The 36 Top Spots to Live in Greater Boston in 2025

Boston Globe

17-04-2025

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The confounding circumstances of the past few years — notable even in a market that's been mind-boggling for far longer — started when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in early 2022 in response to surging inflation. Mortgage rates that had lingered below 4 percent for the better part of three years soon started climbing, peaking at 7.8 percent in late 2023. Suddenly, a $2,400 monthly mortgage payment on a $500,000 loan turned into a $3,600 one.
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And that's not all. Those who dared venture into the Massachusetts market have run headlong into the frustrating fact that there just haven't been that many houses for sale, especially in the mid-price range. Lately, the inventory shortage has been even worse than usual: Continued high interest rates make many potential sellers reluctant to give up the low rates they locked down in 2020, says Cassidy Norton, associate publisher with Peabody-based real estate data firm
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'That shifts people's buying power,' Norton says. 'There's always been kind of an inventory crunch in Massachusetts. Sometimes it's worse than other times, and this is one of those times.'
Overall, the housing shortage — the state needs to add at least 222,000 units by 2035, Governor Maura Healey estimates — is a stubborn problem. In February, the Healey administration released a comprehensive plan for addressing this gap through a variety of measures aimed at increasing housing supply, rehabilitating and repairing existing substandard housing stock, and providing financial support to struggling households. The ambitious plan's 10-year implementation, however, means it won't meaningfully change housing prices or availability in the coming months.
Thankfully, there may be some relief ahead. Interest rates, still well above the lows of four years ago, have started to temper, remaining under 7 percent for most of 2024 — that's at least a glimmer of good news, though it's impossible to tell if it will last. And sales volume is starting to inch its way back: In 2024, single-family home sales increased 4 percent in Massachusetts, as compared with the previous year. (That's a bigger turnaround than it might seem: In 2023, the number of sales had plummeted 21 percent compared with 2022.)
Prices aren't sinking, but they may be starting to stabilize. Homes priced at the high end of their estimated property values are spending more time on the market and seeing their asking prices reduced more often, Gustafson says. More aggressively priced homes, however, are still receiving multiple offers and getting snapped up quickly.
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Slowly expanding inventory may help. In January, the number of listings in the state was up 7.1 percent over the previous year, according to research from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. And in Gustafson's
Of course, there are wide variations between the dynamics in different regions, towns, and even neighborhoods.
There are 'nuances to all our markets, because all real estate is local,' Gustafson says. And that's where the 2025 edition of Top Spots to Live comes in, providing a primer on the housing options, perks, and community character of 36 of the state's most in-demand housing destinations, from the cultural vibrancy of Lawrence to the seaside charms of Marion.
Explore the Top Spots to Live by region:
Methodology:
To arrive at this annual list, we relied on the finite — but meaningful — wisdom of supply and demand: Significantly increasing prices in these communities are a signal that many buyers are eager to call them home. We analyzed median home prices from 2019 and 2024 to find the biggest five-year increases across three price tiers for each region. In the Boston suburbs, we looked at single-family data from The Warren Group, excluding communities with fewer than 50 sales in 2024. For Boston and Cambridge neighborhoods, we used median home price data — including both single-family and condo sales — from
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Sarah Shemkus is a frequent contributor to the
Globe Magazine.
Additional research by Jon Gorey. Send comments to [e-mail].