even found listings around $4,000 in the first place.

In a place like Boston, the housing market has perfected itself around students: high demand, predictable turnover, and a constant influx of renters who adapt. It creates this bubble where inflated prices become normalized.

Even the timeline proves it. We were apartment hunting in January for September. In most other cities, including big ones like LA and New York, who signs a lease eight months in advance, puts down a first month’s deposit, and a security deposit that early? But here, it’s just how things work. It’s expected.

So why would anyone say yes?

Because at that moment, it doesn’t feel like making a bad decision. It feels like doing exactly what everyone else is doing, following a system that makes something unreasonable feel completely normal.