If you rent at Everly and you’re wondering about buying, start with the best argument for staying. Renting keeps your options open. You can leave when the lease ends, go month to month while you look around, or move to a bigger apartment down the hall.
All of that is true at Everly, and every one of those options has a printed price. The building publishes a full fee guide, issued June 10, 2026, and a menu of lease lengths on every available home. Going month to month costs $1,000 a month on top of your rent. Moving to another apartment in the same building costs $1,000. And on September 18, 2026, an ordinary twelve month lease cost $938 to $2,157 a month more than the price shown on the board.
So should you buy? That depends on your numbers, and we’ll get to them. Everly’s own pages settle a narrower point first. Flexibility at 14 Audubon Road is something you pay for each time you use it, and the prices are large enough to set beside a down payment.
Everly Prints Its Whole Price List, to Its Credit
Everly’s pricing page defines its terms before it shows you a price. Base Rent is “the monthly rent for the rental home,” and Total Monthly Leasing Price adds “fixed, mandatory monthly fees” to it. On all six homes the availability map showed us, the two figures were identical, $2,818 beside $2,818. Everly wasn’t adding a fixed monthly fee on top of the rent.
That label has a history. Greystar manages Everly, and in December 2025 the Federal Trade Commission and the State of Colorado settled with Greystar for $24 million over advertised rents that left out mandatory monthly fees. The order requires Greystar to show the total monthly leasing price more prominently than any partial price. Everly’s pages do that, and the fee guide lists its charges one by one, each with an amount, a frequency and a label saying if it’s required, optional or situational.
Nothing on the required monthly list will surprise you. Electricity and gas go to outside providers, water and sewer are submetered, and you carry renters liability insurance. Garage parking is $50 to $100 a month, pet rent is $35 to $75 per pet and storage is $40 to $50. The refundable security deposit is $500. The map’s own estimate of the cash due at move in, a prorated first month plus that deposit, ran from about $700 to about $1,900.
Read that last figure again, because it’s the strongest thing renting has going for it. You can move into Everly for under $2,000, and no purchase gets you through the door for that. Getting into Everly is cheap. Changing your mind is what costs money.
Before you tour. Open the fee guide and read the section headed Situational before the one headed Essentials. The Essentials are bills you already expect. You’ll meet the Situational lines on the day your plans change.
What Does It Cost to Keep Your Options Open at Everly?
Four lines in the Situational section put a price on the things renters say they rent for.
- Staying without a lease: The Month-to-Month Fee is $1,000, described as the “amount, in addition to base rent, for a month-to-month lease.” On a $2,818 apartment that would be $3,818 a month while you shop for a home, if the base rent held still.
- Leaving early: The Lease Buy Out line reads 200.00%, with the note “additional conditions apply.”
- Leaving on short notice: The Insufficient Move-Out Notice Fee also reads 200.00%.
- Changing apartments: The Intra-Community Transfer Fee is $1,000, “due when transferring to another rental unit within community.”
The guide prints 200.00% without saying 200 percent of what. A month’s rent is the obvious guess, and a guess is a poor thing to sign a lease on. The same document says additional fees may apply under the application and the lease, and that you can ask for the lease before you apply.
None of it is hidden. A building of 186 apartments has to plan around who’s leaving and when, and fees like these help pay for that planning. The renter covers it, one decision at a time.
Owning isn’t flexible either. Selling a condominium takes time and costs money in commissions and fees, and nobody should buy a home they expect to leave in a year. An owner who stays put gets something for it, though. On a fixed rate mortgage the principal and interest payment doesn’t change for the life of the loan. Part of every payment becomes your share of the home. At Everly you pay for flexibility separately, and nothing carries over when the lease ends.
What to ask the office. Put three questions in one email. What is the 200 percent a percentage of, on both lines? Does the base rent change when a lease rolls to month to month, or only the $1,000 fee? And if you buy a home in the middle of a lease, which line applies to you? Written answers cost nothing today and save an argument later.
The Price on the Board Belongs to One Lease Length
Each home on Everly’s availability map shows one price with a lease length beside it. Open the home and a menu appears with thirteen lease terms, from three months to fifteen, each with its own rent. We read all six available homes in a browser at about 5:30 p.m. on September 18, 2026.
- Apartment 448, studio, 632 square feet, fourth floor: $2,276 at 11 months. Twelve months is $3,714, which is $1,438 more each month.
- Apartment 225, one bedroom, 789 square feet, second floor: $2,818 at 9 months. Twelve months is $3,792, which is $974 more.
- Apartment 404, one bedroom, 789 square feet, fourth floor: $2,931 at 8 months. Twelve months is $3,869, which is $938 more.
- Apartment 425, one bedroom, 789 square feet, fourth floor: $2,931 at 9 months. Twelve months is $3,963, which is $1,032 more.
- Apartment 334, two bedroom, 1,109 square feet, third floor: $3,174 at 15 months. Twelve months is $5,331, which is $2,157 more.
- Apartment 510, two bedroom, 1,193 square feet, fifth floor: $3,946 at 14 months. Twelve months is $6,023, which is $2,077 more.
Read down that list and the lease lengths are 11, 9, 8, 9, 15 and 14 months. The price on the board is always the cheapest line on that home’s menu, and a different line is cheapest on nearly every home. A renter who wants the usual twelve months pays the difference, which over a year runs from $11,256 on apartment 404 to $25,884 on apartment 334.
The menus don’t slope the way you’d expect, either. The studio was $2,276 at eleven months, $3,714 at twelve, $3,765 at thirteen and $2,292 at fourteen. The third floor two bedroom was $12,817 a month on a five month lease and $3,874 on a six month one. The fifth floor two bedroom was $17,506 a month on a four month lease. “Short term leases” is on Everly’s own amenity list, and the menu shows what one costs.
We won’t guess at why the numbers fall where they do, and the pages don’t say. The effect is easy to see. Take the cheap price and the building has chosen the month your lease ends. Choose the month yourself and you pay for it.
One Day, Six Homes, and the Prices Moved
Every figure above needs a caution. We read the same map at 10 a.m. that day, and by late afternoon three of the six homes had changed. The studio went from $2,283 to $2,276, apartment 425 went from $2,937 to $2,931, and a few short terms on apartment 334 shifted by several dollars. The floor plan card on Everly’s pricing page showed the studio “starting from $2,305” at both hours. That put the building’s two displays $29 apart on the same apartment.
So this is one day’s capture of six homes, and yours will differ. The map is the only place that shows your price for your dates.
Before you renew. Ask for your renewal offer at twelve months and at the cheapest term on the same day, and write down the rent and the month each lease would end. Then count forward. A lease that ends in a month when you can’t move leads straight to the $1,000 month to month fee.
The Twelve Month Premium Is the Size of a Down Payment
Set the smallest gap on that list beside the Wakefield condominium market. Apartment 404 costs $938 a month more at twelve months than at eight. That’s $11,256 over the year, paid for nothing except a normal lease length.
On the same day, the multiple listing feed showed 27 condominiums for sale in Wakefield, and five of them were asking under $380,000. A two bedroom of 698 square feet at 72 Renwick Road in Greenwood, listed the day before, was asking $360,000. A second 698 square foot two bedroom at 80 Renwick Road was $379,000. A 763 square foot two bedroom at 68 Preston Street was $317,500. One bedrooms at 16 Richardson Street and 14 West Water Street were $339,000 and $349,900.
FHA financing allows down payments as low as 3.5 percent, and 3.5 percent of $360,000 is $12,600. The year’s premium for a twelve month lease on apartment 404 is $11,256, and that’s the smallest premium on the map. It covers 89 percent of that down payment.
That comparison needs three cautions. FHA loans carry mortgage insurance. FHA finances a condominium only when the building meets its approval rules. HUD keeps a searchable list of approved projects, and we haven’t checked any Wakefield building against it. And these are older, smaller homes than yours. The feed dates the Renwick Road buildings to 1965. Everly gives you a washer and dryer in the apartment, a salt water pool and an elevator.
Then there’s help a renter may not have counted. MassHousing offers down payment assistance of up to $30,000 to income-eligible first-time buyers, condominiums included, when it’s paired with one of its mortgages.
The Number We Don’t Have
The listing feed doesn’t show condominium fees, so we can’t put a monthly cost of owning next to your rent, and we won’t invent one. In a 1965 building the fee and the reserve fund tell you more than the asking price does. Ask for the fee, what it covers, the reserve balance and any special assessments from the last ten years before you compare anything by the month.
Property tax is easier to pin down. Wakefield’s fiscal 2026 residential rate is $11.74 per $1,000 of assessed value, against $22.40 for commercial property. The 72 Renwick Road listing reports annual taxes of $3,728, which is about $311 a month. For scale, the town’s director of assessing put the average single family home at $825,700 last October. That works out to about $9,694 a year at the certified rate. A small condominium’s tax bill is well under half of that.
Try this. Pull up the Wakefield condominiums under $400,000 and ask one question of each. What payment would my rent at the twelve month price support here? Our rent versus buy page walks through that comparison, and a free pre-qualification puts your own numbers into it.
Thirty-Three Homes at Everly Have a Different Price List
SEB Housing, which markets Everly’s income-restricted apartments, says 33 of the 186 homes are reserved for households at or below 80 percent of area median income. Its page lists a studio at $2,035, a one bedroom at $2,200 and a two bedroom at $2,470, each on a twelve month lease. Income limits run from $96,000 for one person to $137,100 for four, and tenants pay gas, electricity, water and sewer.
SEB’s figures were the only Everly prices we found quoted at twelve months, and the only ones that didn’t move during the day. The one bedroom figure is $1,592 a month under $3,792, the lowest twelve month price the map showed for a one bedroom.
If that’s your apartment. Ask SEB or the leasing office how they recheck your income at renewal. Then ask us what your current income pre-qualifies you for, since several Massachusetts buyer programs have income limits of their own. Both answers are free.
What You’d Be Giving Up
Everly is five stories with a salt water pool, a courtyard fire pit, an outdoor kitchen, a pet park and a fitness center the building calls Club Fit. Every home has a full-size washer and dryer. Its pages make no claim about trains, so a rail commute is a measurement to take yourself. The landlord’s own description is “centrally located off Route 128 and I-93,” with MarketStreet Lynnfield “just outside your door.”
The feature the website says least about is at the end of the street. Wakefield Patch places the entrance to the Reedy Meadow conservation area at the end of Audubon Road and calls the meadow the largest freshwater cattail marsh in the state. Two of the six homes on the map carried the landlord’s “Conservation Views” tag.
A 1965 condominium on Renwick Road has none of that, and you should weigh it. Six homes on the map out of 186 is about 3 percent of the building, so a resident who wants a different apartment has little to choose from and a $1,000 fee to pay for the move.
Make the list. Write down what you’d miss and what you’d pay to keep it. If the list is long, another lease at Everly may be the right call, and then the job is to sign it at the length and price you choose.
Where GoldCoast Comes In
GoldCoast Mortgage Service is an independent mortgage broker in Beverly. John Donlon, who owns GoldCoast, has spent more than 25 years financing homes for families across the North Shore and Greater Boston, and many of them started in a lease like yours. A bank offers you the loans that bank sells. A broker shops your file across many lenders and shows you what comes back.
We’ll pre-qualify you at no cost and with nothing attached. You might find a Wakefield condominium is closer than you assumed. You might find another year at Everly is the smarter move, signed at a term you chose with the fee guide open beside you. If renting still wins for your household, we’ll tell you so. We work with Wakefield buyers regularly, and we wrote a similar breakdown for renters at The Basin, elsewhere in Wakefield, where the board prints “plus Required Fees” under every price and we couldn’t find a fee schedule to read.
Recommended Realtors for First-Time Buyers
We work regularly with two local agents who are good with first-time buyers and who won’t rush you:
- Arthur Martiroso, DNA Realty Group, 617-921-5015
- Joshua Riopelle, Simes City Realty, North Andover, 978-590-2741
You’re welcome to work with any agent you like. We mention them because renters often ask us who to call once the financing side makes sense.
Questions from Renters at Everly
What Are Rents at Everly in Wakefield?
At about 5:30 p.m. on September 18, 2026, the property’s availability map showed six homes. A 632 square foot studio was $2,276, three 789 square foot one bedrooms were $2,818 to $2,931, and two bedrooms of 1,109 and 1,193 square feet were $3,174 and $3,946. Each price belonged to one lease length, from 8 to 15 months, and three of the six had been a few dollars higher that morning.
How Much More Is a Twelve Month Lease at Everly?
On the six homes we read that day, a twelve month lease cost $938 to $2,157 a month more than the price on the board. The board price belonged to the cheapest term on each home’s menu, which was 8, 9, 11, 14 or 15 months depending on the apartment. Over a year the difference ran from $11,256 to $25,884.
What Does It Cost to Go Month to Month at Everly?
Everly’s fee guide, issued June 10, 2026, lists a Month-to-Month Fee of $1,000 “in addition to base rent” for a month to month lease. The same guide lists a $1,000 fee to transfer to another apartment in the community, and lease buy out and insufficient notice fees of 200.00% without stating the base. Ask the office for that base in writing.
Does Everly Charge Monthly Fees on Top of Rent?
On the day we looked, the Total Monthly Leasing Price equaled the Base Rent on all six available homes. Everly wasn’t adding a fixed mandatory monthly fee. Electricity, gas, water and sewer are usage-based and billed separately, and Everly requires renters liability insurance. Garage parking, pet rent and storage are optional monthly charges listed in the fee guide.
What Does a Condo in Wakefield Cost?
On September 18, 2026, the multiple listing feed showed 27 Wakefield condominiums, from $317,500 for a 763 square foot two bedroom on Preston Street to $965,000. Five were under $380,000 and nine were under $600,000. The feed doesn’t show association fees, so ask for the fee, the reserve balance and the assessment history on any building you consider.
Who Manages Everly?
Greystar lists Everly at 14 Audubon Road among the communities it manages, and the footer of Everly’s site links to Greystar’s privacy policy. The “Total Monthly Leasing Price” label on its pages is the same term the Federal Trade Commission used for the all-in figure in its December 2025 settlement with Greystar.