Renting vs buying in Boston
Boston publishes the second highest residential tax rate of the twenty-four municipalities inside eleven miles of its own City Hall, and a resident owner here pays one of the lowest bills on that table. Both are true, the residential exemption is the whole of the gap, and it reaches nobody who rents the building out and nobody who closed too late in the year. Here is the arithmetic, and then the parts of it that are estimates.
Calculator
The short answer
The typical home in the City of Boston was worth $791,816 in June 2026, down 1.3% on the year, and a three-bedroom asks about $4,110 a month. Both come from the same two Zillow indexes, in the same month, that the Charlotte, Orlando, Palm Beach, Miami and Tampa Bay pages use, which is what makes all six readable against each other.
The published rate is not the rate you pay, and the gap here is the largest on the table. Boston publishes $12.40 per $1,000 for fiscal 2026, second highest of the twenty-four municipalities inside eleven miles, and then takes $351,108 of assessed value off every owner-occupied parcel. An owner who lives here pays about $5,465 a year, the 0.69% used below. Somebody who owns the identical building and rents it out pays $9,819. The difference, $4,354 a year, is the exemption, and it is the single largest editable number on this page.
Two dates decide whether you get it in your first year. You have to have owned and occupied the property on 1 January, and you have to file Form RES with the Assessing Department by 1 April. A March closing fails the January test, which means a full year at $9,819 rather than $5,465 before the exemption arrives. Nothing on the listing will tell you this and the seller's bill will not show it either, because the seller was probably taking it.
And what a Massachusetts buyer does not pay matters as much as what they do. There is no buyer transfer tax, no mortgage recording tax and no tax on the loan. Getting in is about $3,660 for the attorney the state requires, the title policy, the inspection and the registry recording, and it does not grow when you put less down. Tax and insurance together run $8,225 a year once the exemption is in place, of which $2,760 is an estimate rather than a quote.
Massachusetts assesses at full and fair cash value and re-sets the whole class every year, with the Department of Revenue certifying the roll every five years and reviewing the interim adjustments in between. There is no assessment freeze as in Ontario and North Carolina and no purchase reset or growth cap as in Florida, which means the useful thing a Massachusetts buyer can do that a Florida buyer cannot: the seller's current tax bill is a fair guide to what you will pay. The only lag is the lien date. Fiscal 2026 bills are charged against values as of 1 January 2025.
The price is the shakier of the two numbers here. The rate and the exemption are citywide and hold at any Boston address. The $791,816 does not: one index is averaging Back Bay bowfronts, Dorchester three-deckers and Seaport towers, which are separate markets that have moved in different directions for a decade. Put the price of the property you are actually looking at into the calculator.
And along the water. Homeowners insurance does not cover flood, and along this coast that distinction is the one that costs money. Boston Harbor, Revere Beach, the Lynn shore, the Saugus marshes, the Quincy necks and the Fore River are all tidal, and the flood policy is separate, is priced off an elevation certificate, and is not in any figure on this page. Nothing here is a barrier island, so the exposure is a smaller version of what the Florida layers describe, but a low-lying lot in Revere or on Houghs Neck is a flood question before it is a tax question.
Your situation
Compare like for like: the rent on somewhere you would actually be willing to live, not the cheapest listing in the city. Drop the price to around $300,000 and the rent to a one-bedroom figure to compare apartments instead, and put the condo fee in under Assumptions.
20.0% down. The renter starts with this plus closing costs: $162,024: invested instead.
The single biggest lever. Buying costs a lot to enter and a lot to exit, and only time amortizes that away.
Assumptions: every one of them editable
Boston's typical value fell 1.3% over the year to June 2026, in a metro where three of these twenty-four fell and most of the rest moved by less than two percent. The 2.5% default is a long-run figure for a supply-constrained region rather than a forecast. Try 1%, and try zero.
What the renter earns on the down payment they never spent. This is the comparison's hidden lever. A renter who spends it instead of investing it does far worse than this model shows.
Massachusetts abolished rent control by referendum. Question 9 on the November 1994 ballot passed 51 to 49 statewide, while Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, the only three municipalities that had it, voted to keep it. MGL c.40P took effect on 1 January 1995 and section 3 forbids any city or town from regulating the rent on residential property at all. Home-rule petitions from Boston, Somerville and Cambridge between 2023 and 2025 went nowhere. What does bind is notice rather than amount: a tenancy at will cannot be raised without at least thirty days' written notice, or a full rental period if that is longer, and a lease cannot be raised inside its term. Any rent growth figure you enter on this site is a forecast, not a ceiling.
Roofs, furnaces, fences, hail. Averaged out it is a real cost even in the years nothing breaks.
Zero for a single-family house, which much of West Roxbury, Hyde Park and Roslindale is. Elsewhere in the city a condominium is the ordinary case and $625 a month is the midpoint of a very wide range. The range is the point: one floor of a converted three-decker with two neighbors and an informal arrangement about the roof is a different risk from a professionally managed tower. Massachusetts has no reserve statute of the kind Florida passed after Surfside, so ask for the reserve study, the master insurance certificate and three years of minutes.
Commission and legal fees, charged against the price you eventually sell at. The owner's net worth below is after this comes off.
Net worth, side by side
The buyer's line is home value minus what is still owed minus the cost of selling, plus anything they invested in months when owning was cheaper. The renter's line is one portfolio: the down payment and closing costs they never spent, plus the monthly difference whenever renting is cheaper.
Show the year-by-year figures
| Year | Owner | Renter | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $140,389 | $188,039 | −$47,650 |
| 2 | $166,903 | $214,298 | −$47,395 |
| 3 | $194,400 | $240,778 | −$46,378 |
| 4 | $222,927 | $267,457 | −$44,530 |
| 5 | $252,534 | $294,308 | −$41,774 |
| 6 | $283,272 | $321,301 | −$38,030 |
| 7 | $315,196 | $348,406 | −$33,210 |
| 8 | $348,365 | $375,588 | −$27,222 |
| 9 | $382,841 | $402,809 | −$19,968 |
| 10 | $418,690 | $430,030 | −$11,341 |
| 11 | $455,979 | $457,207 | −$1,228 |
| 12 | $494,784 | $484,292 | $10,492 |
| 13 | $535,181 | $511,233 | $23,948 |
| 14 | $577,254 | $537,977 | $39,277 |
| 15 | $621,550 | $564,923 | $56,627 |
| 16 | $669,324 | $593,170 | $76,155 |
| 17 | $720,855 | $622,828 | $98,027 |
| 18 | $776,392 | $653,969 | $122,423 |
| 19 | $836,201 | $686,668 | $149,533 |
| 20 | $900,561 | $721,001 | $179,560 |
| 21 | $969,772 | $757,051 | $212,721 |
| 22 | $1,044,150 | $794,904 | $249,246 |
| 23 | $1,124,030 | $834,649 | $289,381 |
| 24 | $1,209,769 | $876,382 | $333,388 |
| 25 | $1,301,746 | $920,201 | $381,546 |
| 26 | $1,400,363 | $966,211 | $434,152 |
| 27 | $1,506,045 | $1,014,521 | $491,523 |
| 28 | $1,619,244 | $1,065,247 | $553,997 |
| 29 | $1,740,441 | $1,118,510 | $621,931 |
| 30 | $1,870,144 | $1,174,435 | $695,709 |
- The rate is fixed for the life of the loan, so there is no renewal to model, but nothing here credits you for refinancing into a lower one either.
- Neither household is credited with tax on their investments, and the buyer's gain on a principal residence is tax-free while the renter's portfolio may not be.
An estimate from published figures, not a lender quote.
Questions people actually ask
Is it worth buying in Boston right now?
The typical home in Boston is worth about $791,816 and a three-bedroom in this municipality asks roughly $4,110 a month. At 6.66% on a 30-year fixed loan with 20% down, the mortgage is $4,071 a month; add about $455 in property tax and $230 in homeowners insurance and the owner's month is closer to $4,756. Boston's typical value fell 1.3% over the year to June 2026, in a metro where three of these twenty-four fell and most of the rest moved by less than two percent. The 2.5% appreciation the calculator assumes is a long-run figure for a supply-constrained region, not a forecast for next year.
Why is the tax rate on this page 0.69% when Boston publishes a residential rate of $12.40?
About 0.69% of what you pay for the house. Boston charges business $27 per $1,000 against the $12 it charges you, a shift of 2.17 to one. That is why the residential rate is what it is: under MGL c.40 s.56 a municipality may move part of the levy onto commercial property, so a low published rate is evidence of a commercial tax base rather than of a cheap town. Boston is one of nine municipalities in this layer that grants a residential exemption under MGL c.59 s.5C, and it takes $351,108 of assessed value off an owner-occupied parcel. That is a flat dollar slab rather than a percentage of your house, so it is worth the same on a cheap home as on an expensive one and worth far more as a share of the bill at the bottom of the market. On the $791,816 typical home value here it produces a bill of about $5,465 a year against the $9,819 somebody who does not live in the building pays on the same house. It is not automatic: you file with the assessors, the deadline is 1 April, and you must have owned and occupied the property on the previous 1 January. Massachusetts assesses at full and fair cash value and re-sets the whole class every year, with the Department of Revenue certifying the roll every five years and reviewing the interim adjustments in between. There is no assessment freeze as in Ontario and North Carolina and no purchase reset or growth cap as in Florida, which means the useful thing a Massachusetts buyer can do that a Florida buyer cannot: the seller's current tax bill is a fair guide to what you will pay. The only lag is the lien date. Fiscal 2026 bills are charged against values as of 1 January 2025.
Does Boston have a residential exemption, and what is it worth?
Yes. Boston takes $351,108 of assessed value off an owner-occupied parcel, which at the town's $12.40 rate is worth about $4,354 a year. It is a flat dollar slab and not a percentage of your house, so it is the same money whether the house is cheap or expensive and it is worth far more as a share of the bill at the bottom of the market. The person who owns the identical building next door and does not live in it pays $9,819 against your $5,465. The residential exemption is a local option and it is voted again every autumn at the classification hearing, so a town that grants it this year is not obliged to grant it next year and several have changed the percentage recently. It applies only to the home you are domiciled in on 1 January, it is not automatic on purchase, and you have to file for it: the deadline is three months after the third-quarter bill, which in most of these municipalities means 1 April. It does not travel with you across a town line. And it is the owner-occupier's alone, so on a two-family where you live upstairs and rent the ground floor you get the whole exemption on the whole parcel, while the absentee owner of the identical building next door gets none of it.
Why is the commercial tax rate the thing to watch in Boston?
Because it is holding your rate down and it is not guaranteed. Under MGL c.40 s.56 a municipality may shift part of its levy onto commercial, industrial and personal property, up to 75% above that class's own share of value, and Boston shifts about as hard as the statute allows: business pays $26.96 per $1,000 against your $12.40, a ratio of 2.17 to one. An unusually large share of the city's budget therefore comes from downtown office towers, and office values have been falling since 2020. Proposition 2 1/2 caps the levy rather than the rate, so every dollar the commercial roll loses has to be raised somewhere else under the same ceiling, and the somewhere else is residential. The 2024 home rule petition to soften that shift failed in the legislature. On a thirty-year view that is the risk worth pricing. It arrives as a gradual reweighting that nobody votes on, over years, with no announcement to react to.
I am buying in the spring. When does the residential exemption actually reach me?
Later than most buyers expect, and this is where the most money is left on the table in Boston. The exemption is worth $4,354 a year here, and two dates decide whether you get it. You must have owned and occupied the property on 1 January of the year the fiscal year runs from, and you must file Form RES with the Assessing Department by 1 April. Close in March and you fail the January ownership test for the year already running, so your first full year is billed at the landlord's rate: $9,819 rather than $5,465, a difference of $4,354 on a purchase most people have financed to the limit. It is also not automatic on purchase and it does not travel with you across a city line. Budget the first year at the unexempted rate and treat the exemption as arriving in year two.
What are the closing costs on a Boston home?
Smaller than in most of the country and much smaller than in Florida, because of what is absent. Massachusetts charges a buyer nothing to take title and nothing to borrow. There is no buyer transfer tax, no mortgage recording tax and no intangible tax on the loan. The only tax on the transaction is the deeds excise at $4.56 per $1,000, and MGL c.64D s.1 puts that on the seller. The deeds excise on this $791,816 house is $3,611 and the seller pays it. What is yours is the attorney at about $1,400, which Massachusetts requires rather than permits, an owner's title policy at roughly $1,200, an inspection at about $700 and the registry recording at $360 for the deed and the mortgage together. That is about $3,660 before the lender's own charges, and unlike Florida it does not grow when you put less down.
How long do you have to stay for buying to beat renting in Boston?
Getting in is about $3,660 and getting out roughly 5.5%: around 5% commission plus the $3,611 deeds excise, or about $43,550 on this house. The carrying cost a renter does not pay is $8,225 a year in tax and insurance. Note that the exemption is worth $4,354 a year and reaches only an owner who lives in the building, so it belongs on the buy side of this comparison and it disappears the day you move out and rent the place. The variable that actually decides the crossover is appreciation, and 2.5% is an assumption rather than a measurement. Try 1% and try zero.
Does Massachusetts have rent control?
No, and Boston is not permitted to introduce it. Massachusetts abolished rent control by referendum. Question 9 on the November 1994 ballot passed 51 to 49 statewide, while Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, the only three municipalities that had it, voted to keep it. MGL c.40P took effect on 1 January 1995 and section 3 forbids any city or town from regulating the rent on residential property at all. Home-rule petitions from Boston, Somerville and Cambridge between 2023 and 2025 went nowhere. What does bind is notice rather than amount: a tenancy at will cannot be raised without at least thirty days' written notice, or a full rental period if that is longer, and a lease cannot be raised inside its term. Any rent growth figure you enter on this site is a forecast, not a ceiling.
Is $791,816 a useful number for the house I am actually looking at?
Less useful here than anywhere else in this layer, and it is worth saying so on the page that uses it. The other twenty-three municipalities are small enough that one index describes something a reader can picture. Boston is 673,000 people across twenty-odd neighborhoods with very little in common: Back Bay and South End brick bowfronts, Dorchester and Hyde Park three-deckers, West Roxbury single families, and Seaport towers that did not exist as housing twenty years ago. Those markets price separately, finance separately and have moved in different directions for a decade, and the citywide index averages all of them. The tax arithmetic on this page holds for any Boston address, because the rate and the exemption are citywide. The $791,816 does not. Put the price of the specific property in at the top and the rest of the page will follow it. None of this includes the Community Preservation Act surcharge. The CPA is a local option under MGL c.44B, adopted by ballot, that adds a surcharge of 1% to 3% to the property tax bill to fund open space, historic preservation and affordable housing, usually with the first $100,000 of value exempted. It is levied on the bill rather than on the value, so it is in no published rate and in no figure on this page, and it is adopted in a good many of these municipalities. Check whether the town has it and at what percentage before you treat the tax line here as the whole tax line. And Proposition 2 1/2 allows 2.5% levy growth a year plus new growth, so an override or debt exclusion passed at a single ballot raises what you pay with no change to anything here. Massachusetts has a homestead and it is not a tax exemption. A declaration of homestead under MGL c.188 protects up to $500,000 of the equity in your principal residence from most creditors, with $125,000 protected automatically whether you file or not. It does nothing at all to your tax bill. The residential exemption is the thing that lowers the bill, it is a different filing with a different office, and it does nothing at all for your creditors. If you are arriving from a state where homestead means the tax break, this is the sentence to remember.
Which figures here are estimates
The home value, the rent, the published rate and the exemption amount come from sources listed below, each with the period it describes, and the tax figure is derived from the rate and the exemption through Massachusetts's own rules. These do not:
- Home insurance at $230 a month, which is the band for a municipality fronting Boston Harbor rather than a quote on a building, and excludes flood entirely. Flood along the waterfront and the Fort Point Channel is a separate policy priced off an elevation certificate
- The condominium fee at $625 a month, which in this city spans a converted three-decker with three units and no funded reserve at one end and a professionally managed tower at the other. The range matters more than the midpoint
- The split of rent by bedroom count, on HUD's fiscal 2026 Fair Market Rents for this metro. The level is Zillow's and measured, the shape is HUD's and measured, and applying one to the other is the assumption
- The utilities an owner pays over a renter, at $210 a month, which is the highest figure on this site because here the owner picks up the heat
- Maintenance at 1% of the home's value a year, which on housing stock largely built between 1890 and 1940 is optimistic rather than conservative
- Every forward-looking rate: appreciation, rent growth, cost inflation and the return on the invested difference
- The private mortgage insurance rate, which is priced per borrower by credit score rather than published as a schedule
- And the typical home value itself as a description of any particular address. One citywide index averages Back Bay and the South End, the Dorchester and Hyde Park three-deckers, the West Roxbury single families and the Seaport towers, and those markets move independently of each other
If you want the payment side on its own. Prepayments, the month mortgage insurance stops, and a closing that taxes the deed rather than the loan: the mortgage calculator covers it. To see Boston against the twenty-three municipalities around it on the same two indexes and the same fiscal year, use the Greater Boston comparison. For those same indexes in the same month under a tax system that shares nothing with this one, see Tampa Bay.
Sources
- Tax Rates by Class, fiscal year 2026 · Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services, Municipal Databank · retrieved Supports: The certified fiscal 2026 residential rate for each of the twenty-four municipalities, from Cambridge at $6.67 to Everett at $12.62, The commercial, industrial and personal property rate behind each of them, which gives the classification shift, That Arlington and Belmont charge a single rate to all classes, That fiscal 2026 is the most recent fully certified year: at the retrieval date only two of the state's 352 municipalities had a fiscal 2027 rate on the table
- Residential exemption, fiscal year 2026 · City of Boston Assessing Department · retrieved Supports: $351,108 of assessed value excluded from an owner-occupied parcel, worth $4,353.74 at the city's $12.40 rate, The 1 April filing deadline and the requirement to have owned and occupied on the previous 1 January
- City of Somerville FY2026 Classification Hearing, 25 November 2025, and the FY2026 Property Tax Update · Somerville Board of Assessors · retrieved Supports: A residential exemption of 35% of average assessed value adopted for fiscal 2026, yielding savings of up to $4,578, A minimum residential factor of 82.816, the legal minimum for the city, Form LA-4 parcel counts and assessed values by use code, from which the average Class One value of about $1,191,000 follows, That Somerville carries 7,251 condominium parcels against 2,315 single-family parcels, That life science property in this market depreciated about 20% between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026
- City Council meeting minutes, 28 October 2025: adoption of a residential exemption and minimum residential factor for fiscal 2026 · City of Malden · retrieved Supports: A unanimous vote to adopt a residential factor of 0.9054 and a residential exemption of 35%, raised from 30%, The council's own statement on the record that the increase is a tax shift benefiting owner-occupied households and not a tax cut, and that the shift is budget neutral, Average fiscal 2026 values of $449,000 for a condominium, $666,000 for a single family, $861,000 for a two-family and $991,000 for a three-family, That the increase from 30% to 35% is worth about $291 a year, from which the $178,684 exemption value here is derived, A Proposition 2 1/2 override under discussion for fiscal 2027 at $5.4 million and $8.2 million
- Residential exemption information for fiscal year 2026 · City of Chelsea Board of Assessors · retrieved Supports: An exemption of 35% of the average assessed value of all Class One residential parcels, $279,066 of assessed value excluded for fiscal 2026, worth $3,203.68 at the city's $11.48 rate, The 1 April 2026 filing deadline and the 1 January ownership and occupancy test
- Residential exemption information, fiscal year 2026 · City known as the Town of Watertown, Assessing Department · retrieved Supports: The maximum 35% exemption recommended by the assessors and adopted by the council for fiscal 2026, $324,715 of assessed value excluded, worth $3,961.52 at the town's $12.20 rate
- Residential exemptions · Town of Brookline Assessors · retrieved Supports: $354,974 deducted from a qualified owner-occupier's assessed value for fiscal 2026, That the exemption may be not more than 35% of the average assessed value of all Class One residential parcels and that the amount changes each year
- Assessor's Department: the residential exemption · City of Waltham · retrieved Supports: $317,643 of assessed value removed from an owner-occupied residence of up to three units for fiscal 2026, The maximum 35% exemption continued by the city council, The 1 January 2025 ownership and occupancy test for the fiscal 2026 year
- Assessor's office: owner-occupant residential exemption, fiscal year 2026 · City of Everett · retrieved Supports: $204,651 of taxable value removed from an owner-occupied parcel, worth $2,582.70 at the city's $12.62 rate
- Residential exemption and fiscal 2026 tax rates · City of Cambridge Assessing Department · retrieved Supports: A 30% residential exemption for fiscal 2026, $510,208 of assessed value, worth about $3,403, A residential rate of $6.67 per $1,000 set by the city council on 20 October 2025, the lowest in the Commonwealth
- Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), mid-tier, smoothed and seasonally adjusted: city files for all homes, single family and condominium, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A typical home value for each municipality, computed on one method across all twenty-four, The same series and month the Charlotte, Orlando, Palm Beach, Miami and Tampa Bay pages use, A separate single-family and condominium index for every one of these municipalities, Year-over-year change to June 2026, which is negative in three of the twenty-four
- Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), all homes, smoothed: city file, June 2026 · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: Asking rents for all twenty-four municipalities, with no gaps and therefore no fallback anywhere in this layer
- Fiscal Year 2026 Fair Market Rents: Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH HUD Metro FMR Area · United States Department of Housing and Urban Development · retrieved Supports: $2,476 for one bedroom, $2,941 for two and $3,526 for three, The ratios this layer uses to split the Zillow rent index by bedroom count, which differ from the Florida layers'
- Annual estimates of the resident population for minor civil divisions, 2020 to 2024 · United States Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program · retrieved Supports: 2020 census counts and 2024 estimates for each municipality, at summary level 061, That in New England the municipality is the minor civil division, so 061 rather than the place level is the right series and all 351 Massachusetts municipalities appear in it, Boston at 673,458 and Cambridge at 121,186; Belmont at 27,442 as the smallest here, Weymouth at 60,159, which would rank eleventh on this table and is outside the eleven-mile rule by three tenths of a mile
- Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 27 August 2026 · Freddie Mac · retrieved Supports: A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 6.66%
- Average home insurance cost in Massachusetts, 2026 · MoneyGeek and Insurance.com, on carrier rate filings · retrieved Supports: A Massachusetts average between roughly $1,500 and $1,900 a year against a national average near $2,800, Coastal communities running roughly a third to two thirds above the state mean, Wind and hurricane deductibles on coastal policies of 1% to 5% of dwelling value rather than a flat amount
- Chapter 59, Section 5C: residential exemption · Massachusetts General Laws · retrieved Supports: A local option exemption of not more than 35% of the average assessed value of all Class One residential parcels, The exemption applies only to a parcel that is the principal residence of the taxpayer as of 1 January, The percentage is voted annually by the municipality
- Chapter 59, Section 21C: Proposition 2 1/2 · Massachusetts General Laws · retrieved Supports: A levy ceiling of 2.5% of the total full and fair cash value of taxable property, A levy limit that may grow 2.5% a year plus certified new growth, Overrides and debt exclusions as the two ways a municipality exceeds the limit, That the cap is on the levy and not on the tax rate
- Chapter 59, Section 38: valuation at full and fair cash value · Massachusetts General Laws · retrieved Supports: Assessment at full and fair cash value, re-set annually rather than frozen at a base year, No purchase reset and no growth cap on an assessment, so a seller's bill is a fair guide to a buyer's
- Chapter 40, Section 56: classification and the minimum residential factor · Massachusetts General Laws · retrieved Supports: The power to shift part of the levy onto commercial, industrial and personal property, A ceiling of 175% of the commercial share, subject to a minimum residential factor, That the published residential rate is therefore an output of a local vote rather than a measure of what a town spends
- Chapter 64D, Section 1: excise upon deeds, instruments and writings · Massachusetts General Laws · retrieved Supports: $2.28 for each $500 of consideration, which is $4.56 per $1,000 or 0.456%, The excise falls on the person making the deed, so it is the seller's by statute, The Barnstable County rate of $2.85 per $500, which no municipality in this layer pays
- Chapter 40P: the Massachusetts Rent Control Prohibition Act · Massachusetts General Laws · retrieved Supports: No city or town may enact or enforce any control on the rent of residential property, Enacted by the 1994 ballot initiative and effective 1 January 1995, The voiding of the then-existing ordinances in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline
- Chapter 188: the declaration of homestead · Massachusetts General Laws · retrieved Supports: Protection of up to $500,000 of equity in a principal residence from most creditors on a declared homestead, and $125,000 automatically, That this is a creditor protection and not a property tax exemption, which is the confusion the caveat in lib/housing/massachusetts.ts exists to prevent
- Real Estate Bar Association for Massachusetts v. National Real Estate Information Services, 459 Mass. 512 · Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts · retrieved Supports: That conducting a residential real estate closing in Massachusetts is the practice of law and must be done by an attorney
- Homebuyer programs and down payment assistance · MassHousing · retrieved Supports: Down payment assistance to $30,000 generally and to $50,000 or 10% of price in Boston and the Gateway Cities
- ONE Mortgage · Massachusetts Housing Partnership · retrieved Supports: A 3% down first mortgage with no private mortgage insurance for income-eligible first-time buyers
These are estimates built from published figures, not a lender quote, a pre-approval or financial advice. Rates, premiums and state and federal rules change; confirm anything you plan to act on with a mortgage professional and read the sourcing methodology.