In Boston, Labor Day isn’t the only holiday this weekend. There’s also “moving day.”
We’re coming up on Labor Day, and if you live in Boston, you’ll know there’s another holiday this weekend: moving day. Many of Boston’s rental housing units start their lease cycle on Sept. 1 every year.
Sept. 1 has been Boston’s unofficial moving day for more than a century. Why has the date stuck around?
“Well, in Boston, we have a natural initiation point, which is the start of the school year,” said Jon Gruber, a professor of economics at MIT.
It’s a college town, Gruber added. But tens of thousands of students needing rentals at the same time in the same city causes some challenges or in economist-speak: congestion costs.
“You can’t fit them all in the apartment at the same time. You can’t all get moving trucks to move in that same day,” said Gruber.
Not to mention the already crowded, narrow Boston streets, which devolve into sheer chaos. That’s according to Adam Guren, professor of economics at Boston University and a veteran of the Sept. 1 move.
“It is a crush — and getting movers a mess,” he said.
Still, Guren said there’s a good economic reason the rental market concentrates around a single day: It makes it easier for landlords and tenants to find the right match.
“People have better search outcomes when there’s more things to look at,” he said.
But if you’re not a student and you need a rental starting any other time of year, good luck.