Understand Woburn before you commit to an address
Woburn is 44,000 people at the junction of Interstates 93 and 95, historically a tanning city and now an industrial and laboratory park with a residential town attached, growing faster than anywhere else in this layer except Everett. 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 Woburn publishes is the rate you pay on the whole value, exactly as a landlord does.
The cost of living in Woburn, 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 Woburn
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 Woburn is the right part of the metro
No neighborhood guides for Woburn 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 Woburn actually involves
Woburn shifts more of its levy onto business than any other municipality here: a commercial rate of $21.43 against a residential rate of $9.15, a ratio of 2.34. It grants no residential exemption. That combination makes Woburn the single-lever case on this table, and it is worth reading beside Cambridge, which pulls both, and Arlington, which pulls neither. A Woburn owner pays 0.92% of the purchase price, about $7,000 a year, which is a low effective rate on a house that costs $770,000.
The shift is possible because the interchange is one of the largest concentrations of commercial and industrial property in eastern Massachusetts, and the city's residential rate is what a substantial business tax base buys. The exposure is the same one Cambridge and Watertown have in a different form: this is a tax base of buildings that companies lease, and lease markets move.
Woburn's environmental history is well documented and a buyer should know it rather than discover it. The Wells G and H site, the childhood leukemia cluster around it and the litigation that followed became the subject of A Civil Action, and the site remains on the National Priorities List with ongoing groundwater remediation. That is a matter of public record, it is geographically specific, and it is the sort of thing a Massachusetts 21E site assessment is for.
The stock is largely postwar single family, capes and ranches and split levels from the 1950s onward, with newer subdivision at the edges and apartment construction near the Anderson station. That makes Woburn one of the more affordable ways into a detached house inside 128, and it is the reason the population is up over seven percent since the 2020 census.
Moving to Woburn: check these before you commit
- That there is no residential exemption, so the low published rate is the rate you pay on the whole value
- The environmental history of the specific parcel, in a city with a Superfund site and a long industrial past
- Which side of the interchange, since highway proximity is priced in and lived with differently
- For a postwar house: the age of the roof, the heating system and the electrical panel
- Whether the commute is really the commuter rail, or whether it is 93 at rush hour
- Private well or town water history on any older parcel at the edges
Woburn publishes a residential rate of $9 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 2.34 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 Woburn 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 Woburn 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