House hunters looking for a little more elbow room around Boston are finding the steepest price tags clustered in a familiar trio of suburbs. New Castle, N.H., Weston and Wellesley sit at the very top of the Boston-area housing market, with typical home values that run deep into seven figures. The priciest spots now clear $1.9 million, and New Castle in particular has surged past the $2.3 million mark, a sharp reminder of just how concentrated high housing costs are around Greater Boston.
The ranking comes from a Stacker analysis that pulled Zillow home-value data for 197 cities and towns across the Boston–Cambridge–Newton metro, according to Stacker. The project tracks month-by-month “typical” home values back to January 2018, mapping out which communities consistently command the highest prices.
Top towns by typical home value
Zillow’s local pages put New Castle, N.H., at a typical home value of $2,356,522 and Weston at about $2,182,055, according to Zillow. Wellesley rounds out the top three, sitting just under $2 million in the overall ranking. Several other suburbs on the list also post typical values above $1 million, underscoring the premium that still comes with living within striking distance of Boston.
Mortgage backdrop
Those seven-figure “typical” values are landing at a time when long-running borrowing costs have eased a bit. The 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 6.01% the week of Feb. 19, according to Freddie Mac. Slightly lower rates than last year have helped some buyers lock in loans, but the combination of big down payments and tight inventory still keeps many households on the sidelines in these markets.
Why it matters
The spread between the Boston metro’s most expensive suburbs and the country as a whole is striking. Stacker found that the typical U.S. home value was about $358,968 in January, highlighting how much wealth is concentrated in a relatively small group of towns, according to Stacker. For local buyers, that reality translates into hard tradeoffs. Shorter commutes, access to top schools and distinctive neighborhood character tend to come with an outsized price tag. For planners and developers, the staying power of these seven-figure suburbs points to ongoing pressure on housing affordability across the region.
