Average Property Tax Bill by Town: Twenty Years in Western Mass

The average single family tax bill in this region runs from $835 in Hancock to $10,915 in Longmeadow. That is a thirteenfold spread inside one region, for fiscal 2026, from the same state report.

Set today's bills against fiscal 2006 and the direction is almost perfectly uniform: 100 of the 101 towns collect more than they did twenty years ago, most of them roughly twice as much. Exactly one town's average bill fell, and it is the town that already paid the least: Hancock, from $845 to $835.

The Median Bill Since 1990

There is no dip anywhere in the line. House prices in this region fell for six years after 2007; the median bill did not fall in any of them, because a town's levy is set by what it needs to raise, not by what the market is doing. Assessments came down, rates went up, and the bill continued its climb. The mechanics of that are their own story.

Where Bills Grew Fastest, and Where They Barely Moved

The spread of twenty-year growth is wide enough to matter when comparing towns:

• North Adams multiplied its average bill by 2.77x: $1,404 in 2006 to $3,894 now.
• Washington multiplied its average bill by 2.56x: $2,030 in 2006 to $5,204 now.
• Erving multiplied its average bill by 2.50x: $1,107 in 2006 to $2,772 now.
• Hancock moved least: 0.99x, $845 to $835.
• Windsor moved least: 1.38x, $2,065 to $2,846.

Growth and level are different lists. A town can double a small bill and still be among the cheapest places in the region to hold a house, and the table below carries both so you can sort by either.

Every Town, Both Years

Sortable and filterable by county. The bar under each fiscal 2026 bill marks its distance from this table's own middle.

What This Does Not Mean

An average is not a typical house. The figure is the town's total single family tax divided by its single family parcel count, so a handful of large waterfront or estate properties pulls a small town's average well above what most owners there actually pay.

A low bill is not a low rate, and neither is a verdict on the town. The lowest bills here belong to towns with very small budgets and, in some cases, unusual tax bases: Hancock keeps its rate near the bottom of the state partly because a resort carries a large share of the levy. What a particular house would owe is a function of its own assessment, and the tax bill calculator runs that arithmetic for any figure in any town.