Monroe

$1,483/year in estimated municipal tax on the median assessment

At $10.13 per $1,000 of assessed value (fiscal 2026). This applies that rate to the median single-family assessment from FY2025; it is a comparison scenario, not a current bill. Separate fire, water or other district levies, special assessments and individual exemptions are excluded. Confirm the property's full bill with the assessor. 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.

No single heating fuel provably dominates here, the survey sample is too thin to name one. No Gas Main serves the town, heating follows the delivered-fuel market. This week's prices and the season maths are on the heating page.

201 parcels; the median single-family home here was built in 1960, surviving stock, not construction history.80 housing units at the 2020 count (67 in 2000). 80.4% of occupied homes are owner-occupied.

66.7% of homes here are single-family detached houses, and 70.4% of the housing stock predates 1940 while 0% went up in 2010 or later. Survey shares (2024), not counts.

30% of Homes Vacant at the Last Count

About 1 in 3 homes here stood empty at the April 2020 count, but 87.5% of those are seasonal or vacation homes. That is a second-home market, not an abandoned one.

≈2 sales a year

About 1 qualifying dwelling deed per 43 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 44 years. Steady-state arithmetic, not a measured wait, both counts cover dwelling property, and a deed can cover several parcels.

0 new homes were permitted in 2025 (the Bureau's estimate; the town filed no monthly reports that year). County-wide, house prices moved up 9.61% in 2025 (Franklin County index, a county figure, not this town's).

Younger Grades Local, Older Grades by Arrangement

The town's own schooling (Monroe) stops before grade 12; older students attend Florida (Gr PK-8); North Adams (Gr 9-12) (grades PK-12) under a tuition arrangement the town pays for. Every grade has a school, the question is where the bus goes.

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: MONROE WATER DISTRICT, service areas have edges, so a specific address may still be on a well. Municipal sewer exists (MONROE SEWER); beyond its edge, homes are on septic. Bedrock well yield potential in town is rated "average specific yield".

Mapped Flood Zones Present

Parts of this town are inside mapped special flood hazard areas, where flood insurance is required for most mortgages and building is regulated. Whether a specific property is inside one is a parcel-level question, check the address, not the town.

4 dams in town, 1 classed high hazard, a statement about what a failure would harm, not about condition or likelihood. No sites appear in the state's cleanup registry for this town, a registry fact, not a clean bill of health. Address-level detail, this parcel, this street, is on the address check.

Solar in the State's Record. 2 solar installations here have been through the Commonwealth's incentive programmes, rated 21 kW between them. 100% are on houses. The register runs to 2021: 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 Western Connecticut Valley Belt. 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.

1.7% of the recorded Massachusetts jobs held by town residents are in this town. Other leading Massachusetts job destinations are Charlemont, Greenfield, Shelburne. The record includes 10 jobs in this town held by Massachusetts residents. These are 2022 job records, not a count of distinct workers. Interstate jobs are excluded, including commutes to or from Connecticut, New York and Vermont.

Recorded job destinations and nearby work centres: living near Florida (19 min), living near North Adams (24 min), living near Clarksburg (28 min), living near Rowe (1 Massachusetts job records (2022), 30 min), living near Adams (30 min), living near Charlemont (6 Massachusetts job records (2022), 35 min), living near Buckland (2 Massachusetts job records (2022), 46 min).

The average commute from here runs 56.2 minutes one way (working residents who leave home for work, 2024 5-year estimate).

No fixed-route bus stops in town. All three regional transit authorities' schedules were checked; dial-a-ride and paratransit services do not appear in them.

$1,882/Month: HUD's Two-Bedroom Standard

HUD's fair-rent standard for a two-bedroom here is $1,882 a month, the figure housing vouchers are built on for the Franklin County, MA, not what landlords ask. It assumes rent plus most utilities, so it is not comparable to an advertised rent that excludes heat.

57.1% of households here fall below 80% of the area's median family income, the federal housing-programme measure of need, not a poverty rate. 0% of the town's year-round homes count toward the state's subsidized-housing inventory (the state threshold where override rules change is 10%).

0% of renters here spend a third or more of their income on housing (0% spend half or more); for owners it is 19.5%. The federal "cost-burdened" line is 30% of income; these are 5-year survey estimates (2024), not a headcount.

Winters average 22.8°F, summers 63.9°F, and about 85″ of snow a year

Thirty-year normals (1991–2020), not this year's weather. The year averages 43.6°F with 53.15″ 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.

Between the 1960 and 2020 censuses, population fell 43.8%. Between 1971 and 1999, about -3 acres were developed. About 19.8% of adults here hold a bachelor's degree or higher (2024 survey). The deep story, the town's oldest surviving houses and what they're built in, is in the Old House Atlas.