Understand Saugus before you commit to an address
Saugus is 29,000 people between Revere, Lynn and Melrose, best known for the stretch of Route 1 that runs through it and for the tidal marsh along the Saugus and Pines Rivers on its eastern side. 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 Saugus 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 Saugus, 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 Saugus
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 Saugus is the right part of the metro
No neighborhood guides for Saugus 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 Saugus actually involves
Saugus charges residents $10.42 per $1,000 and business $21.28, a shift of 2.04, and grants no residential exemption. An owner pays 1.04% of the purchase price, about $7,300 a year on a typical value of $698,000. What is unusual is where the commercial base comes from: Saugus has almost no office or laboratory property and a great deal of highway retail, and the strip along Route 1 with its restaurants and big-box stores is doing the work that Kendall Square does for Cambridge. That is a thinner and more cyclical base than an office corridor, and highway retail has been the weakest commercial category in the country for a decade.
The marsh is the other structural fact. The Rumney Marsh Reservation and the tidal reaches of the Saugus and Pines Rivers cover a substantial part of the town's eastern side, which is why Saugus counts as coastal here despite having no beach of its own. Anything near the water is a flood and wetlands question before it is anything else, and Massachusetts wetlands protection is administered by the local conservation commission with real teeth over work near a resource area.
The Wheelabrator waste-to-energy plant and its ash landfill sit on the marsh at the Revere line and have been the subject of permitting fights for years. Whatever view you take of it, it is a fixed feature of the eastern side of the town and it is priced into the housing near it.
Saugus has no rail, which given that it is seven and a half miles from City Hall is the main reason its prices sit well below Melrose and Arlington at similar distances. The stock is mostly postwar single family, capes and ranches on decent lots, with older wood frame around Cliftondale Square and the town center. For a buyer who is driving anyway, it is one of the cheaper detached houses inside this radius.
Moving to Saugus: check these before you commit
- That there is no residential exemption, so the published rate applies to the whole assessed value
- Flood zone and wetlands, and whether the parcel is within the conservation commission's jurisdiction
- Proximity to the Route 1 strip and to the Wheelabrator site, both of which are priced in
- Septic or town sewer, which in parts of Saugus is not uniform
- For a postwar house: roof, heating, and whether the electrical service has ever been upgraded
- The drive you would actually make, since there is no rail and Route 1 and 128 are the options
Saugus publishes a residential rate of $10 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 2.04 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 Saugus 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 Saugus 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