Western Massachusetts has a reputation as the low-cost corner of an expensive state, and for people buying a house that reputation is broadly earned. For people renting one, the numbers tell a considerably harsher story, and it is a story that almost never gets told because the headline figures in this region are all about purchase prices.
In the median town here, 49.6% of renter households spend thirty percent or more of their income on housing. Among owners with a mortgage, the same figure is 24.2%.
Why the gap is this wide
Three things compound, and none of them is about landlords being unusually greedy here.
The first is that a mortgage is a fixed payment against a rising income and rent is not. Somebody who bought in 2015 is still paying 2015 principal and interest. Somebody renting the identical house has absorbed every increase since. Over a decade that divergence is enormous, and it is the single largest driver of the gap above.
The second is the housing stock. This region built its rental supply for an industrial workforce that peaked around 1960, and it built it in the cities: Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, Westfield, Pittsfield, North Adams. Much of it is old, a great deal of it is in two-family and triple-decker buildings, and maintaining a 1910 triple-decker to modern standards is expensive in a way that shows up in rent.
The third is that incomes in the rental cities are lower than incomes in the towns around them. The same rent takes a larger bite. Cost burden is a ratio, and this region's problem lives as much in the denominator as the numerator.
Read the small towns with care
4 towns in this dataset report a renter cost-burden rate at or near one hundred percent. Do not read those as findings about a housing crisis in Granby, Middlefield, Otis.
Read them as findings about sample size. These are towns with a few hundred households and perhaps a dozen renters, surveyed by a rolling five-year sample. When the denominator is that small the margin of error swallows the estimate, and a figure of one hundred percent usually means "almost all of the very small number of renters we found". The Census Bureau publishes it honestly and it deserves to be read honestly.
The cities are where these figures carry weight, because that is where the renters are.
What the rent standard says
There is no reliable public dataset of asking rents in this region, which is worth stating plainly rather than substituting something that looks like one. What does exist is HUD's fair market rent: the benchmark used to set housing voucher payments, calculated per rent area.
- Amherst Town-Northampton, MA MSA: $2,004 for a two-bedroom
- Franklin County, MA: $1,866 for a two-bedroom
- Springfield, MA MSA: $1,734 for a two-bedroom
- Berkshire County, MA (part) HUD Metro FMR Area: $1,709 for a two-bedroom
- Pittsfield, MA HUD Metro FMR Area: $1,626 for a two-bedroom
It is a programme benchmark rather than a market average, and it is set to a percentile of the local distribution rather than the middle of it. Use it as a floor for what a decent two-bedroom costs, and expect the open market to sit above it in the towns people most want to live in.
The supply that is meant to answer this
Massachusetts sets a ten percent threshold under Chapter 40B: a town whose subsidised housing inventory falls below ten percent of its year-round homes can face a comprehensive permit that overrides local zoning. It is the state's main lever against exactly the problem this article describes.
12 of the 101 towns here are at or above that line. The other 89 are, in the statute's terms, open to an override. The full ledger with every town's share is at the 40B ledger.
Every town: rent standard, burden and subsidised share
Sortable and filterable. Check the town's size before you read a burden figure from a small one.
Rent Standards, Cost Burden and Subsidised Share by Town
Download CSV, same columns, same definitions
HUD's two-bedroom fair market rent for each town's rent area, the share of renter and of mortgaged owner households spending 30% or more of income on housing, and the town's Chapter 40B subsidised housing share. Survey estimates in small towns carry wide margins of error.
| Town | County | Two-Bedroom Rent Standard | Renters Spending 30%+ | Owners Spending 30%+ | Subsidised Housing Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adams | Berkshire | $1,626 | 61% | 25.1% | 7.5% |
| Agawam | Hampden | $1,734 | 39.3% | 23.3% | 5.2% |
| Alford | Berkshire | $1,709 | 0% | 30.4% | 0.0% |
| Amherst | Hampshire | $2,004 | 65.9% | 23.9% | 12.8% |
| Ashfield | Franklin | $1,866 | 83% | 30.4% | 2.4% |
| Becket | Berkshire | $1,709 | 36% | 40.2% | 0.1% |
| Belchertown | Hampshire | $2,004 | 47.2% | 28.9% | 6.0% |
| Bernardston | Franklin | $1,866 | 32.3% | 25.3% | 2.3% |
| Blandford | Hampden | $1,734 | 12.1% | 24.2% | 0.0% |
| Brimfield | Hampden | $1,734 | 54.8% | 22.9% | 3.5% |
| Buckland | Franklin | $1,866 | 61.4% | 14.4% | 0.9% |
| Charlemont | Franklin | $1,866 | 58.9% | 25.9% | 0.5% |
| Cheshire | Berkshire | $1,626 | 21.8% | 27.2% | 0.0% |
| Chester | Hampden | $1,734 | 42.5% | 24.1% | 0.0% |
| Chesterfield | Hampshire | $2,004 | 59.1% | 22.6% | 1.4% |
| Chicopee | Hampden | $1,734 | 50.5% | 27.7% | 10.5% |
| Clarksburg | Berkshire | $1,709 | 58.1% | 16.6% | 0.7% |
| Colrain | Franklin | $1,866 | 42.6% | 24.9% | 0.0% |
| Conway | Franklin | $1,866 | 32.3% | 25.1% | 0.1% |
| Cummington | Hampshire | $2,004 | 35% | 22% | 3.3% |
| Dalton | Berkshire | $1,626 | 37.9% | 22.9% | 5.6% |
| Deerfield | Franklin | $1,866 | 36.8% | 25.3% | 1.5% |
| East Longmeadow | Hampden | $1,734 | 47.2% | 24.4% | 7.0% |
| Easthampton | Hampshire | $2,004 | 45.7% | 30.4% | 7.2% |
| Egremont | Berkshire | $1,709 | 27.7% | 12.7% | 0.0% |
| Erving | Franklin | $1,866 | 51.7% | 20.2% | 0.0% |
| Florida | Berkshire | $1,709 | 9.7% | 17% | 0.0% |
| Gill | Franklin | $1,866 | 55.4% | 22.5% | 3.7% |
| Goshen | Hampshire | $2,004 | 56.4% | 29.1% | 2.3% |
| Granby | Hampshire | $2,004 | 100% | 18.3% | 3.1% |
| Granville | Hampden | $1,734 | 17.6% | 28.3% | 0.0% |
| Great Barrington | Berkshire | $1,709 | 54.6% | 31.9% | 11.1% |
| Greenfield | Franklin | $1,866 | 58.5% | 33.4% | 14.8% |
| Hadley | Hampshire | $2,004 | 34.2% | 18.8% | 12.0% |
| Hampden | Hampden | $1,734 | 86.5% | 26.6% | 3.0% |
| Hancock | Berkshire | $1,709 | 75.9% | 26% | 0.0% |
| Hatfield | Hampshire | $2,004 | 33.2% | 24.1% | 2.9% |
| Hawley | Franklin | $1,866 | 20% | 28.2% | 0.0% |
| Heath | Franklin | $1,866 | 40% | 19.7% | 0.0% |
| Hinsdale | Berkshire | $1,626 | 47.4% | 21% | 0.0% |
| Holland | Hampden | $1,734 | 33.3% | 29.8% | 0.0% |
| Holyoke | Hampden | $1,734 | 49.6% | 24.7% | 19.4% |
| Huntington | Hampshire | $2,004 | 35.3% | 20.2% | 3.2% |
| Lanesborough | Berkshire | $1,626 | 40% | 23.6% | 2.0% |
| Lee | Berkshire | $1,626 | 68.1% | 26.9% | 8.3% |
| Lenox | Berkshire | $1,626 | 56% | 25.3% | 6.5% |
| Leverett | Franklin | $1,866 | 68% | 21.7% | 0.3% |
| Leyden | Franklin | $1,866 | 50% | 22.8% | 0.0% |
| Longmeadow | Hampden | $1,734 | 50.5% | 24.9% | 4.9% |
| Ludlow | Hampden | $1,734 | 48.7% | 21.8% | 4.6% |
| Middlefield | Hampshire | $2,004 | 100% | 19% | 0.0% |
| Monroe | Franklin | $1,866 | 0% | 20.9% | 0.0% |
| Monson | Hampden | $1,734 | 53.2% | 28.6% | 3.4% |
| Montague | Franklin | $1,866 | 60% | 21.2% | 9.2% |
| Monterey | Berkshire | $1,709 | 73.3% | 30.8% | 0.0% |
| Montgomery | Hampden | $1,734 | 0% | 17.4% | 0.0% |
| Mount Washington | Berkshire | $1,709 | 100% | 33.8% | 0.0% |
| New Ashford | Berkshire | $1,709 | 31.6% | 37% | 0.0% |
| New Marlborough | Berkshire | $1,709 | 40.9% | 35.1% | 0.0% |
| New Salem | Franklin | $1,866 | 78.8% | 37.7% | 0.0% |
| North Adams | Berkshire | $1,709 | 60.4% | 24.3% | 12.2% |
| Northampton | Hampshire | $2,004 | 54.2% | 22.6% | 10.7% |
| Northfield | Franklin | $1,866 | 57.7% | 12.7% | 2.1% |
| Orange | Franklin | $1,866 | 46.4% | 30.6% | 12.0% |
| Otis | Berkshire | $1,709 | 100% | 16.2% | 0.0% |
| Palmer | Hampden | $1,734 | 46.5% | 26% | 4.5% |
| Pelham | Hampshire | $2,004 | 44.4% | 26.6% | 1.1% |
| Peru | Berkshire | $1,709 | 75% | 24.5% | 0.0% |
| Pittsfield | Berkshire | $1,626 | 53.4% | 22.2% | 8.5% |
| Plainfield | Hampshire | $2,004 | 23.5% | 37.8% | 0.0% |
| Richmond | Berkshire | $1,626 | 58.7% | 22.5% | 0.6% |
| Rowe | Franklin | $1,866 | 7.7% | 19.9% | 0.0% |
| Russell | Hampden | $1,734 | 43.3% | 28.6% | 0.7% |
| Sandisfield | Berkshire | $1,709 | 66.7% | 27.1% | 0.0% |
| Savoy | Berkshire | $1,709 | 81.3% | 20.7% | 0.0% |
| Sheffield | Berkshire | $1,709 | 54.5% | 37.5% | 1.9% |
| Shelburne | Franklin | $1,866 | 38.6% | 23.2% | 4.8% |
| Shutesbury | Franklin | $1,866 | 30.8% | 18.1% | 0.5% |
| South Hadley | Hampshire | $2,004 | 42.6% | 20.7% | 5.9% |
| Southampton | Hampshire | $2,004 | 39.7% | 18.3% | 2.2% |
| Southwick | Hampden | $1,734 | 53.4% | 22.5% | 3.5% |
| Springfield | Hampden | $1,734 | 58.1% | 33.1% | 16.5% |
| Stockbridge | Berkshire | $1,626 | 62.2% | 19.8% | 11.7% |
| Sunderland | Franklin | $1,866 | 72.1% | 16% | 10.3% |
| Tolland | Hampden | $1,734 | 77.8% | 18.5% | 0.0% |
| Tyringham | Berkshire | $1,709 | 66.7% | 17.1% | 0.0% |
| Wales | Hampden | $1,734 | 22.6% | 20.8% | 2.5% |
| Ware | Hampshire | $2,004 | 52.9% | 25% | 7.8% |
| Warwick | Franklin | $1,866 | 21.9% | 24.9% | 0.0% |
| Washington | Berkshire | $1,709 | 0% | 20.8% | 0.0% |
| Wendell | Franklin | $1,866 | 60% | 29.6% | 1.1% |
| West Springfield | Hampden | $1,734 | 58.4% | 22.3% | 3.5% |
| West Stockbridge | Berkshire | $1,709 | 64.4% | 21.8% | 0.0% |
| Westfield | Hampden | $1,734 | 47.6% | 19.5% | 7.0% |
| Westhampton | Hampshire | $2,004 | 34.4% | 28.4% | 2.5% |
| Whately | Franklin | $1,866 | 32.9% | 22.6% | 1.3% |
| Wilbraham | Hampden | $1,734 | 48.5% | 25.6% | 5.6% |
| Williamsburg | Hampshire | $2,004 | 54% | 20.7% | 5.0% |
| Williamstown | Berkshire | $1,709 | 52.1% | 30.7% | 9.1% |
| Windsor | Berkshire | $1,709 | 0% | 28.9% | 0.0% |
| Worthington | Hampshire | $2,004 | 46.2% | 26.6% | 3.8% |
What These Columns Mean
- Town
- The municipality.
- County
- One of the four western counties.
- Two-Bedroom Rent Standard
- HUD's fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit in this town's rent area. A programme benchmark, not an average of listings.
- Renters Spending 30%+
- Share of renter households spending 30% or more of income on housing, from the Census Bureau's rolling five-year survey. Small towns carry wide margins of error.
- Owners Spending 30%+
- The same measure for households with a mortgage.
- Subsidised Housing Share
- Share of the town's year-round homes on the state's Chapter 40B subsidised housing inventory.
Cite: RE413. “Rent Standards, Cost Burden and Subsidised Share by Town.” Updated August 5, 2026. https://www.re413.com/news/renting-in-western-mass/, underlying sources at https://www.re413.com/sources/.
If you are weighing renting against buying
The honest comparison is not rent against a mortgage payment. It is rent against the mortgage plus the property tax plus the heat plus the maintenance, and in this region the tax and the heat vary more between towns than most people imagine: the annual tax on a median home ranges from under $800 to nearly $10,000 depending on where the town line falls.
The cost calculator assembles all of it for any town and any price. What it cannot tell you is how long you will stay, and on the evidence in this region that is the variable that actually decides the answer.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Fair market rents by rent area, current fiscal year, and the Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy tabulations.
- U.S. Census Bureau. Renter and owner cost burden from the American Community Survey five-year estimates, with margins of error that widen sharply in small towns.
- Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. The Chapter 40B subsidised housing inventory, as a share of each town's year-round homes.
"Figures through" is the period the publisher's data describes; "checked" is only when we last asked. The full sourcing: sources and method.