Rental market · Watertown, MA · Incorporated city
Watertown, MA: average rent, home values, and rental yield
New England · Population 35,543
Why this market does or does not qualify
Overall City Market Score rank #4,011 of 4,812. It does not enter the Buy & Hold shortlist under the baseline screen.
Price × rent decision grid · 25% down
Change the two inputs that usually decide the deal. Green cells clear the three financial requirements before the separate quality and data gates.
| Monthly cash flow / Hold Coverage | 10% below entry$519,473 | Entry estimate$577,192 | 10% above entry$634,911 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10% higher rent$3,403/mo | −$550/moHC 0.79 · does not clear | −$900/moHC 0.69 · does not clear | −$1,260/moHC 0.60 · does not clear |
| Modeled rent$3,094/mo | −$790/moHC 0.70 · does not clear | −$1,140/moHC 0.60 · does not clear | −$1,500/moHC 0.53 · does not clear |
| 10% lower rent$2,784/mo | −$1,030/moHC 0.60 · does not clear | −$1,380/moHC 0.52 · does not clear | −$1,740/moHC 0.45 · does not clear |
Expense waterfall · base case
Monthly, rounded to $10. NOI excludes CapEx and debt service.
- Scheduled rent+$3,090/mo
- Vacancy allowance−$150/mo
- Management−$240/mo
- Maintenance−$150/mo
- Property tax−$420/mo
- Insurance allowance−$240/mo
- NOI+$1,890/mo
- CapEx reserve−$150/mo
- Debt service−$2,880/mo
- Cash flow−$1,140/mo
Two supported strengths
Stability 55/100 and Growth 45/100.
Weakest measured signal
Cash Flow is the weakest category at 17/100.
Primary evidenced risk: price-to-income affordability is the weakest measured factor (14th national percentile). Data caveat: price is Zillow Bottom-Tier ZHVI (5th–35th percentile); rent is ZORI asking rent and is not bedroom- or property-matched. Insurance is a 0.5% annual allowance, not a quote.
Scenario buy-hold-v1-2026-09-19: 7% fixed financing for 30 years; 20% and 25% down; 5% vacancy; 8% management on collected rent; 5% maintenance and 5% CapEx on scheduled rent; measured local property tax; 3% closing costs. Qualification also requires positive cash flow, Hold Coverage at least 1.10, nonnegative cash flow after 10% lower rent, and the existing quality and data gates.
Property verification checklist
- Confirm achievable rent with bedroom-matched comps, current listings, and any existing lease.
- Use the parcel’s actual tax bill and reassessment rules.
- Obtain a landlord insurance quote, including wind, flood, or named-storm coverage where relevant.
- Inspect roof, structure, mechanicals, deferred maintenance, and immediate capital needs.
- Verify utilities, HOA, licensing, inspection, registration, and local rental rules.
- Replace the modeled loan with a current lender quote, points, closing costs, and reserve requirements.
Why this grade
Overall 34.2 is a weighted geometric mean of the three category scores. Because they are multiplied rather than averaged, their distances from a perfect 100 combine as an exact identity, and each category's share of that distance is the arithmetic below, not an estimate. Cash Flow carries 57% of it, which is what makes it the binding constraint on this grade.
Inside Cash Flow, the shortfall splits over the factors the model scored here, exactly, in proportion to their published weights. The largest component is expense-adjusted yield (weight 22 of the category's 35, 19th national percentile, 61% of the category's own shortfall); next is price to income (weight 13 of the category's 35, 14th national percentile, 38% of the category's own shortfall).
What this is not. It is not a claim that a different value on any one factor would produce a different score or a different grade. Every factor is scored as a national percentile and the grade is a percentile cut against the other 4,812 ranked markets, so this market's position moves only relative to all of them, never on its own. All 13 factors were measured for this market, so no category is carrying a gap.
How Watertown ranks nationally
Each row places Watertown against all 4,812 ranked U.S. markets. The marker is this city; the centre tick is the national median, and the bar spans from that median to the marker, so its length is how far from the middle of the country this market sits and the side it falls on is the direction. Further right is more favorable to an investor: inverted measures (crime, vacancy, price-to-income) are already flipped so higher always means better here.
What a deal looks like here
A market-level buy-box for Watertown, built from this market's own numbers: the investor-entry price, its rent, and local carrying costs. The market grade is a quality screen; the deal verdict below is this financing scenario only. An illustrative scenario, not a listing.
Does not meet screen. At 25% down, named scenarios span −$1,380 to −$1,140/mo after reserves (10% lower-rent stress to base case). This range is not a confidence interval.
Buy target = Zillow Bottom-Tier ZHVI (5th–35th percentile) $577,192; typical home value $819,283. Rent = Zillow ZORI typical asking rent. Assumptions: 25% down, 7% / 30-yr, 5% vacancy, 8% management on collected rent, 5% maintenance, 5% CapEx reserve excluded from NOI and subtracted from cash flow, 0.5% insurance, 0.87% property tax. Illustrative market-level scenario: not a listing, appraisal, recommendation, or underwriting decision. As of 2026-07-10.
Market Negotiation Leverage
Some seller leverage (25th percentile among 6,196 cities with Redfin coverage)
Equal-weight composite of three Redfin signals’ national percentiles (days on market 19, months of supply 2.1, sale-to-list 100.7%), direction-adjusted so a higher percentile always means more room for a buyer to negotiate. This is a cross-sectional snapshot against every other tracked city today, not a seasonal or historical baseline for this specific city (no multi-year time series is committed for this data). Not a prediction of what any specific seller will accept. Source: Redfin Data Center. See how this is calculated.
Price & rent history
Home value $257,758 → $819,283 (2000-01–2026-08) · Asking rent $2,016 → $3,094 (2016-01–2026-08)
Source: Zillow ZHVI (home value) and ZORI (asking rent) - monthly resolution for the last ~10 years (since 2016-09), quarterly before that. Home value uses the left axis, rent the right; toggle either series, change the range, hover to read any point. Gaps in the source series are left as gaps - never interpolated.
The honest read
Watertown scores 34/100 overall (grade F): 17 for Cash Flow, 45 for Growth, and 55 for Stability, each a 0–100 score built from the factors in that category. The scenario above shows what a representative investor-entry purchase pencils out to at today's rates. Everything we can measure is in the table below, with its source.
Every factor, shown
The Overall score blends three category scores built from thirteen measured factors: Cash Flow (35%), Growth (35%), and Stability (30%). The table shows every factor; the tag on each percentile marks which category a scored factor feeds. Untagged factors are shown for context but not scored. Every percentile also carries the band it falls in - top 10%, top quartile, above or below the national median, bottom quartile, bottom 10% - so a bare ordinal still reads as a position; the band restates that percentile and adds nothing to it. Every value carries its source and as-of date. How the score works.
| Factor | Value | National percentile | Source · as-of | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expense-adjusted yield | 1.5% | Bottom quartile19th percentile · Cash Flow | Zillow ZORI/ZHVI · 2026-08-31 | Annual rent divided by price, net of a modeled vacancy, tax, capex, and management allowance: the core of the Cash Flow category and what the score is actually computed from. The unadjusted gross yield is shown elsewhere on this page. |
| Price to income | 6.5x | Bottom quartile14th percentile · Cash Flow | Zillow + ACS income · 2026-08-31 | Home price over local median income. Lower is cheaper relative to what people earn. Part of the Cash Flow category. |
| Population growth | 0.2%/yr | Below median44th percentile · Growth | Census PEP · Census PEP 2020→2025 (vintage 2025) | Census population trend for the place, capped at 4.5%/yr before scoring (diminishing returns above that rate): the heaviest factor in the Growth category. |
| Job growth | 0.5%/yr | Below median48th percentile · Growth | BLS LAUS (county) · BLS LAUS county annual 2019→2025 (pre-COVID anchor; 2025 is an 11-month average) + BLS LAUS county annual 2015→2025 | County employment trend, capped at 4.0%/yr before scoring (diminishing returns above that rate). A Growth-category factor. |
| Income growth fallback | 5.4%/yr | Above median56th percentile · Growth | Model cohort median (eligible county or state/population cohort); no city-specific observation. Published 2026-10-06 | Local median-income trend. A Growth-category factor. |
| Rent growth | 3.5%/yr | Below median35th percentile · Growth | Zillow ZORI · 3yr + 10yr to 2026-08-31 | A 40/60 blend of 3-year and 10-year rent trend (the model's own weighting). A Growth-category factor. |
| Home-value growth | 4.1%/yr | Below median33rd percentile · Growth | Zillow ZHVI · 3yr + 10yr to 2026-08-31 | A 40/60 blend of 3-year and 10-year price trend (the model's own weighting). A small Growth-category factor. |
| Unemployment | 4.1% | Above median51st percentile · Stability | BLS LAUS (county) · BLS LAUS county annual 2025 (11-month average) | County unemployment rate. Lower is steadier, a Stability-category factor. |
| Rental vacancy | 3.8% | Above median68th percentile · Stability | Census ACS B25004 · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Share of rentals empty. Lower means more pricing power. A Stability-category factor. |
| Property tax rate | 0.9% | Above median58th percentile · Stability | Census ACS B25103/B25077 · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Median tax over median value. A direct drag on cash flow, scored in the Stability category as carrying-cost burden. |
| Months of supply | 2.1 mo | Above median74th percentile · Stability | Redfin Data Center · 2026-05-01 | Listings over sales pace. Under about 4 is a seller market, over 6 a buyer market. A Stability-category factor. |
| Days on market | 19 days | Top quartile81st percentile | Redfin Data Center · 2026-05-01 | How fast homes sell. Lower means more liquidity and an easier exit. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Sale-to-list ratio | 100.7% | Top quartile77th percentile | Redfin Data Center · 2026-05-01 | Sale price over asking. Above 100% means homes clear over ask. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Net domestic migration | -6.7/1k | Bottom quartile14th percentile | Census PEP (county) · PEP vintage 2025 | Net people moving in or out of the county, per 1,000 residents. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Building permits | 6.8/1k | Above median70th percentile | Census BPS (county) · BPS 2025 | New-construction permits per 1,000 homes. More means more supply coming. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Rent burden | 27% | Top quartile75th percentile | Census ACS B25071 · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Median rent as a share of income. Higher means less headroom for increases. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Median year built | 1947 | Bottom 10%5th percentile | Census ACS B25035 · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Age of the housing stock. Older stock carries more capex. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Max drawdown | 16% | Above median58th percentile | Zillow ZHVI · 2026-08-31 | Worst peak-to-trough home-value decline on record. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Violent crime | not reported | - | FBI CDE | No agency reported this place to the FBI. We never impute a crime number; where it is missing, the Stability category renormalizes over its remaining factors. |
- † Job growth and unemployment are county-level (BLS LAUS, county FIPS 25017); large multi-county cities inherit their dominant county’s figures.
- Data flag: popGrowth: no 2015 PEP estimate - recent window only.
- Data flag: incomeGrowth: missing.
Where to go next from Watertown
Every link below is this market's own data taken one step further: its neighbours in the ranking, the same numbers side by side, or the same numbers in a calculator you can change.
Nearby in the Massachusetts rankings, and national look-alikes
- Lynn, MAGrade F · score 34/100 · yield 4.8% · $580,377 · #3,996 nationalZillow ZHVI $136k (2000) to $580k (2026), +325%
- Winthrop Town, MAGrade F · score 34/100 · yield 3.8% · $649,600 · #4,000 national
- Fall River, MAGrade F · score 34/100 · yield 4.9% · $450,311 · #4,020 nationalZillow ZHVI $124k (2000) to $450k (2026), +263%
- Barnstable Town, MAGrade F · score 34/100 · yield 3.8% · $602,500 · #4,041 national
- Wilsonville, ORGrade F · score 34/100 · yield 3.5% · $623,949 · #4,012 nationalZillow ZHVI $235k (2000) to $624k (2026), +166%
- Zion, ILGrade F · score 34/100 · yield 6.5% · $254,581 · #4,009 nationalZillow ZHVI $110k (2000) to $255k (2026), +131%
- Grand Haven, MIGrade F · score 34/100 · yield 5.0% · $401,623 · #4,014 nationalZillow ZHVI $103k (2000) to $402k (2026), +292%
Compare Watertown head to head
- Watertown vs Lynn vs WilsonvilleThe pre-filled matchup: nearest in-state rank and closest national grade.
- Watertown vs Winthrop Town, MAGrade F · yield 3.8%
- Watertown vs Zion, ILGrade F · yield 6.5%
- Pick your own opponentAny of the 5,233 tracked cities.
Underwrite a Watertown deal
- Cap rateOpens on Watertown's own entry price and rent. Change either one.
- Cash flow & DSCRMonthly cash flow and DSCR, prefilled with this market's numbers.
- Mortgage paymentP&I on Watertown's entry price at the assumptions shown above.
- All marketsCompare Watertown against 4,812 ranked cities.
- Massachusetts ZIP CodesEvery Massachusetts ZIP Code area (Census ZCTAs), scored separately from the city rankings.
- Ranked listsYield, affordability, growth, stability, price band, or whether rent covers the mortgage.
For learning, not advice. A market screen from public data - not a forecast, not underwriting, not a recommendation to buy anywhere.