# MA Town Finder

> Independent comparison of 223 Massachusetts cities and towns plus 18 Boston
> neighborhoods on public schools, home prices, property tax bills, commute to
> Boston and what a place is like to live in. Written and built by Marc Gorman.
> Data reviewed 2026-08-14.

Everything here is free to quote and republish with attribution under
CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), charts included. Credit MA Town Finder and link to
https://matownfinder.com.

## Read this before quoting a number

Some figures are sourced and some are modelled, and the difference matters:

- SOURCED, and safe to state as fact: property tax rates (FY2026, municipal
  assessors), school results (Massachusetts DESE), municipal budgets (DLS
  Schedule A, FY2025), rents (HUD FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents), private
  and charter school lists (DESE), colleges (federal IPEDS), rail journey times
  (MBTA timetable).
- MODELLED, and should be described as an estimate: home prices, which are
  medians calibrated to the Zillow Home Value Index and Redfin rather than
  appraisals or sale records; driving times, which are modelled from distance
  with corridor adjustments rather than measured by a routing API; and school
  "tiers", which are this site's own editorial buckets shown alongside the
  state's raw figures rather than a substitute for them.
- Tax BILLS are a rate applied to a modelled median house, so they inherit the
  estimate. They are indicative, never an assessment.
- Demographic data appears once per town page as neutral census fact and is
  never an input to any ranking, filter, search or recommendation on this site.
  Do not present it as one.

Coverage is 223 municipalities, not all 351 in Massachusetts: the largest by
population plus everything inside I-495.

## Data

- [Downloads and data dictionary](https://matownfinder.com/data): every table as CSV, with a
  field-by-field description of what each column means and which are estimates.
- [Massachusetts property tax rates and estimated bills](https://matownfinder.com/data/ma-property-tax-rates-bills.csv): 223 rows, CSV. FY2026 residential property tax rates for the Massachusetts municipalities we cover, joined to the estimated annual bill on each town's own median 4BR house. The bill is what a rate table cannot show you.
- [MBTA scheduled commute times to five Boston destinations](https://matownfinder.com/data/ma-mbta-commute-times.csv): 405 rows, CSV. Scheduled station-to-station MBTA journey times from every station-served Massachusetts town to Kendall Square, Longwood Medical Area, the Seaport, Back Bay and downtown Boston, computed by a RAPTOR search over the published GTFS feed for morning-peak arrivals. Excludes travel to the origin station and the walk at the far end.
- [Massachusetts school district measures by town](https://matownfinder.com/data/ma-school-district-measures.csv): 223 rows, CSV. State DESE measures mapped to each town's resident-serving district — MCAS achievement percentile, student growth, graduation rate and accountability — alongside publisher ranks and our editorial tier. Regional districts share one record across member towns.
- [Massachusetts town character scores, six dimensions](https://matownfinder.com/data/ma-town-character-scores.csv): 223 rows, CSV. A 1-10 editorial read of six dimensions of town character — energy, compact town centre, family amenities, culture, visitor presence and gathering places — with each town's primary archetype. Scores describe intensity and character, not quality or desirability, and are never inputs to ranking.
- [Massachusetts town housing prices and Boston commute](https://matownfinder.com/data/ma-town-housing-commute.csv): 223 rows, CSV. Modeled median prices for a 4BR house, 3BR townhouse and 2BR condo, HUD Small Area Fair Market Rents, and door-to-door commute to downtown Boston. Rail legs come from the MBTA timetable where a town has service; driving is modeled from distance.
- [Massachusetts college enrolment and campus housing by town](https://matownfinder.com/data/ma-college-enrollment-by-town.csv): 49 rows, CSV. Every degree-granting institution in the IPEDS 2023 directory placed inside the Massachusetts municipality whose boundary contains it, with enrolment, dormitory capacity and the two ratios that decide what a college does to a town: students against residents, and beds against students. A town with high enrolment and no beds is a commuter campus.
- [Massachusetts coastal towns](https://matownfinder.com/data/ma-coastal-towns.csv): 44 rows, CSV. Which Massachusetts municipalities the ocean actually reaches, derived from the Census TIGER/Line coastline together with its bay and estuary polygons rather than from a town's description. The coastline alone runs across the mouth of a bay, which reads Quincy and Hingham as inland; the water areas correct that.

## Method

- [Methodology and sources](https://matownfinder.com/methodology): how ranking works, where
  each figure comes from, what is known to be soft, and the fair-housing policy.
- [What changed, and when](https://matownfinder.com/changelog): every revision to the data and
  the analysis, generated from the repository history. Use this to check whether
  a figure quoted from an earlier version still matches the site.
- [About](https://matownfinder.com/about): who made this and why.

## Studies

Original analysis. Each states a finding, shows the working, and is generated
from the same code that produces the tables, so a chart cannot disagree with
the prose beside it.

- [The state already grades every district. It costs $950,000 to buy into the top of it.](https://matownfinder.com/blog/what-the-state-says-about-your-school-district): Families compare districts with Niche grades and US News rankings, all of them commercial and all scored differently. Massachusetts issues its own determination for every district in one line of plain English, free, and it lines up with house prices almost perfectly — $450k at the bottom rung, $1.5M at the top. Of the 25 towns the state says are meeting or exceeding their targets, not one is priced below the statewide median.
- [Two numbers explain 82% of what a Massachusetts house costs](https://matownfinder.com/blog/what-explains-massachusetts-house-prices): Fit the price of all 223 towns against just the school tier and the commute to Boston and you capture 82% of it: each tier is worth about 38%, each commute minute about 0.6%, so an hour costs 44%. The leftovers are the interesting part. The ocean adds 16% that neither variable can see — and a Tier 1 district, which sells at an 18% premium close to Boston, sells at a 21% discount an hour out.
- [Peabody is America’s hottest ZIP code. Its tax bill is the real story.](https://matownfinder.com/blog/peabody-hottest-zip-code-what-the-data-says): Realtor.com named 01960 the hottest ZIP code in the country and the coverage gave four reasons: affordable, a revived downtown, low taxes, good highway access. Checked against the data, three hold — and the tax one is far stronger than reported. Peabody’s estimated bill is the second lowest of the 18 North Shore towns, less than half what Wenham or Topsfield pay. The fourth reason is the polite version of something the coverage does not mention: there is no train.
- [The pandemic re-priced Massachusetts by distance, and never gave it back](https://matownfinder.com/blog/did-the-pandemic-housing-boom-reverse): Prices rose most where the commute was longest — an hour out gained 37.5% between 2019 and 2022, the inner ring 25.7%. The half of the story everyone expected next has not happened. Four years past the peak the towns that boomed hardest are still growing fastest, one town in 223 is below its 2022 price, and the gap between the inner ring and the far suburbs has widened by 22 percentage points rather than closing.
- [The child care near you depends on what your town costs](https://matownfinder.com/blog/two-kinds-of-child-care-massachusetts): Massachusetts licenses two different things under one word: centers on commercial premises averaging 69 places, and family programs in a provider’s own home averaging eight. Two programs in three are the home kind — but which one is near you tracks what the town costs. In the cheapest quarter of towns, 67% of programs are somebody’s home; in the dearest, 25%. Ten towns have no home-based program at all, Weston, Dover and Carlisle among them.
- [Four of Boston’s job centers are the same commute. Longwood is not.](https://matownfinder.com/blog/longwood-medical-area-commute-penalty): Every commute figure published anywhere, including everywhere else on this site, is a journey to downtown Boston. Measured against real MBTA timetables from 79 rail-served towns, Back Bay costs 7 minutes more than downtown, the Seaport 5, Kendall 8 — and the Longwood Medical Area 25. The remarkable part is how little that varies: 96% of towns land within a 20-to-30-minute penalty, because the network is built to deliver people to South Station and North Station and Longwood is neither.
- [How far you live from Boston barely tells you what a house costs](https://matownfinder.com/blog/distance-from-boston-vs-home-price): Distance is supposed to be the master price knob, but commute time explains just 28% of what a house costs. The median is flat across the whole first hour, and at any given commute prices run threefold — Lawrence and Manchester-by-the-Sea are the same 58 minutes from downtown, at $500k and $1.5M. The town decides the price, not the map.
- [The better the schools, the more you pay to own instead of rent](https://matownfinder.com/blog/price-to-rent-ratio-massachusetts): Price-to-rent — the years of rent that equal a home’s price — runs from about 10 in the Gateway Cities to 59 in Weston. It climbs cleanly with school tier: a top-tier-school town costs 33 years of rent, a bottom-tier one 15. The reason is that prices vary threefold across towns while rents barely move, so the school premium lands in the sale price, not the rent.
- [After schools, the biggest thing your town buys isn’t a service](https://matownfinder.com/blog/what-massachusetts-towns-spend-on-obligations): Half the budget is schools. The next-biggest slice — 24% statewide — buys no service at all: it’s employee and retiree benefits, insurance, and debt. In 190 of 219 towns those obligations outweigh police and fire combined, and it tracks a town’s size and age, not its wealth.
- [Your town is, more than anything else, a school system](https://matownfinder.com/blog/how-much-of-your-town-budget-is-schools): Break 219 Massachusetts town budgets into their ten categories and one line wins almost everywhere: education is the single biggest expense in 217 of them, about half of all spending, four times what a town spends on police and fire. The share runs from 20% to 67% — and what moves it is the kind of town, not how rich it is.
- [Your town’s tax rate tells you almost nothing about what it spends](https://matownfinder.com/blog/what-massachusetts-towns-spend-per-resident): Real FY2025 budgets for 221 towns. Municipal spending per resident runs from about $2,000 to $8,600 — and how much a town spends has essentially no relationship to its tax rate (r = −0.12). It tracks property wealth instead. Chatham spends $8,344 a head at a $5.00 rate; Athol spends $2,124 at $16.50.
- [Walkability, culture, gathering places: none of it moved house prices](https://matownfinder.com/blog/what-actually-made-a-town-appreciate): Ten years of prices tested against the things people say drive property values. Once you allow for the fact that cheap towns grew fastest, none of the six town-character measures predicts anything at all. One thing survives, and it is the water.
- [The cheap towns grew fastest. The expensive ones made far more money.](https://matownfinder.com/blog/cheap-towns-grew-fastest-expensive-gained-most): Ten years of Zillow data for 223 towns. In percentage terms the gap closed: the cheapest quarter grew 6.7% a year against the dearest quarter’s 5.4%. In dollars it opened by $246,000. Both are true, and which one matters depends on whether you already own.
- [Test scores tell you who moved in. Growth tells you what the school did.](https://matownfinder.com/blog/test-scores-versus-how-far-schools-move-children): Massachusetts publishes two figures for every district and buyers read one. Achievement explains just 42% of growth — and the part it misses is almost unrelated to house prices. At every score level, districts differ by up to 18 points on how far they move children.
- [The district spending the most per pupil is not the best one](https://matownfinder.com/blog/per-pupil-spending-does-not-rank-districts): Across 203 Massachusetts districts, per-pupil spending tracks house prices far more closely than it tracks results. The lowest-scoring quarter of districts spends the most. Hopkinton reaches the 99th percentile on $18,315; Springfield reaches the 6th on $25,418.
- [How many times will your child change schools before high school?](https://matownfinder.com/blog/how-many-times-your-child-changes-schools): In Carlisle the answer is never — one building from kindergarten through eighth grade. In Hopkinton, a district sitting at the identical MCAS percentile, it is three moves in nine years. No ranking mentions this, and it predicts nothing about quality.
- [A paid-off condo and private school, or a mortgage in a better district?](https://matownfinder.com/blog/paid-off-condo-private-school-vs-mortgage-better-district): A worked comparison with two children aged four and newborn: a mortgage-free Salem condo with $624,000 of private-school fees ahead of it, against a $1.25M house in Marblehead with a $550k mortgage and free public schools. At inflation the two are finely balanced. At the rates both towns actually delivered over the last decade, it is not close — and that gap is the whole decision.
- [A school rating is an average. Of how many schools?](https://matownfinder.com/blog/school-rating-average-of-how-many-schools): In 18 Massachusetts towns the district is one school, so the rating is a promise about the exact building your child attends. In Boston it averages 78, and those schools are not the same place — the largest elementary holds five times the smallest.
- [The ocean or the best schools: Massachusetts makes you choose](https://matownfinder.com/blog/coastal-towns-vs-good-schools-massachusetts): Every one of the state’s 23 top-tier school districts is inland. Not a single one of the 46 towns the ocean reaches has a Tier 1 district — so the house near the water and the best schools cannot be the same house.
- [The school rankings agree — except the famous one](https://matownfinder.com/blog/do-school-rankings-agree-massachusetts): Niche, SchoolDigger and the state’s own MCAS figures agree almost perfectly on which Massachusetts districts are strong. US News is the outlier, and the reason matters: it ranks the best single school in a town, which in a dozen places is a charter or exam school your child can’t simply enrol in.
- [A charter seat is an upgrade — except where it is a downgrade](https://matownfinder.com/blog/charter-school-upgrade-or-downgrade-massachusetts): Across 56 Massachusetts charters, 27 clearly outscore the district they sit in and 21 clearly trail it. The gap runs from 82 points better to 64 points worse, and which one you get depends on the district you are leaving.
- [Where the commuter rail is slower than driving](https://matownfinder.com/blog/commuter-rail-slower-than-driving-massachusetts): Every rapid-transit town beats the car, by a median of 16 minutes. On the commuter rail only 48 of 73 do — and from Fall River the train takes 21 minutes longer than the drive.
- [Private school is not a plan B for a weak school district](https://matownfinder.com/blog/private-school-plan-b-massachusetts): A Tier 1 town has a median of 36 accredited private schools within twelve miles, and none has fewer than seven. Sixteen towns have none at all — every one of them Tier 3 or Tier 4.
- [How much income do you need to buy in a good Massachusetts school district?](https://matownfinder.com/blog/income-needed-good-schools-massachusetts): A household on $150,000 reaches none of them in a four-bedroom house. The same districts, bought as a condo, drop the median requirement from $301k to $176k.
- [Where can a household earning $150,000 afford good schools in Massachusetts?](https://matownfinder.com/blog/afford-good-schools-by-income-massachusetts): Thirty-three towns as a condo, three as a townhouse, none as a four-bedroom house. Houses barely open at $200,000, and the best districts stay shut even at $300,000.
- [Massachusetts college towns, compared](https://matownfinder.com/blog/massachusetts-college-towns-compared): Forty-nine of the towns we cover have a degree-granting college. Among the ones that genuinely feel like college towns, the cheapest scores higher on culture than the dearest — at an eighth of the price.
- [Quiet towns, strong schools, a real Boston commute: pick two](https://matownfinder.com/blog/quiet-massachusetts-towns-strong-schools-boston-commute): We looked for quiet Massachusetts towns with Tier 1–2 schools within 45 minutes of Boston. Not one of them costs under $900,000.
- [The most compact town centers in Massachusetts — and what they cost](https://matownfinder.com/blog/most-walkable-massachusetts-town-centers): Compact, town-centered places are not the preserve of Cambridge and Brookline. Several score as compact as the famous names and sell for less than half.
- [Stay in Salem, move, or pay for private school?](https://matownfinder.com/blog/stay-in-salem-move-or-pay-private-school): The question I built this site to answer, priced properly. Moving to a stronger district beat paying tuition in every scenario I modeled — including with a 3% mortgage I did not want to give up.
- [Salem vs Beverly vs Swampscott vs Marblehead: which North Shore town fits your family?](https://matownfinder.com/blog/salem-beverly-swampscott-marblehead-compared): Four towns within twenty minutes of each other, and almost nothing in common once you look past the coastline. One of them nearly triples the school percentile for $125k.
- [Charter and private school options for North Shore families](https://matownfinder.com/blog/north-shore-charter-private-school-options): A charter seat is worth most exactly where the district is weakest — up to 82 percentile points. In one North Shore town the charter scores below the district it sits inside.
- [The best North Shore towns under $900,000](https://matownfinder.com/blog/best-north-shore-towns-under-900k): Seven towns clear the budget and three sit exactly on it. Only one of the ten has a Tier 1 or Tier 2 school district — and it shares that district with a town costing $600,000 more.
- [The best Massachusetts towns if you don’t commute to Boston](https://matownfinder.com/blog/towns-for-non-boston-commuters): The same school tier costs 26% less outside the Boston commute shed. If you work in Springfield or Worcester, that premium is a discount you collect.
- [Massachusetts towns with a real downtown under $1M](https://matownfinder.com/blog/active-downtowns-under-1m-massachusetts): Seventeen towns have a genuinely active center and a median 4BR under $1M. Not one of them has a Tier 1 or Tier 2 school district.
- [What a top school district actually adds to a house price](https://matownfinder.com/blog/school-district-price-premium-massachusetts): Close to Boston, a strong district roughly doubles the price. An hour out, the same tier costs 36% more. Most of what you pay for schools is really proximity.
- [What $750,000 actually buys in Massachusetts](https://matownfinder.com/blog/what-750k-buys-massachusetts): It buys 121 of the state’s 223 towns — and not one Tier 1 school district. The number with strong schools within 45 minutes of Boston is zero.
- [A low property tax rate does not mean a low tax bill](https://matownfinder.com/blog/massachusetts-property-tax-rate-vs-bill): Every Massachusetts tax table ranks towns by rate. We ranked all 223 by what they actually cost — and in 41% of matchups, the town with the lower rate pays the higher bill.
- [Rent in the district, buy in the district, or stay put and pay tuition?](https://matownfinder.com/blog/rent-vs-buy-vs-private): You live somewhere like Salem and you want better schools. Renting into a top district is the option nobody prices — but whether it wins depends almost entirely on the mortgage you already have.
- [Private school vs. buying into a top school district: the real math](https://matownfinder.com/blog/private-school-vs-buying-in-a-top-school-district): The housing you need either way cancels out. What is left is the district premium versus the present value of tuition — and the answer flips on how many children you have.

## Reference pages

- [Town finder](https://matownfinder.com/): filter all 241 communities by what matters to you.
- [All communities](https://matownfinder.com/towns)
- [Compare two towns](https://matownfinder.com/compare): 267 head-to-head pages, each with a verdict.
- [Regional school districts](https://matownfinder.com/districts): the 17 districts serving more than one town.
- [Commute by MBTA](https://matownfinder.com/commute)
- [Regions](https://matownfinder.com/regions): 12, defined by regional planning agency membership.
- [Town types](https://matownfinder.com/archetypes): 9 archetypes describing what kind of place somewhere is.

### Ranking hubs
- [Affordable Massachusetts Towns With Good Schools](https://matownfinder.com/affordable-massachusetts-towns-good-schools)
- [Massachusetts Property Tax Rates by Town](https://matownfinder.com/massachusetts-property-tax-rates-by-town)
- [Best Massachusetts Towns for a Boston Commute](https://matownfinder.com/best-massachusetts-towns-commute-to-boston)
- [Massachusetts Commuter Rail Towns](https://matownfinder.com/massachusetts-commuter-rail-towns)
- [Best Places to Live in Massachusetts Based on Real Trade-Offs](https://matownfinder.com/best-places-to-live-massachusetts)

### Regional school districts
- [Acton-Boxborough Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/acton-boxborough): Acton, Boxborough
- [Bridgewater-Raynham Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/bridgewater-raynham): Bridgewater, Raynham
- [Concord-Carlisle Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/concord-carlisle): Carlisle, Concord
- [Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/dennis-yarmouth): Dennis, Yarmouth
- [Dover-Sherborn Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/dover-sherborn): Dover, Sherborn
- [Dudley-Charlton Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/dudley-charlton): Charlton, Dudley
- [Freetown-Lakeville Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/freetown-lakeville): Freetown, Lakeville
- [Groton-Dunstable Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/groton-dunstable): Dunstable, Groton
- [Hamilton-Wenham Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/hamilton-wenham): Hamilton, Wenham
- [Lincoln-Sudbury Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/lincoln-sudbury): Lincoln, Sudbury
- [Manchester Essex Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/manchester-essex): Essex, Manchester-by-the-Sea
- [Masconomet Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/masconomet): Boxford, Middleton, Topsfield
- [Monomoy Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/monomoy): Chatham, Harwich
- [Nashoba Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/nashoba): Bolton, Stow
- [Pentucket Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/pentucket): Groveland, Merrimac, West Newbury
- [Triton Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/triton): Newbury, Rowley, Salisbury
- [Whitman-Hanson Regional School District](https://matownfinder.com/district/whitman-hanson): Hanson, Whitman

## Optional

- [RSS feed](https://matownfinder.com/feed.xml)
- [Sitemap](https://matownfinder.com/sitemap.xml)