Boston apartments aren’t what you’d call affordable. But they’re cheaper than they used to be.

The region has now notched 13 straight months of monthly rent drops compared with the year prior, according to data collected for the Business Journal by Realtor.com. That’s brought rent to an average of $2,930 from $3,054 the year earlier.

Boston’s price drop is simple supply and demand, according to Jiayi Xu, an economist for Realtor.com.

Boston may not be building new homes nearly as quickly as cities in the Sun Belt or elsewhere, but it has added enough to make a difference: More than 37,000 units among buildings with five or more units since 2021.

That’s enough to give the rental market some breathing room. Vacancy rates have risen to 3.2% last year from 2.6% in 2022, according to Xu.

Construction growth is coinciding with sagging demand — fewer international students and a slower labor market. With such high starting prices, rents were bound to face some gravity.

“Elevated rents combined with a cooling job market could push young professionals toward other, more affordable or job-rich metros,” Xu said.

Xu analyzed each of those demand trends. Boston has one of the highest shares of international students among major U.S. metro areas, with 11% of students coming from abroad. Their absence, she said, can have ripple effects on industries relying on the skilled labor they typically provide after graduation.

The Boston-area economy is also facing a cooled-down jobs market. Across the Boston metro area, employment is down 2% over the past year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Across the state, it’s a similar drop of 1.9%.

The rental website Bostonpads.com has also reported more slack in the local apartment market. According to a spring report from that website, availability in April hit 8% — up from 5.5% a year prior and the highest since July 2021, when the market was coming off an early-pandemic wave of suddenly-empty apartments.

Falling apartment prices aren’t unique to the Boston area.

Asking rent across the country’s 50 largest markets has fallen on a year-to-year basis for 35 straight months, according to Realtor.com.

“The big-picture driver is the wave of new multifamily construction,” Xu said.

Xu highlighted another city also going through long drops in prices. In Seattle, where average prices in June were $1,880 compared to Boston’s $2,930, rents have fallen since May 2023. They’ve dropped a cumulative 8%, or $166 a month, over that time there.

Xu called Seattle’s example “a clear consequence of the post-pandemic construction boom that pushed rents down.”

This article first appeared in the Boston Business Journal.