Petersham, Massachusetts.
Typical home $480,968 (+2.3% in a year). Worcester, MA-CT metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,406 (+126%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $10,691 +2%
- $470,277$480,968 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $112,706 +31%
- $368,263$480,968 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.
- Petersham$2,524
- 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 Petersham, MA rose 2.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Petersham, Worcester County, Massachusetts
Petersham, in Worcester County, had 225 people in the 2020 census. 92% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 8% are rented. Unemployment in Worcester County was 4.5% in August 2026, and the county had 1.4% 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Petersham is a very small community in Worcester County, and nearly everyone who lives here owns their home. Typical home values run well above what many people expect for a small hill town, and household incomes are somewhat lower than across the county. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm but not hot, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by manufacturing, other services and government. A fair number of people work from home. Across Worcester County, some of the largest workplaces are UMass Memorial Health, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and Worcester Schools.
Things to do. Much of what there is to do is outdoors. Brooks Woodland Preserve and Harvard Forest are protected areas in or beside town, and Swift River Reservation is a short drive away. For a longer outing, the Quabbin Reservoir and the Emily Dickinson Museum are both a longer drive away.
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- 137households
- 6%below the poverty line
- 12%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Worcester County had 356,384 jobs in 2025, 1.4% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 33° and lows near 14°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 60°. About 42 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Orange Municipal Airport weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Worcester County
- UMass Memorial HealthGeneral medical and surgical hospitals18,140
- University of Massachusetts Chan Medical SchoolUniversity or college5,780
- Worcester SchoolsSchool district4,289FTE
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage2,457
- Waters- MilfordChromatographic instruments, laboratory-type, manufacturing2,249
- Consigli Construction CompanyConstruction management, commercial and institutional building1,800
- Bristol-Myers Squibb CompanyPharmaceutical preparations manufacturing1,785
- Venture Community ServicescIntellectual and developmental disability facilities, residential1,673
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 671 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 116,907 people in all across the county; Petersham has one of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) 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 Petersham’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 Worcester County and the Worcester, MA-CT metro.
Petersham home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Petersham$480,968
- 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.
- Petersham6
Zip codes with a Petersham address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Petersham — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.