Understand Quincy before you commit to an address
Quincy is 103,000 people on Boston Harbor south of the city, a shipbuilding and granite town with twenty-seven miles of coastline, four Red Line stations and a downtown that has been rebuilding for fifteen years. 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 Quincy publishes is the rate you pay on the whole value, exactly as a landlord does. It fronts the ocean or Boston Harbor, which is what the insurance figure here is banded on, and flood is a separate policy that covers what homeowners insurance does not.
The cost of living in Quincy, 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 Quincy
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 Quincy is the right part of the metro
No neighborhood guides for Quincy 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 Quincy actually involves
Quincy publishes $11.78 per $1,000 with a commercial rate of $23.53 and grants no residential exemption. An owner pays 1.18% of the purchase price, about $8,100 a year on a typical value of $687,000. At 103,434 people Quincy is the second-largest municipality in this layer that has not adopted the exemption, fifty-five behind Lynn on the 2024 estimate this layer selects on, and the comparison that shows what that costs is Malden: a smaller city, a similar house price, a similar published rate, and a Malden owner pays roughly $5,800 against a Quincy owner's $8,100 because Malden takes $178,684 off the assessment first.
Quincy has more coastline than any other municipality in this layer and it is spread across peninsulas rather than concentrated on one beach. Houghs Neck, Germantown, Squantum, Adams Shore and Merrymount are separate low-lying necks with their own flood exposure, and the difference in insurance and in flood policy between a house on a neck and one up the hill in West Quincy is substantial. Homeowners insurance covers none of the flood risk.
Four Red Line stations in one municipality is the best rapid transit service outside Boston and Cambridge, and the city has spent fifteen years redeveloping Quincy Center around one of them, with several thousand units built or permitted. That has created two distinct markets: new construction apartments and condominiums downtown with real fees and modern systems, and the two- and three-family and granite Victorian stock in the neighborhoods that is a century older.
The Wollaston station rebuild and the long-running work on the Red Line have made service here unreliable at points over the last several years, and the ferry from Squantum runs as an alternative. For a buyer the useful test is the trip at the hour you would make it rather than the map, which shows a fifteen-minute ride.
Moving to Quincy: check these before you commit
- That there is no residential exemption here, which is worth several thousand dollars a year against Malden or Chelsea
- Flood zone and elevation on any of the necks, and a real flood insurance quote
- Which Red Line station and the real walk to it, since the four serve different parts of a large city
- For new construction downtown: the fee, the reserve and the master insurance
- For a two- or three-family in the neighborhoods: leases, deleading and the state of the systems
- Whether the address is on a neck or on the hill, because they insure and flood differently
Quincy 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 $24, a classification shift of 2.00 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 Quincy 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 Quincy 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