Chester, Massachusetts.
Typical home $305,456 (+3.2% in a year). Springfield, MA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$927 (+137%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,438 +3%
- $296,017$305,456 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $72,543 +31%
- $232,913$305,456 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.
- Chester$1,603
- Massachusetts$3,439
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Chester, MA rose 3.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Chester, Hampden County, Massachusetts
Chester, in Hampden County, had 552 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Hampden County was 5.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.5% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Hampden County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Chester is a very small hill town where most people know one another, and few places in Massachusetts feel smaller. Household poverty is rare here, and homes are priced below what many buyers in the state would expect. Adults with a four-year degree are fewer than in much of the country, and almost no one works from home. Winters are cold and very snowy, with January highs near freezing, while summers are pleasantly warm and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and professional and business services close behind. The commute is a fairly long one, which fits a town this small and rural. Across Hampden County, jobs slipped slightly last year and unemployment is a little higher than it was a year earlier. Large employers across the county include Baystate Medical Center, Springfield Schools and Holyoke Medical Center.
Things to do. Chester-Blandford State Forest lies in or beside town, so woods and trails are close at hand. C. M. Gardner State Park is a short drive away and is another protected area for walking and being outdoors. For a day out, the Norman Rockwell Museum is a longer drive away, and the same is true of Six Flags New England.
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- 242households
- 15%of adults have a degree
- 2%below the poverty line
- 28 mintypical commute
- 2%work from home
What people in Hampden County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Hampden County had 201,216 jobs in 2025, 0.5% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 12°; warmest in July, with highs near 80° and lows near 56°. About 77 inches of snow and 54 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Worthington weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Hampden County
- Baystate Medical CenterGeneral hospital6,945FTE
- Springfield SchoolsSchool district4,290FTE
- BMP - Baystate Medical PracticesPhysicians' offices2,187
- Springfield NDCMail and parcel delivery1,619
- Trinity Health of New EnglandMedical doctors', mental health, offices1,372
- Holyoke Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,273FTE
- Chicopee SchoolsSchool district1,253FTE
- Holyoke SchoolsSchool district994FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 405 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 60,376 people in all across the county; Chester has none of its own. Hospitals come 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
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Chester’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively 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 Hampden County and the Springfield, MA metro.
Chester home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Chester$305,456
- Massachusetts$655,219
- United States$366,157
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
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Chester5
Zip codes with a Chester address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Chester — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.