Rochester permits 100 new homes this year, including a 68-unit building

ROCHESTER Rochester authorized 100 new homes from January to August, according to Census Bureau permit data. That is equal to about 4% of the 2,255 homes in town, by the bureau's American Community Survey estimates. Sixty-eight of them are in a single building with five or more units. The Census data does not identify the project or its location.

The rest were 14 single-family houses and 18 units in six buildings with three or four units each. Rochester reported its permits to the Census Bureau for all eight months, so the total is the town's own count, not an estimate.

Rochester falls under the state's MBTA Communities law as an adjacent small town, required to zone for at least 105 multifamily homes. The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities counted Rochester as compliant as of Aug. 31; the town has adopted the zoning the law requires.

A small sales market

The sales market is much smaller. Redfin, a national real estate brokerage, counted 18 home sales in Rochester from July to September, up from 12 a year earlier, at a median price of $749,593, up 9.8% from $682,500. Median price per square foot fell 6.5%, to $346.60 from $370.84.

Those numbers rest on very few sales. Redfin's town figures are rolling three-month windows covering only sales through listing services, and the window covering February to April held just eight. Over the past year the median ranged from $600,000 to $772,450. Zillow's home value index, an estimate of a typical home's value that does not depend on which homes sold, was $687,191 in September, up 4.1% from a year earlier.

Listings rose. Owners listed 26 homes, up from 21, and 23 remained for sale at the end of September, up from 16, or 3.9 months of supply compared with 4.1. The median home sold in 31 days, compared with 27, and 38.9% sold above asking, compared with 33.3%. Sellers' median asking price rose to $737,058 from $674,900.

Rochester's median was about $101,000 above Plymouth County's September median of $648,549, according to Redfin, though the county figure is for a single month.

Taxes and borrowing

The average single-family tax bill in Rochester was $6,745 for fiscal 2026, up $142, or 2.2%, from $6,603, according to the state Department of Revenue. The statewide average that year was $8,113, so Rochester's bill ran about 83% of it. Rochester uses one rate for every class of property, $10.59 per $1,000 of assessed value in fiscal 2026, on an average single-family assessment of $636,929. The state has already posted Rochester's figures for fiscal 2027, which began July 1: an average bill of $6,957, up $212, or 3.1%, at a rate of $10.62 on an average assessment of $655,097.

Mortgage rates averaged 7.40% on a 30-year fixed loan for the week of Oct. 15, up from 6.27% a year earlier, in Freddie Mac's weekly survey. With 20% down on Rochester's median price, principal and interest would cost about $4,152 a month, by our arithmetic, or $452 more than at last year's rate. Insurance and the tax bill would come on top.

Owners and renters

Rochester is overwhelmingly a town of owners. Of its occupied homes, 88.1% are owner-occupied, by Census Bureau American Community Survey estimates for 2020 to 2024, leaving about 265 renter households. The survey found a median rent of $1,432 and a median construction year of 1984. Zillow has no rent index for the town.

Label: Reported by us, from public housing market data and records.