How many rooms for rent are available in West Roxbury?
Fewer than anywhere else in Boston, and the reason is structural: 59.3 percent of the housing here is detached single-family homes and 63.6 percent of it is owner-occupied, which leaves a thin band of rentals in two-family houses and a handful of buildings. One room site listed just fourteen rooms across eleven advertisements for the whole neighborhood. Expect 59 on Roomster, most of them scattered around Bellevue Hill, Oak Hill, Riverdale and the Upper Washington blocks rather than clustered in any one place.
How much does a room for rent in West Roxbury cost per month?
The usual band is $950 to $1,250 a month, running from roughly $775 for a small bedroom in a shared house to about $1,750 for a large room with parking and bills included. Look toward Upper Washington Street, the Dedham line and the blocks below Bellevue Hill for rooms under $1,000. Set that against a studio here averaging $1,856 and the case for a room is obvious, but the scarcity is the catch: there may only be a dozen on the market at once, so the useful skill is speed rather than negotiation.
Can I find a room for rent near the West Roxbury VA medical center?
Yes, and it is the neighborhood's largest single workplace. The VA Boston Healthcare System campus at 1400 VFW Parkway opened in 1943 as a 382-bed acute care hospital and now runs a 24-hour emergency department, a nationally recognized acute spinal cord injury program and a CARF-accredited rehabilitation service, drawing clinical staff, visiting families and patients on long courses of treatment. Rooms along VFW Parkway, Spring Street and the Lagrange Street blocks put that within a short drive or a single bus ride.
Can I rent a room here if my job requires a Boston address?
This is a genuine driver of demand in West Roxbury, and worth understanding before you search. Boston requires most municipal employees to be city residents from their first day of work, and while police and fire personnel may move out after ten years, more than 70 percent of both still live inside the city; teachers are exempt under state law. For someone who needs a Boston address but wants a quieter street and a yard, this corner of the city is the obvious answer, which is part of why its small rental stock turns over slowly.
Are West Roxbury rooms for rent near transit, or do I need a car?
There is no subway here at all, which surprises people. What there is instead is commuter rail: three Needham Line stations sit inside the neighborhood, at Bellevue on Colbert Street, Highland at Corey and Hastings, and West Roxbury at 450 Lagrange Street, all of them in Fare Zone 1 and each served by buses 35, 36 and 37. Both Highland and West Roxbury station offer 175 parking spaces. Away from those corridors a car earns its keep, so ask a prospective household which station they actually walk to.
What should I check before renting a room in West Roxbury?
Establish who owns the house, because in a neighborhood this owner-occupied your landlord is very often the family living on the floor below. That can be the best arrangement you will find or the most constrained, so ask how they handle guests, noise and shared laundry before you sign anything. Then check the practical things that come with older houses: how heat is billed, whether the room includes a parking space, and whether the unit is a properly permitted apartment rather than a converted basement.
Rooms for rent in West Roxbury, Boston on Roomster
