Northampton is the town people move to Western Massachusetts for, and then discover they cannot quite afford. Its median single-family home is assessed at $504,350, which is among the highest in the Connecticut valley, and the annual tax on it runs $7,060.
55 towns sit within a real fifty-minute drive of it, and the median home across them ranges from $214,100 to $537,100. If the town is the draw and the price is the problem, this is the actual shortlist.
The near ring
10 of these towns are inside twenty minutes. In a valley this compact, twenty minutes covers Hadley, Easthampton, Williamsburg, Hatfield and a good deal besides, and several of them price well below Northampton itself for reasons that are about scarcity of housing rather than quality of place.
The heaviest recorded commuter flows into Northampton come from Easthampton (1,575), Springfield (1,083), Holyoke (1,067), Chicopee (880), Westfield (595). Those are observed counts from federal employment statistics, not estimates, and a well-worn route tells you something a map cannot: enough people have already made this work that the drive is genuinely liveable.
What the drive times mean
Every minute figure is computed on the road network, town centre to town centre, with no traffic applied. In this valley that is closer to reality than it is around Boston, because the congestion is short-lived and localised, but Route 9 through Hadley at five in the afternoon is still Route 9 through Hadley at five in the afternoon.
The columns worth reading together
Price and tax first, because the tax is the recurring one and it varies enormously between neighbouring towns here. Then the schools column: several towns in this radius do not run their own high school and tuition older students out, which changes a teenager's daily life more than any feature of the house.
Every town within fifty minutes
Towns Within 50 Minutes of Northampton
Download CSV, same columns, same definitions
Every Western Massachusetts town within a measured 50-minute drive of Northampton, with recorded commuter counts, median single-family assessment, the annual tax on it, and whether the town's schools run through grade 12.
| Town | Drive Minutes | Already Commute | Median Home | Annual Tax | Schools to Grade 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hadley | 10 | 232 | $458,800 | $5,381 | Yes |
| Easthampton | 13 | 1,575 | $394,100 | $5,355 | Yes |
| Hatfield | 13 | 265 | $416,900 | $6,255 | Yes |
| Williamsburg | 16 | 232 | $393,700 | $6,303 | Yes |
| Westhampton | 17 | 154 | $305,700 | $6,221 | Yes |
| Whately | 17 | No record | $419,050 | $5,602 | Yes |
| Holyoke | 18 | 1,067 | $262,450 | $4,603 | Yes |
| Amherst | 19 | 584 | $537,100 | $9,304 | Yes |
| Southampton | 19 | 373 | $448,400 | $6,016 | Yes |
| Sunderland | 19 | 154 | $396,450 | $5,042 | Yes |
| South Hadley | 24 | 496 | $366,500 | $4,955 | Yes |
| Chicopee | 25 | 880 | $287,000 | $4,374 | Yes |
| Chesterfield | 26 | No record | $360,500 | $5,501 | Yes |
| Goshen | 26 | No record | $338,000 | $4,700 | Yes |
| Deerfield | 26 | 240 | $424,900 | $5,846 | Yes |
| Greenfield | 27 | 519 | $264,600 | $4,963 | Yes |
| West Springfield | 28 | 394 | $292,000 | $4,121 | Yes |
| Granby | 29 | 174 | $382,300 | $5,677 | Yes |
| Springfield | 30 | 1,083 | $267,900 | $4,181 | Yes |
| Conway | 30 | No record | $404,800 | $5,911 | Yes |
| Montague | 31 | 237 | $302,800 | $4,581 | Yes |
| Leverett | 31 | No record | $464,000 | $7,456 | Yes |
| Westfield | 32 | 595 | $321,800 | $4,838 | Yes |
| Bernardston | 32 | No record | $303,300 | $4,610 | Yes |
| Ludlow | 33 | 237 | $332,300 | $5,320 | Yes |
| Huntington | 33 | No record | $298,300 | $4,406 | Yes |
| Agawam | 34 | 291 | $342,300 | $4,875 | Yes |
| Belchertown | 34 | 427 | $418,200 | $6,400 | Yes |
| Ashfield | 34 | No record | $359,500 | $5,116 | Yes |
| Longmeadow | 36 | 153 | $511,700 | $9,966 | Yes |
| Cummington | 37 | No record | $330,000 | $4,122 | Yes |
| Montgomery | 38 | No record | $325,200 | $3,769 | Yes |
| Worthington | 38 | No record | $350,300 | $4,880 | Tuition out |
| Gill | 38 | No record | $292,900 | $4,367 | Yes |
| Colrain | 39 | No record | $245,200 | $4,369 | Yes |
| East Longmeadow | 40 | 156 | $344,200 | $6,735 | Yes |
| Shutesbury | 40 | No record | $385,400 | $6,317 | Yes |
| Palmer | 41 | No record | $277,900 | $4,630 | Yes |
| Northfield | 41 | No record | $302,100 | $4,025 | Yes |
| Shelburne | 41 | No record | $364,900 | $4,769 | Yes |
| Buckland | 41 | No record | $315,300 | $5,278 | Yes |
| Russell | 43 | No record | $287,600 | $5,298 | Yes |
| Wilbraham | 44 | No record | $429,000 | $7,572 | Yes |
| Southwick | 44 | No record | $342,800 | $5,048 | Yes |
| Plainfield | 44 | No record | $244,850 | $4,300 | Yes |
| Leyden | 44 | No record | $283,000 | $4,157 | Yes |
| Chester | 45 | No record | $214,100 | $3,867 | Yes |
| New Salem | 46 | No record | $350,500 | $4,774 | Yes |
| Erving | 47 | No record | $270,500 | $2,591 | Tuition out |
| Wendell | 47 | No record | $246,300 | $5,049 | Yes |
| Ware | 49 | No record | $289,600 | $4,196 | Yes |
| Peru | 49 | No record | $267,800 | $4,309 | Yes |
| Hampden | 50 | No record | $410,150 | $6,521 | Yes |
| Granville | 50 | No record | $332,400 | $4,702 | Yes |
| Charlemont | 50 | No record | $277,400 | $4,663 | Yes |
What These Columns Mean
- Town
- The municipality.
- Drive Minutes
- Typical drive to central Northampton without traffic, measured on the road network.
- Already Commute
- Residents recorded as working in Northampton, from federal origin-destination employment statistics.
- Median Home
- The town's median single-family assessed value.
- Annual Tax
- The town's own rate applied to that median assessment.
- Schools to Grade 12
- Whether the town's own districts run through grade 12.
Cite: RE413. “Towns Within 50 Minutes of Northampton.” Updated August 5, 2026. https://www.re413.com/news/towns-near-northampton-ma/, underlying sources at https://www.re413.com/sources/.
The same table exists for 106 work centres at live near work, including Springfield, Pittsfield, Greenfield, Amherst and Hartford. Pick the workplace, then the town.
If the shortlist has come down to the two obvious ones, Amherst against Northampton on the numbers is the comparison worth making: eight miles apart, and $2,244 a year apart on the tax bill for the median home.
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau. Origin-destination employment statistics recording where workers live and where they work.
- Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services. Certified residential tax rates by town.
- MassGIS standardized assessors' parcels. Median single-family assessed values from each town's own roll.
"Figures through" is the period the publisher's data describes; "checked" is only when we last asked. The full sourcing: sources and method.