Boston publishes the metro's second highest rate and one of its lowest bills

What buying in Boston actually involves

Boston publishes a residential rate of $12.40 per $1,000, second highest of these twenty-four, and a resident owner here pays 0.69% of what the house costs. Both facts are true and the gap between them is the whole point of this layer. The city takes $351,108 of assessed value off every owner-occupied parcel under the residential exemption, worth $4,353.74 a year, and it shifts the levy onto commercial property at better than twice the residential rate. A landlord with the identical building gets neither and pays about $9,800 on the typical home value here against your $5,500.

The thing to watch in Boston is not the residential rate but the commercial one. The city funds an unusually large share of its budget from downtown office towers, and office values have been falling since 2020. Every dollar the commercial roll loses has to come from somewhere under Proposition 2 1/2, and the somewhere is residential. The 2024 home rule petition to soften that shift failed in the legislature. If you are buying here on a thirty-year view, the risk is not a rate increase announced in a headline, it is a gradual reweighting nobody votes on.

The housing stock is a set of separate markets that one index averages. A Back Bay or South End brick rowhouse, a Dorchester or Hyde Park three-decker, a West Roxbury single family and a Seaport tower are all Boston, and they behave nothing alike on price, on carrying cost or on what a lender will do with them. The condominium question in particular splits: a converted three-decker with three units and no reserve study is a different animal from a 400-unit tower with a professional manager, and Massachusetts has no reserve statute of the kind Florida passed after Surfside.

The exemption is not automatic and Boston is where the most money is left on the table. You file Form RES with the Assessing Department by 1 April, and you have to have owned and occupied the property on the previous 1 January, which means a buyer who closes in March waits until the following fiscal year for it. That is a full year at the landlord's rate on a purchase most people finance to the limit.

Moving to Boston: check these before you commit

• Whether the seller was taking the residential exemption, because their bill is the post-exemption number and yours will not be until you file
• The date you would take title against the 1 January ownership test, which decides whether you wait one fiscal year or two
• For any condominium: the reserve study, the master insurance certificate and the last three years of minutes, since no state statute requires the reserve
• Which neighborhood the address is actually in, because the citywide index averages markets that move independently
• Flood exposure along the harbor and the Fort Point Channel, which is a separate policy and is not in the insurance figure here
• The realistic commute, since a two mile trip across the city can be faster on foot than by car

Boston publishes a residential rate of $12.40 per $1,000 for fiscal 2026 and takes $351,108 of assessed value off an owner-occupied parcel, which is worth about $4,354 a year on the typical home value here. Business pays $26.96. Both figures are what the city council adopted and the Department of Revenue certified, rather than anything assembled on this site.