Fancy condos, BMWs, and Bulgari: Why international students are so valuable to Boston's economy

Boston Globe

16-06-2025

Their seemingly boundless spending materializes in flashy and unmissable ways — in the Maseratis students park along Commonwealth Avenue, the Balenciaga sneakers they wear to class, and at the tables of the poshest restaurants, including Yvonne's, Trade, and Contessa.
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Perhaps nowhere is foreign students' influence more striking than the high-rise buildings in Downtown Crossing and Fenway, where families frequently purchase condos for children studying oceans away, and students rent top-dollar apartments in the city's swankiest buildings.
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Now, as the White House moves to revoke some student visas and
The Newbury Street outpost of designer jewelry brand Bulgari.
Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
To be sure, not
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It's not yet clear how many of those international students will return in the fall, as legal challenges against Trump's moves to restrict visas wind through the courts.
But even if his mandates are reversed, they're hitting during 'high season' for student visa applications, said Tom Dretler, chief executive of the international student advising service Shorelight Education.
'This is like deciding you're going to stop all retail sales right before Thanksgiving and saying maybe you'll open it on Dec. 26,' Dretler said. 'At colleges, you can do four years' worth of damage in a month and a half.'
The fallout is starting to emerge. Boutiques that retain Mandarin-speaking sales staff are waiting to gauge the drop-off in Chinese customers, and real estate brokers are watching to see how a plunge in foreign students could transform the housing market.
That population has long accounted for a big slice of the city's condo market, dating back to Kuwaitis who came to Boston in the 1990s. Families from abroad typically buy ahead of a student's freshman year and sell after graduation at a profit. Many of the priciest condos in Boston are occupied by young adults
from China and Saudi Arabia, said Brett Star, principal broker at Star Residential.
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'The number of times I listed something in Boston for sale, had someone from outside the country tour it on FaceTime for a student, and then saw an all-cash offer almost immediately is exceptional,' he said. 'You basically expected that.'
In January, for example, an apartment at Millennium Place was vacated by a few international students abruptly.
They had just moved out of the Downtown Crossing luxury condo building, where nothing sells for under a million, and left behind a small fortune's worth of stuff: guitars, designer clothes, three MacBooks, $1,000 worth of liquor, and in the bathtub, a pile of copies of a drinking board game named 'Wasted' that the residents had apparently produced, and then abandoned, like everything else in the apartment.
That might be an extreme example, but
Millennium Place on Washington Street in Downtown Crossing.
Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
'When you all of a sudden start to think about a force of individuals who fuel the housing market with no way to replace them, what happens?' DeRocker asked. 'Will there be a pullback in home values? Will there be a surplus in inventory?'
Those worries have given way to uncertainty in neighborhoods like Allston, where foreign residents have reshaped the streetscape. Over the past decade,
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'They would both have a lot less customers and revenue if these mandates go into effect,' he said.
The same goes for luxury retail. Many foreign students purchase Dior saddle bags and Le Labo perfume in Boston because the products are more affordable
in the US compared to the same goods back home, said one Boston-based luxury retail executive, who was not authorized to share his name by his employer. Boutiques rely on that steady flow of sales year after year.
'A good portion of the stability in luxury retail in Boston is sustained with the consistency of the student population,' the executive said. 'It's like the tide. You know it's going to come in at this time, and go out at this time. If we were to start to see a cap on how many international students are coming from any university, that is going to have severe repercussions.'
Employee Cristian Petre detailed tires on a Porsche for sale at the Boston Foreign Motors lot in Allston.
David L. Ryan/ Boston Globe Staff
For Riccardo Dallai Jr., foreign-born students are a good chunk of the customer base at Riccardi, the fashion boutique he owns on Newbury Street
offering Comme des Garçons sneakers, Moncler bomber jackets, and Loewe hoodies. At least once a week, he said, a Turkish master's student browses his selection in search of new styles, one of many international students who frequent the shop.
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'Hopefully, they come back to school next year,' Dallai said. 'That is the main wild card.'
At Boston Foreign Motors in Allston, business also follows the academic calendar, said owner Milad Farahani, thanks largely to
international students. For 20 years, he has watched students — especially from Malaysia — refer him from friend to friend, creating a never-ending line of clients looking for BMWs, Mercedes, and Land Rovers. They sell cars back to him in May, and he flips them to a new buyer come fall. Offers are typically all-cash, even
for the six-figure vehicles.
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'We do think it could affect things to not have those people come into the country or into Boston,' Farahani said.
The slowdown may already be here.
Leonardo Solís, owner of the International Student Guest House, a short-term rental service that caters to foreign students, once owned seven apartment buildings in Back Bay and a transportation company, mostly catering to foreign students. At his peak, he hosted 100 students a year. But those numbers began to dwindle during the COVID-19 pandemic, and have fallen again this year. Today, his client list from abroad is closer to five.
'Boston has always been a beacon for international students with money,' Solis said. 'But that wealthy population of international students just doesn't seem to be coming as they used to, and I don't know if they are ever going to come back.'
Leonardo Solís checked the mail at International Guest House on Beacon Street in the Back Bay.
David L. Ryan/ Boston Globe Staff
Take Big Night Live. Ed Kane, co-owner of Big Night Entertainment, thought it would be a slam dunk when he booked Alan Walker for a show. The Norwegian DJ had filled stadiums in China and India during a record-breaking 2024 world tour, and foreign students from those very countries are the lifeblood of nightclubs in Boston, snagging tables and bottle service.
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But Walker's May 30 show at the 1,500-person venue didn't even sell out, Kane said. A fifth of the general admission tickets went unsold; a few tables stayed empty.
Kane said he saw it coming.
'I feel like the international market is exactly where I thought it was, which is not great right now,' said Kane, who also operates The Grand, Memoire, and Scorpion Bar. 'It's been coming for 12 to 18 months, and here it is.'
Andrew Brinker of the Globe staff contributed to this story.
Diti Kohli can be reached at