Re: Residences at Kensington
I still wonder when saturation of "luxury rentals" will hit... at some point the number people who can afford to pay really high rents will run dry. Places like the Kensington will have a hard time filling up without dropping rents. I'm not under any illusion that that's happening here, but it must happen eventually. Maybe I'm just naive about the Boston real estate market...
The good news for lux rentals is that Boston supports a lot of good jobs. A lot. Remember how this is one of the most wealthy and successful cities in the country? Sure we don't have the bling and glamour of NY and LA, but there a hell of a lot of wealthy people here.
Doctors, Lawyers, Financiers, Engineers, Professors, Accountants, Institutional Administrators (hospitals, universities, etc), municipal government big-shots, State government big-shots, Hotel managers, Restaurant owners... Please feel to add to the list...
Those are all 6-figure jobs. Many ten's of thousands if not hundred's of thousands of job's in metro-Boston pay 6-figures. Two of those people get married, you can easily hit over a quarter million. I'm talking about working people here. I'm not even talking about the RICH, of which Boston has more than its fair share.
While many such people have not chosen to live in the city in past, the trend among upper-middle and high income earners is that more of them (certainly not all of them) are choosing to remain in or return to the city.
Think of luxury new construction as slowing the pace of gentrification. Those people where here/coming anyway. The Kensington and the like just give them one more option of where to live rather than buying something older and renovating the hell out of it.