Somerville’s Millbrook Lofts apartment complex going condo

The eight-story, 100-unit Millbrook Lofts apartment complex at 9 Medford Street in Somerville, between the Inner Belt area and East Cambridge, opened in mid-2016.

A little more than a year later, Berkeley Investments informed tenants that the building was going condo—and that they had to leave. Berkeley is guaranteeing tenants $1,000 for exiting, and those in the 15 units designated as affordable have the opportunity to buy.

Otherwise, though, there is little right now awaiting Millbrook Lofts’ tenants other than the headaches of moving in a very tight and expensive regional rental market.

Some have banded together in a quickly formed tenants association, and are enlisting the help of local officials to gain what the group calls “fair compensation” for their ousting.

The condos could command $750 a square foot, according to the association (and reported in Cambridge Day), “presumably amounting to $750,000 or more for most units. Our request for fair compensation would be a rounding error on those numbers.”

Good one. Stay tuned.

• Renters at a brand-new Somerville building surprised by news: Millbrook’s going condo [Day]
• Cambridge, Brookline priciest places in Boston area to rent as 2018 starts [Curbed Boston]