The Boston Courant ran an insightful piece this weekend that gave some visibility into the Mandarin Oriental rental apartments that are now available for rent, and ready for move-in shortly.
New housing projects in the city of Boston with more than 10 units are required to include an affordable component with units “comparable” to market-rate units. The Boston Mandarin Oriental Developer, CWB Boylston, LLC, is leveraging their apartment rental units to fulfill the affordability requirement, and interestingly, decided to bypass the “comparable” piece and make the affordable rental units the same as the market rate rental units.
A two-bedroom market-rate apartment…rented for about $12,000 per month. That same two-bedroom unit, [with the same finishes] will rent for $2,316 a month to a four-person household not making more than approximately $102,950, or 120 percent of the areas’s median income.
The 14-story residential tower will house 10 affordable rental units, along with 25 market-rate ones, all between floors four and eight. While there are affordable units on the rental side, the for-sale condos, which sold out long ago, with some now going through resale (see Buzz Continues at Boston Mandarin Oriental) have no affordability component to them – recent closings on for-sale luxury condos at the Boston Mandarin Oriental include:
- E-9C $4,450,000
- E-10B $4,095,800
- W-9D $2,950,000
- E-PH2 $13,089,000
- E-10E $5,685,420
- E-10A $5,616,300
- E-9C $4,450,000
- E-9F $2,223,920
Keith Munsell 
Hi there,
I don’t know how you can use the word affordable and Mandarin in the same sentence. So its expensive that’s a given.
My big complaint with the Mandarin is that it looks just like a community hospital I’ve seen somewhere. Ugly, so Ugly! Why did they use that same light brick that was ubiquitous in the last half century, used for hospitals and other institutions. And it ruined the views of the Prudential apartments and it ruined the light on that whole block. A block I’ve loved since 1967. That’s pre-Hancock by the way. Speaking of the Hancock, that is my idea of beautiful and is my favorite building in the city.
So I don’t think much of the new building that ruined that block for me, as I walk up Boylston Street colder than ever in the shadow of that very humdrum looking building. Even if I had the money of Bill Gates I wouldn’t buy into such a utilitarian looking building.