Boston, Massachusetts.
Typical home $761,236 (-1.6% in a year), asking rent $3,271 (+2.1%). Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,585 (+66%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $12,405 -2%
- $773,640$761,236 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $34,549 +5%
- $726,687$761,236 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Boston$3,996
- Massachusetts$3,439
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 75 years.
Typical home values in Boston, MA fell 1.6% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Boston, MA rose 2.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Boston runs $1,957/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $2,241 in Oct 2023.
That is $5,228 a month against $3,271 rent: a $3,996 mortgage payment, plus $418 property tax and $815 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Boston
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$5,228
- Renting$3,271
- Mortgage only$3,996
Property tax · $418/mo 0.66% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Suffolk County, MA
Insurance & upkeep · $815/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts
Boston is a city of 675,647 people in Suffolk County. Half its households earn more than $97,344 a year and half less, against $95,631 across Suffolk County; 17% of its people live below the poverty line. 36% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 64% are rented. Unemployment in Boston was 4.4% in August 2026, and Suffolk County had 0.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Boston is the largest city in Massachusetts and one of the oldest in the country, and it is a place where most households rent rather than own. The people who live here are younger than in much of the country, and a large share hold a four-year degree. Incomes are a little above the county's, though a noticeable number of residents live below the poverty line, and both homes and rents are costly. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, and in professional and business services, with others in banking, insurance and property or in restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Some of the largest workplaces in the city are hospitals and a university, among them Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Womens Hospital and Boston University. Unemployment has eased slightly over the past year, though the number of jobs across Suffolk County has dipped a little. A typical commute is about the length of one that many American workers face, and a fair number of residents work from home.
Things to do. The Freedom Trail and Boston Common are both in or beside town, the trail a walking route through the city's early history and the common a public garden in the middle of it. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston is a short drive away and is one of the city's best known museums. Fenway Park, a stadium for baseball, is also a short drive away.
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- 283,374households
- 55%of adults have a degree
- 17%below the poverty line
- 30 mintypical commute
- 21%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Suffolk County had 712,462 jobs in 2025, 0.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 37° and lows near 23°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 66°. About 49 inches of snow and 44 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Boston Logan International Airport weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Boston
- Massachusetts General HospitalGeneral hospital19,418FTE
- Brigham and Womens HospitalGeneral hospital14,858FTE
- Boston UniversityUniversity or college11,414
- Children's HospitalChildren's hospital10,006FTE
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical CenterGeneral hospital8,791FTE
- Boston Medical CenterGeneral hospital7,500FTE
- Northeastern UniversityUniversity or college6,874
- Dana-farber Cancer InstituteGeneral hospital6,754FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 363 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 159,470 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Boston’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Suffolk County and the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro.
Boston home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Boston$761,236
- Massachusetts$655,219
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 5 Boston listings, and the typical home goes pending in 30 days — the market is cooling.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Boston20.15%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Boston30
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Boston2,146
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Boston609
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Boston$814,959
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Boston99.42%
Zip codes with a Boston address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Boston — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Boston
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 02124 | Dorchester Center | 56,216 | $3,045 | $669,607 |
| 02128 | East Boston | 43,345 | $3,111 | $649,765 |
| 02135 | Brighton | 43,149 | $2,914 | $621,581 |
| 02130 | Jamaica Plain | 40,055 | $3,112 | $788,944 |
| 02136 | Hyde Park | 37,265 | $2,806 | $638,889 |
| 02127 | South Boston | 36,769 | $3,738 | $853,515 |
| 02125 | Dorchester | 33,662 | $3,160 | $637,139 |
| 02131 | Roslindale | 31,151 | $2,874 | $703,893 |
| 02115 | Boston | 29,705 | $3,185 | $901,287 |
| 02121 | Dorchester | 29,040 | $3,228 | $620,807 |
| 02118 | Boston | 28,946 | $3,805 | $962,145 |
| 02119 | Roxbury | 27,377 | $3,200 | $631,962 |
| 02126 | Mattapan | 26,583 | $2,971 | $585,491 |
| 02132 | West Roxbury | 26,444 | $2,830 | $792,121 |
| 02215 | Boston | 24,581 | $3,203 | $697,438 |
| 02122 | Dorchester | 23,479 | $3,134 | $649,001 |
| 02116 | Boston | 21,978 | $3,412 | $1,338,758 |
| 02129 | Charlestown | 20,032 | $3,500 | $1,006,856 |
| 02134 | Allston | 17,667 | $2,934 | $733,753 |
| 02120 | Roxbury Crossing | 15,283 | $3,743 | $935,642 |
| 02114 | Boston | 14,418 | $3,670 | $732,619 |
| 02111 | Boston | 8,407 | $3,921 | $972,203 |
| 02210 | Boston | 6,971 | $4,455 | $1,487,676 |
| 02113 | Boston | 6,385 | $2,868 | $722,502 |
| 02108 | Boston | 3,794 | $3,869 | $1,686,190 |
| 02109 | Boston | 3,612 | $3,757 | $951,157 |
| 02110 | Boston | 2,342 | $4,448 | $1,422,475 |
| 02199 | Boston | 1,292 | $5,930 | $3,281,260 |