Lenox

$5,488/year in property tax on the median home

At $9.85 per $1,000 of assessed value (fiscal 2026), including the 3% community-preservation surcharge. The tax rate year by year, with the bill history and every town in the county, is on its own page. The full worked figure, mortgage at this week's rate, heating, the lot, is on the cost page, and the calculator takes any price.

Most homes here heat with utility gas. A gas main serves at least part of the town. This week's prices and the season maths are on the heating page.

2,991 parcels; the median single-family home here was built in 1959, surviving stock, not construction history.3,184 housing units at the 2020 count (2,713 in 2000). 65.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied.

57.1% of homes here are single-family detached houses, and 29.7% of the housing stock predates 1940 while 5.1% went up in 2010 or later. Survey shares (2023), not counts.

23.7% of Homes Vacant at the Last Count

About 1 in 4 homes here stood empty at the April 2020 count, but 71.9% of those are seasonal or vacation homes. That is a second-home market, not an abandoned one.

≈76 sales a year

About 1 qualifying dwelling deed per 30 dwelling parcels is recorded in a year (2022–2024 average of recorded arm's-length deeds), at that pace, a property comes up roughly every 31 years. Steady-state arithmetic, not a measured wait, both counts cover dwelling property, and a deed can cover several parcels. The latest complete year's median sale: $566,500 (2024).

Estimated construction value in 2025: $5,095K (Census total including imputation, nominal dollars).

13 new homes were permitted in 2025 (the Bureau's estimate; the town filed no monthly reports that year). County-wide, house prices moved up 1.06% in 2025 (Berkshire County index, a county figure, not this town's).

Schools Through Grade 12

Students here are covered from the early grades through high school by Lenox (PK–12).

The district spends $24,085 per student. That is total spending per pupil, an input the state publishes, not a rating or a ranking of the schools.

3 school buildings stand in town. Which building a child attends is set by the district, not by the address alone.

• Lenox Memorial High School · 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12 · public secondary
• Morris School · PK, K, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05 · public elementary
• The Montessori School of The Berkshires · PK, K, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08 · private

Cable Internet: Spectrum

Cable internet serves this town. Franchise areas can stop at village edges, so confirm service at the specific address, not the town line.

Public water exists here: LENOX DPW WATER DIVISION, service areas have edges, so a specific address may still be on a well. Municipal sewer exists (LENOX CENTER SEWER DEPT, LENOX CENTER SEWER DEPT); beyond its edge, homes are on septic. Bedrock well yield potential in town is rated "average specific yield".

Mapped Flood Zones on the Older Map

This town has no current digital flood map, but the older FEMA paper map was digitised and it does show special flood hazard areas here. Treat it as a warning to check, not as a boundary: the paper map is less precise, carries no base flood elevations, and may be decades old. The town's floodplain administrator and the FEMA Map Service Center hold the answer for a specific address.

7 dams in town, 2 classed high hazard, a statement about what a failure would harm, not about condition or likelihood. 6 reported release sites appear in the state's cleanup registry. Address-level detail, this parcel, this street, is on the address check.

Solar in the State's Record. 96 solar installations here have been through the Commonwealth's incentive programmes, and the 94 of them with a published rating come to at least 2.5 MW. 91% are on houses. The register runs to 2026: the older programmes closed to new applications and their successor only opened in 2025, so a gap after that is the incentive record ending, not the installing. Capacity is what an array is rated at, never what it produced.

Radon Potential: Zone 2. The rock under this town is rated zone 2, the middle of the three the survey uses. The rock underneath is the Taconic Mountains-Stockbridge Valley. That is a rating of geology, not a reading from any building: houses above the action level turn up in every zone, and houses in zone 1 routinely test clean. Radon is invisible, a test kit is the only thing that answers the question for a particular house, and it is worth doing whatever this map says.

Facilities here reported 0 lbs of TRI-listed chemicals released to air, water and land in 2015, down from a peak of 138 lbs in 2003. The most-released over the years has been polycyclic aromatic compounds. Self-reported by facilities above federal thresholds, a disclosure record, not a measure of anyone's exposure or risk.

24.5% of working residents work right here in town. The rest most often head to Pittsfield, Lee, Great barrington. The town itself hosts 3,139 jobs.

Where people here work: living near Lee (113 already commute, 9 min), living near Richmond (1 already commute, 11 min), living near Stockbridge (81 already commute, 12 min), living near West Stockbridge (11 already commute, 14 min), living near Pittsfield (468 already commute, 16 min), living near Great Barrington (100 already commute, 26 min).

The average commute from here runs 24.5 minutes one way (working residents who leave home for work, 2023 5-year estimate). Walkability, where people live, scores 8.4 out of 20 on the EPA's index (below the national average).

BRTA runs fixed-route buses here: 8 stops in town, on 2 routes. 2 · Pittsfield, Lee; 921 · Express Pittsfield/Great Barrington.

$1,626/Month: HUD's Two-Bedroom Standard

HUD's fair-rent standard for a two-bedroom here is $1,626 a month, the figure housing vouchers are built on for the Pittsfield, MA HUD Metro FMR Area, not what landlords ask. It assumes rent plus most utilities, so it is not comparable to an advertised rent that excludes heat.

39.1% of households here fall below 80% of the area's median family income, the federal housing-programme measure of need, not a poverty rate. 6.51% of the town's year-round homes count toward the state's subsidized-housing inventory (the state threshold where override rules change is 10%).

56% of renters here spend a third or more of their income on housing (19% spend half or more); for owners it is 25.3%. The federal "cost-burdened" line is 30% of income; these are 5-year survey estimates (2023), not a headcount.

Winters average 24.8°F, summers 67.3°F, and about 77″ of snow a year

Thirty-year normals (1991–2020), not this year's weather. The year averages 46.1°F with 49.1″ of precipitation. Readings come from the nearest long-record weather station to each measure, so a hilltown reading a valley station will see less snow here than falls on its own ridges.

Population is up 19.8% since 1960. Between 1971 and 1999, about 667 acres were developed. About 49.5% of adults here hold a bachelor's degree or higher (2023 survey). The deep story, the town's oldest surviving houses and what they're built in, is in the Old House Atlas.