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Real Estate Prices & Overview

Merrimac St / Portland St median real estate price is $939,216, which is more expensive than 80.1% of the neighborhoods in Massachusetts and 91.0% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.

The average rental price in Merrimac St / Portland St is currently $6,774, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. The average rental cost in this neighborhood is higher than 99.7% of the neighborhoods in Massachusetts.

Merrimac St / Portland St is a densely urban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Merrimac St / Portland St real estate is primarily made up of small (studio to two bedroom) to large (four, five or more bedroom) apartment complexes/high-rise apartments and small apartment buildings. Most of the residential real estate is renter occupied. Many of the residences in the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood are newer, built in 2000 or more recently. A number of residences were also built between 1970 and 1999.

Vacant apartments or homes are a major fact of life in Merrimac St / Portland St. The current real estate vacancy rate here is 27.8%. This is higher than the rate of vacancies in 93.6% of all U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, most vacant housing here is vacant year round. This can sometimes be the case in neighborhoods dominated by new construction that is not yet occupied. But often neighborhoods with vacancy rates this high are places that can be plagued by a protracted vacancy problem. If you live here, you may find that a number of buildings in your neighborhood are actually empty.

Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics

Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Boston, the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.

People

If you come to know the people here, you will recognize that you're in the company of one of the wealthiest communities in the nation. In fact, a mere 2.4% of America's neighborhoods are wealthier than the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood. Real estate here is exceedingly well-maintained, and similarly, tends to maintain its value over time. The cars driven are mostly luxury brands like Mercedes, Audi, BMW, and Lexus. If the public schools aren't up to snuff, the residents of this neighborhood preferentially send their children to private preparatory schools. Vacation to Disney? Yes, but equally popular are summers in Europe. As one would expect in a considerably wealthy neighborhood such as this, Merrimac St / Portland St also has one of the lowest ratings of child poverty in the nation.

In addition, the rate of college educated adults in the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood is a unique characteristic of the neighborhood. 81.4% of adults here have received at least a 4-year bachelor's degree, compared to the average neighborhood in America, which has 34.3% of the adults with a bachelor's degree. The rate here is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.2% of all U.S. neighborhoods.

Also, if you're looking for an active nightlife with lots of opportunities to flirt and find romance, then you probably won't have to go too far from the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood to find it. Only 2.1% of the neighborhoods in the country have a larger proportion of young, single professionals. The nightlife may not be reminiscent of a "Sex and the City" episode, but the people who live here find friendship, romance, fun, and socializing readily available. In addition to being an excellent choice for young, single professionals, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for urban sophisticates.

Real Estate

The Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood is very unique in that it has one of the highest proportions of one, two, or no bedroom real estate of any neighborhood in America. Most neighborhoods have a mixture of home or apartment sizes from small to large, but here the concentration of studios and other small living spaces is at near-record heights. With 99.2% of the real estate here of this small size, this most assuredly is a notable feature that makes this neighborhood unique, along with just a handful of other neighborhoods in the U.S. that share this characteristic.

In addition, one of the really unique and interesting things about the look and setting of the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood is that it is almost entirely dominated by large apartment buildings, such as apartment complexes or high-rise apartments. 96.6% of the residential real estate here is classified as such. This puts this neighborhood on the map as having a higher proportion of large apartment buildings than 99.3% of all neighborhoods in America.

Furthermore, if you like the look and ambience of new homes and newly built neighborhoods, you will love the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood. A whopping 93.5% of the homes and other residential real estate here were built after 1999, which is a higher proportion of new homes then you will find in 99.2% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. Everything here just feels new. In fact, the concentration of newer homes here is so great that they completely dominate the landscape. In most neighborhoods, there is a mixture of ages of residential real estate, but here it is almost completely built during one time frame: 2000 through today.

Also of note, renter-occupied real estate is dominant in the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood. The percentage of rental real estate here, according to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, is 93.8%, which is higher than 97.8% of the neighborhoods in America. If you were to buy and live in the property you bought here, you would be almost alone in doing so.

Finally, the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood is very densely populated compared to most U.S. neighborhoods. In fact, with 34,032 persons per square mile in the neighborhood, it is more packed with people than 97.4% of the nation's neighborhoods.

Occupations

The Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood has a higher proportion of its residents employed as executives, managers and professionals than 99.1% of the neighborhoods in America. In fact, 80.2% of the employed people here make a living as an executive, a manager, or other professional. With such a high concentration, this truly shapes the character of this neighborhood, and to a large degree defines what this neighborhood is about.

Modes of Transportation

In the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood, walking to work is a real option for many. In fact, NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research reveals walking to and from work is the chosen way to commute for 21.2% of residents here. This is a higher proportion of walking commuters than we found in 98.3% of American neighborhoods. Get ready to put on your walking shoes if you move here!

Also, in the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood, many people's commute means walking from the bedroom to the home office. NeighborhoodScout's analysis found that 32.6% of residents worked from home. This may not seem like a large number, but Scout's research shows that this is a higher percentage of people working from home than 98.0% of the neighborhoods in America. Often people who work from home are engaged in the creative or technological economy, such as is found in areas around Boston, and in Silicon Valley. Other times, people may be engaged in other businesses like trading stocks from home, or running a small beauty salon.

Finally, in the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood, 17.0% of people ride the train to work each day. This is a very high percentage compared to most places. In fact, NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this is a higher level of train ridership than in 96.8% of the neighborhoods in America.

Car Ownership

We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. 37.6% of the households in this neighborhood don't own a car at all. This is more carless households than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.9% of U.S. neighborhoods.

Diversity

Did you know that the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood has more Portuguese and Brazilian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Portuguese ancestry and 1.8% have Brazilian ancestry.

Merrimac St / Portland St is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 2.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Japanese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.2% of the neighborhoods in America.

Migration / Stability

The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. In the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood, a greater proportion of the residents living here today did not live here five years ago than is found in 97.0% of U.S. Neighborhoods. This neighborhood, more than almost any other in America, has new residents from other areas.

The Neighbors

There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.

The neighbors in the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood in Boston are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 97.6% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America's neighborhoods.

What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.

In the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood, 80.2% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 12.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (6.3%).

Languages

The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood is English, spoken by 78.2% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese.

Ethnicity / Ancestry

Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.

In the Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood in Boston, MA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (22.8%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (21.4%), and residents who report English roots (14.4%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (5.2%), along with some Portuguese ancestry residents (4.6%), among others. In addition, 16.3% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.

Getting to Work

Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in Merrimac St / Portland St neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (36.7% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (27.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (21.2%) and 17.0% of residents also take the train for their daily commute. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


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