Faro Labs / Markets / Boston, MA
Boston real estate investment market
What a typical rental in Boston, Massachusetts costs, rents for, and returns: underwritten by Faro's own engine, not a scraped summary.
Returns assume 20% down at 6.75% over 30 years, 7% vacancy, and standard operating costs: Faro's default assumptions, the same ones every report starts from. Home value and rent trends as of 2026-05-31.
Difficult for both
At market rent, a typical Boston rental runs $2,153 short each month, and home values moved −0.7% over the last year. Neither leg is carrying deals right now, which means the ones that work here are bought well below market rather than at it.
The price a deal actually works at
Faro models five price points for Boston, from a weak buy to a strong one. The market-rate deal is $786,208; a good buy is $707,587 and a great one $628,966 roughly 20% below market value. Those are the bars a specific listing gets measured against when you run it.
How Boston compares
Of the 210 markets Faro publishes, Boston is the 28th most expensive to buy into: 98% above the median covered market, and the 112th strongest on rent-to-price. Within Massachusetts it's the 1st priciest of 2 markets we cover. On the last year of home-value change it ranks 116th.
To break even at the default financing, a typical Boston property would need about $6,411 a month in rent: $2,658 more than the $3,753 the market currently supports.
What each tier costs in Boston
Faro models five price points per market. A listing gets measured against these bars, not against a national average.
| Tier | Purchase price | Market rent | vs. market rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weak buy | $864,829 | $3,565/mo | +10% |
| Fair buy | $825,518 | $3,678/mo | +5% |
| Market rate | $786,208 | $3,753/mo | — |
| Good buy | $707,587 | $3,941/mo | -10% |
| Great buy | $628,966 | $4,128/mo | -20% |
A typical Boston deal, underwritten
The market-rate property above, run through the same engine every Faro report uses.
| Purchase price | $786,208 |
|---|---|
| Monthly rent | $3,753 |
| Cash required (20% down + 3% closing) | $180,828 |
| Net operating income | $23,114/yr |
| Monthly cash flow | -$2,153 |
| Cap rate | 2.9% |
| Cash-on-cash return | −14.3% |
| DSCR | 0.47 |
Expensive, and the rent doesn't follow
Boston is the 28th most expensive of the 210 markets here, 98.0% above the median, but rent only reaches 0.48% of price a month, so the income never scales with the entry cost. A typical property needs $180,828 in cash and still runs $2,153 short each month. Buyers here are underwriting appreciation and the loan paydown, not the rent, whether or not they say so.
What it would take to break even
A typical Boston property would need about $6,411 a month to cover itself at the default financing: 71% above the $3,753 the market currently supports. That gap is the honest size of the problem: it isn't closed by trimming an expense line, it's closed by buying meaningfully below market, putting more down, or finding a property that rents well above its market's median.
Negotiation matters more than usual here
The gap between a market-rate Boston buy at $786,208 and a strong one at $628,966 is 20%: a wide band. In markets with a spread that size, what you pay relative to comps drives the return more than the market's own direction does. Two buyers in the same city, the same month, can end up with completely different deals.
Boston investor questions
Is Boston a good place to buy rental property?
A typical Boston rental at $786,208 renting for $3,753 a month returns 2.9% on a cap-rate basis and runs short by $2,153 a month at 20% down. Individual deals vary far more than markets do, which is the whole reason to underwrite a specific address.
Can you cash-flow a rental in Boston?
Not at the market's own price and rent. A typical property runs $2,153 short each month. It would need about $6,411 in rent to break even. Deals that work here are bought below market rather than at it, which is what the price ladder above is for.
Are rents going up in Boston?
Rents moved up 3.1% over the last year, measured across 25 ZIP codes. The typical market-rate rental sits at $3,753 a month.
Where do these numbers come from?
Price and rent come from a modeled city-level benchmark dataset; the year-over-year trends are Zillow's ZHVI and ZORI indices, taken as the median across every covered ZIP so one unusual ZIP can't swing the figure. Every return metric is computed by Faro's own underwriting engine. Days on market and sale-to-list aren't shown because we have no city-level source for them we'd stand behind.
Other Massachusetts markets
Run the numbers yourself
A market average is not a deal.
Paste a real Boston listing and Faro underwrites that specific property from its own comps, with a target price you can actually offer.
Estimates for analysis and educational use only: not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Verify every number independently before making a purchase decision.