Understand Belmont before you commit to an address
Belmont is 27,000 people on a hill between Cambridge, Arlington and Watertown, the smallest municipality in this layer by population and one of two that has never split its tax rate. Figures are the same two indexes measured the same way in all 24 municipalities here, on Massachusetts rules including annual full-value assessment. It has not adopted the residential exemption, so the rate Belmont publishes is the rate you pay on the whole value, exactly as a landlord does.
The cost of living in Belmont, and what a home costs
Two calculators on Massachusetts's own rules: monthly compounding and the month private mortgage insurance stops, and the closing costs this state actually charges.
Rent or buy in Belmont
Whether buying here beats renting, and the year it turns over. With no residential exemption in this municipality, the tax line is the published rate on the whole value from the first bill.
Mortgage calculator
Monthly compounding, the 30-year fixed loan, the private mortgage insurance a low down payment triggers, and a closing where Massachusetts charges the buyer no transfer tax and no tax on the mortgage at all.
Then work out whether Belmont is the right part of the metro
No neighborhood guides for Belmont yet. What is here instead is all 24 municipalities of the inner metro on one comparable footing.
All 24 municipalities inside eleven miles
Every municipality here side by side on home value, the rate the town publishes, the rate an owner-occupier really pays after the residential exemption, and the rate a landlord pays on the same building.
Compare the metroBoston, and the exemption it grants
The municipality at the middle of this table, on its own hub: the second highest published residential rate here, one of the lowest bills a resident owner actually pays, and the filing deadline that decides which of the two you get in your first year.
Read the Boston hubTampa Bay and its twenty-four
The two Zillow indexes in the same month, on Florida's homestead exemption instead of Massachusetts's residential one, in a market repricing storm surge in real time.
Compare the two coastsWhat buying in Belmont actually involves
Belmont charges $11.51 to a homeowner and $11.51 to a business, and grants no residential exemption. An owner pays 1.15% of what the house costs, which on the town's typical home value of about $1.46 million is roughly $16,900 a year, the third highest bill of these twenty-four. Belmont is not an expensive town to run. It is an expensive town to own in because it has no commercial base to shift onto and has chosen not to shift within its residential base either.
The town has run a long sequence of Proposition 2 1/2 overrides, and the reason is arithmetic rather than politics. A municipality whose tax base is almost entirely houses gets 2.5% growth a year plus new growth, and Belmont builds very little, so new growth is small. When school enrollment or a building project outruns that, the only remaining option is a ballot question. A buyer here should read the town's override record as part of the carrying cost rather than as background.
The stock splits sharply. Belmont Hill is large single-family on big lots, some of it grand; the flats toward Waverley and the Watertown line are 1920s two-families and modest colonials at a fraction of the price. One town index averages those, so the number on this table describes neither well. The two-family stock in the flats is also the town's only real entry point and it is thin.
Transit is commuter rail at Belmont Center and Waverley on the Fitchburg line, which is a good service into North Station and a poor one for anything else, and buses to Harvard. Belmont is close in by distance and not by transit, which is a large part of why its prices behave more like a 128 town than a six-mile one.
Moving to Belmont: check these before you commit
- That there is no residential exemption and no shift, so the published rate applies to the whole value
- The override record and anything currently proposed, in a town that has needed them regularly
- Which side of the hill, because the flats and Belmont Hill are effectively two markets under one index
- For a two-family in the flats: whether both units are legal and permitted
- The commuter rail schedule you would actually use, and where it does and does not take you
- Age of the heating and electrical systems on stock largely built before 1940
Belmont publishes a residential rate of $12 per $1,000 for fiscal 2026 and grants no residential exemption, so nothing stands between that rate and your bill. Business pays $12, a classification shift of 1.00 to one. Both figures are what the municipality adopted and the Department of Revenue certified, rather than anything assembled on this site.
Sourced, dated, and separated from the guesswork
Every Belmont figure below is cited, stamped with the period it describes, and editable, because a number for the whole city rarely describes your purchase. Appreciation and investment returns are assumptions rather than facts, and they are labelled that way. Read the methodology for how the line is drawn.
- Prices, rents and tax rates: published statistics and the official schedules.
- Nothing here is a lender quote, a pre-approval or financial advice.
Where the Belmont figures come from
- 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