Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Typical home $1,019,246 (-0.5% in a year), asking rent $3,438 (+2.8%). Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$2,090 (+64%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $5,016 -0%
- $1,024,261$1,019,246 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $64,328 +7%
- $954,918$1,019,246 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.
- Cambridge$5,350
- Massachusetts$3,439
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 53 years.
Typical home values in Cambridge, MA fell 0.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Cambridge, MA rose 2.8% over the past year — in step with the nation.
Owning the typical home in Cambridge runs $3,878/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $4,260 in Jan 2025.
That is $7,316 a month against $3,438 rent: a $5,350 mortgage payment, plus $875 property tax and $1,091 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Cambridge
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$7,316
- Renting$3,438
- Mortgage only$5,350
Property tax · $875/mo 1.03% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Middlesex County, MA
Insurance & upkeep · $1,091/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 Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city of 118,403 people in Middlesex County. Half its households earn more than $130,748 a year and half less, against $130,847 across Middlesex County; 13% of its people live below the poverty line. 34% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 66% are rented. Unemployment in Cambridge was 3.3% in August 2026, and Middlesex County had 2.4% 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. Cambridge is a city of a young population, with a median age well below what most older homeowners would expect to find in a Massachusetts community. Very few homes here are lived in by their owners compared with across the county, and typical home values and rents are among the highest anywhere. Household incomes sit about level with the county's, and nearly every adult holds a four-year degree or more. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, summers turn warm in July, and the year brings a fair amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in professional and business services, and in manufacturing, banking and insurance. The largest workplaces in Cambridge include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the biotechnology company Biogen, and Mount Auburn Hospital. Unemployment is a little lower than a year ago, though Middlesex County has fewer jobs than it did a year earlier. A good many people work from home, and the typical commute is of moderate length.
Things to do. Museums are the easiest way to fill a day, and several sit in or beside town, among them the Harvard Art Museums and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, one of the best known art museums in the region, is also in or beside town. A short drive away, Boston Common offers a long-established public garden for a walk.
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- 49,444households
- 81%of adults have a degree
- 13%below the poverty line
- 26 mintypical commute
- 31%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Middlesex County had 903,942 jobs in 2025, 2.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 37° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 64°. About 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Jamaica Plain weather station, 5 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cambridge
- Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUniversity or college14,957
- Takeda: USA Field Sales & Remote EmployeesPharmaceutical preparations manufacturing3,403
- VinfenMental health facilities, residential3,045
- Biogen - CambridgeBiotechnology research and development laboratories or services2,376
- Mount Auburn HospitalGeneral hospital1,826FTE
- Cambridge SchoolsSchool district1,532FTE
- Moderna, TX. - Cambridge MSCVaccines manufacturing1,300
- Sarepta TherapeuticsResearch and development in biotechnology692
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 70 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 18,873 people in all. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (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
FEMA rates every natural hazard here relatively low or very low.
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cambridge’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 Middlesex County and the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro.
Cambridge home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cambridge$1,019,246
- 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 Cambridge listings, and the typical home goes pending in 22 days — the market is heating up.
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.
- Cambridge19.76%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Cambridge22
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Cambridge226
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Cambridge81
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Cambridge$1,133,770
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Cambridge102.84%
Zip codes with a Cambridge address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cambridge — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Cambridge
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 02139 | Cambridge | 40,033 | $3,379 | $990,941 |
| 02138 | Cambridge | 38,509 | $3,205 | $1,133,659 |
| 02140 | Cambridge | 21,204 | $3,360 | $1,066,152 |
| 02141 | Cambridge | 14,517 | $3,650 | $899,595 |
| 02142 | Cambridge | 4,737 | $3,925 | $1,311,411 |