Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Typical home $509,825 (+2.4% in a year), asking rent $2,372 (+2.2%). Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,581 (+144%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $11,742 +2%
- $498,083$509,825 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $127,401 +33%
- $382,424$509,825 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.
- Lawrence$2,676
- Massachusetts$3,439
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Lawrence, MA rose 2.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Lawrence, MA rose 2.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Lawrence runs $1,291/mo more than renting one — the widest that gap has been in this data.
That is $3,663 a month against $2,372 rent: a $2,676 mortgage payment, plus $441 property tax and $546 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Lawrence
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$3,663
- Renting$2,372
- Mortgage only$2,676
Property tax · $441/mo 1.04% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Essex County, MA
Insurance & upkeep · $546/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 Lawrence, Essex County, Massachusetts
Lawrence is a city of 89,143 people in Essex County. Half its households earn more than $60,433 a year and half less, against $101,883 across Essex County; 18% of its people live below the poverty line. 28% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 72% are rented. Unemployment in Lawrence was 6.8% in August 2026, and Essex County had 0.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. Lawrence is a dense city on the Merrimack River in Essex County, with a young population compared with much of the country. Most households rent rather than own, far more than across the county, and household incomes sit well below the county's. Winters are cold and summers warm, with a good deal of rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by manufacturing, professional and business services, and shops. Among the largest workplaces in the city are Lawrence Schools, Lawrence General Hospital and Artisan Chef Manufacturing Co. The commute for a typical worker is moderate, and relatively few work from home.
Things to do. The Shawsheen River runs in or beside town. A longer drive brings you to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, a large art museum, and Fenway Park, the well-known baseball stadium. The Merrimack River, also a longer drive away along its course, offers another stretch of water to visit.
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- 31,142households
- 17%of adults have a degree
- 18%below the poverty line
- 23 mintypical commute
- 7%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Essex County had 326,688 jobs in 2025, 0.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 35° and lows near 20°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 65°. About 49 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Lawrence weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lawrence
- Lawrence SchoolsSchool district2,349FTE
- Lawrence General HospitalGeneral hospital1,343FTE
- Artisan Chef Manufacturing CoPizzas, frozen, manufacturing632
- The Gem GroupScreen printing fabric grey goods and textile products475
- Centuri GroupConstruction303
- Demoulas Super Markets282
- Community Day Care Center of LawrenceChild day care services279
- Middle East BakeryBakery manufacturing266
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 41 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 7,813 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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 high
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Lawrence’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 Essex County and the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro.
Lawrence home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Lawrence$509,825
- Massachusetts$655,219
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 5 Lawrence listings — 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.
- Lawrence21.89%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Lawrence32
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Lawrence16
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Lawrence address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Lawrence — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Lawrence
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01841 | Lawrence | 52,769 | — | $486,152 |
| 01843 | Lawrence | 27,445 | $2,375 | $533,758 |
| 01840 | Lawrence | 8,522 | $2,342 | $390,685 |