Renting vs buying in Arlington
One of only two municipalities here with a single tax rate, and no exemption to go with it. Here is the arithmetic of owning here rather than renting, on the rate the Department of Revenue certified for this municipality, the residential exemption it does or does not grant, and a state that charges a buyer nothing to take title, and then the part the arithmetic misses.
Calculator
The short answer
The typical home in Arlington was worth about $1,086,584 in June 2026, and a three-bedroom here asks roughly $3,551 a month. Both figures come from the same two Zillow indexes used for the Charlotte, Orlando, Palm Beach, Miami and Tampa Bay layers elsewhere on this site, in the same month, which is what makes all six comparable.
The published rate is not the rate you pay. Arlington publishes $10.67 per $1,000 for fiscal 2026, and grants no residential exemption, so an owner-occupier pays that rate on the whole value: $11,594 a year, exactly what a landlord pays on the same house. Nine of the twenty-four municipalities in this layer do take a flat slab off an owner-occupier's assessment first, and the gap that opens is the largest single difference between neighboring towns on the comparison table.
What a Massachusetts buyer does not pay is as important as what they do. There is no buyer transfer tax, no mortgage recording tax and no intangible tax on the loan. Getting in is about $3,660, which is 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 are $13,454 a year before a dollar of principal or interest, of which $1,860 is the insurance estimate. Replace that estimate with a real quote before you trust any result on this page.
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.
What this page cannot see. 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. Nor can it see a Proposition 2 1/2 override or debt exclusion, which raises the levy limit permanently and which the residential exemption does not offset. 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.
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: $220,977: 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
Arlington's typical home value moved +2.1% in the year to June 2026. The 2.5% default is a long-run assumption for a supply-constrained region rather than this year's experience: 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. Where there is a condominium, $625 a month is the midpoint of a very wide range in this metro, and the range is the point: one floor of a converted three-decker with two neighbors and no funded reserve is a different risk from a professionally managed building. 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 | $192,650 | $283,948 | −$91,298 |
| 2 | $229,034 | $349,430 | −$120,396 |
| 3 | $266,768 | $417,528 | −$150,760 |
| 4 | $305,915 | $488,348 | −$182,433 |
| 5 | $346,543 | $562,002 | −$215,459 |
| 6 | $388,724 | $638,607 | −$249,883 |
| 7 | $432,533 | $718,286 | −$285,753 |
| 8 | $478,050 | $801,164 | −$323,114 |
| 9 | $525,360 | $887,375 | −$362,014 |
| 10 | $574,554 | $977,056 | −$402,502 |
| 11 | $625,725 | $1,070,352 | −$444,627 |
| 12 | $678,975 | $1,167,414 | −$488,438 |
| 13 | $734,412 | $1,268,397 | −$533,985 |
| 14 | $792,147 | $1,373,466 | −$581,319 |
| 15 | $852,301 | $1,482,792 | −$630,490 |
| 16 | $915,003 | $1,596,552 | −$681,549 |
| 17 | $980,387 | $1,714,933 | −$734,546 |
| 18 | $1,048,596 | $1,838,128 | −$789,532 |
| 19 | $1,119,784 | $1,966,340 | −$846,557 |
| 20 | $1,194,111 | $2,099,781 | −$905,670 |
| 21 | $1,271,751 | $2,238,671 | −$966,920 |
| 22 | $1,352,885 | $2,383,240 | −$1,030,355 |
| 23 | $1,437,708 | $2,533,728 | −$1,096,020 |
| 24 | $1,526,426 | $2,690,387 | −$1,163,961 |
| 25 | $1,619,258 | $2,853,478 | −$1,234,221 |
| 26 | $1,716,437 | $3,023,276 | −$1,306,839 |
| 27 | $1,818,211 | $3,200,065 | −$1,381,854 |
| 28 | $1,924,843 | $3,384,144 | −$1,459,301 |
| 29 | $2,036,615 | $3,575,824 | −$1,539,209 |
| 30 | $2,153,828 | $3,775,436 | −$1,621,607 |
- 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 Arlington right now?
The typical home in Arlington is worth about $1,086,584 and a three-bedroom in this municipality asks roughly $3,551 a month. At 6.66% on a 30-year fixed loan with 20% down, the mortgage is $5,586 a month; add about $966 in property tax and $155 in homeowners insurance and the owner's month is closer to $6,707. Arlington's typical value rose 2.1% 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 1.07% when Arlington publishes a residential rate of $10.67?
About 1.07% of what you pay for the house. Arlington charges one rate to everybody. There is no classification shift here, which in practice means the town has almost no commercial base to shift onto, so the published rate carries the whole budget. Arlington has not adopted the residential exemption, so there is nothing between the published rate and your bill. On the $1,086,584 typical home value here that is about $11,594 a year, and an owner who does not live in the building pays exactly the same. Nine of the twenty-four municipalities in this layer do grant one and the gap it opens is the largest single difference between neighboring towns on this table. 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 Arlington have a residential exemption, and what is it worth?
No. Arlington is one of the fifteen municipalities in this layer that has not adopted it, so an owner-occupier here pays the published $10.67 on the whole assessed value, exactly as a landlord does: $11,594 a year on the typical home value. Nine municipalities in this layer do grant one, and the largest of them takes over half a million dollars of value off the bill. It is a local option under MGL c.59 s.5C, voted at the classification hearing every autumn, so this is a decision Arlington makes again each year rather than a fact about Massachusetts.
Why does a neighboring town pay so much less tax on the same house?
Two local votes, neither of which appears in a published rate. The first is classification: under MGL c.40 s.56 a municipality may shift part of its levy onto commercial property, and Arlington charges business $10.67 against your $10.67, a ratio of 1.00 to one. That is a single rate, which means there is very little commercial property here to shift onto, so residential carries the whole budget. The second is the residential exemption, which this municipality does not grant and nine others do. Across these twenty-four the rate an owner-occupier actually pays runs from 0.35% to 1.23%, a spread of more than three and a half to one under one set of state laws, and almost none of that spread is visible in the published rates.
Is the seller's tax bill a guide to what I will pay?
Yes, and that is unusual enough to be worth saying plainly, because on the Florida pages of this site the answer is the opposite. Massachusetts assesses at full and fair cash value and re-sets the whole class every year. There is no assessment freeze as in Ontario or North Carolina and no purchase reset or growth cap as in Florida, so nothing happens to the assessment because you bought the house. There is no residential exemption here, so there is not even that adjustment to make. The only lag is the lien date: fiscal 2026 bills are charged against values as of 1 January 2025.
What are the closing costs on an Arlington 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 $1,086,584 house is $4,955 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 Arlington?
Getting in is about $3,660 and getting out roughly 5.5%: around 5% commission plus the $4,955 deeds excise, or about $59,762 on this house. The carrying cost a renter does not pay is $13,454 a year in tax and insurance. With no exemption here, the tax line is the published rate on the whole value from the first bill and it does not improve with tenure. 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 Arlington 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.
What is this calculator not accounting for in Arlington?
Four things. 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. Then Proposition 2 1/2: the cap is on the levy and not on the rate, it allows 2.5% growth a year plus new growth, and an override or a debt exclusion passed at a single town meeting or ballot raises what you pay with no change to anything on this page. In a fully built-out municipality with little new growth that is a foreseeable cost rather than a remote one. 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. And the local variation: 6 miles from Boston City Hall in a straight line is not a drive time, no station inside the town. The Red Line ends at Alewife, just over the Cambridge line, and a single figure for a municipality of 47,112 people averages over addresses that differ more than the index suggests.
Which figures here are estimates
The home values, the rents, the tax rates and the exemption amounts come from published sources, each listed below with the period it describes. These do not:
- Home insurance: $155 a month inland and $230 on a municipality that fronts the ocean or Boston Harbor. It is the least certain figure here and the one to replace with a real quote; it also excludes flood, which is a separate policy
- The residential exemption in Somerville and Malden. Both cities publish what the exemption is worth in tax rather than the assessed value it removes, so the value here is that published saving divided by the published rate: $416,939 in Somerville from a saving of up to $4,578 at $10.98, and $178,684 in Malden from the $291 the council's own 30% to 35% increase is worth at $11.40. The other seven are the amount the municipality itself publishes
- The condominium fee at $625 a month, which in this metro 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
- And nothing at all for the Community Preservation Act surcharge, for flood insurance, or for a Proposition 2 1/2 override or debt exclusion, any of which can be voted in a single town meeting and none of which is in a published rate
If you want the payment side on its own. Prepayments, the month mortgage insurance stops, and a Massachusetts closing that taxes the deed rather than the loan: the Arlington mortgage calculator covers it. To see how Arlington compares with the other twenty-three municipalities inside eleven miles of City Hall, use the Greater Boston comparison; Arlington is 6 miles from Boston City Hall. For the same two indexes in the same month on a completely different tax system, 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.