Understand Melrose before you commit to an address
Melrose is 30,000 people between Malden and Wakefield with the Middlesex Fells on one side, a small city with a mayor, four commuter rail stops in four miles and almost no industry of any kind. 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 Melrose publishes is the rate you pay on the whole value, exactly as a landlord does.
The cost of living in Melrose, 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 Melrose
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 Melrose is the right part of the metro
No neighborhood guides for Melrose 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 Melrose actually involves
Melrose publishes $11.47 per $1,000 and grants no residential exemption, so an owner pays 1.15% of the purchase price, about $10,700 a year on the city's typical home value. The commercial rate of $20.61 is a shift of 1.80, but there is not very much to shift: a compact retail town center and little else. When a municipality has neither a commercial base nor an exemption, the residential rate carries the whole budget, and Melrose's is among the higher ones here for exactly that reason.
Values rose 3.4% over the year to June 2026, second only to Needham's 5.2% of these twenty-four. The plausible explanation is the one visible from the platform: four commuter rail stops within the city and the Oak Grove Orange Line terminus a short walk over the Malden line, in a town of intact Victorian housing at roughly two-thirds of what the same house costs in Arlington. That combination has been finding buyers.
The housing is unusually coherent for this metro. Melrose grew as a streetcar and railway suburb between 1880 and 1930 and much of what was built then is still standing and still single-family: Queen Anne and Colonial Revival on tree streets, with a walkable Main Street that never got torn out. The corollary is that the stock is old, largely un-updated in the systems that matter, and heated in ways that predate anybody's idea of efficiency.
Melrose is a Proposition 2 1/2 city with a school building program and an override history, and its position is structurally the same as Belmont's and Arlington's: little new growth, no commercial cushion, so capital needs go to the ballot. There is no exemption here to soften what passes.
Moving to Melrose: check these before you commit
- That there is no residential exemption, so the published rate applies to the whole assessed value
- The override history and anything currently proposed, which in a residential-only tax base lands undiluted
- The heating system, insulation and knob-and-tube wiring on stock largely built before 1930
- Which commuter rail stop is actually walkable from the address, since the four are not equivalent
- Whether the property is in a local historic district, which covers part of the town center
- The walk to Oak Grove if you intend to use the Orange Line rather than the commuter rail
Melrose publishes a residential rate of $11 per $1,000 for fiscal 2026 and grants no residential exemption, so nothing stands between that rate and your bill. Business pays $21, a classification shift of 1.80 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 Melrose 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 Melrose 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