Barnstable County

Barnstable County sits at a gross rent-to-price ratio of 0.044, which annualizes to roughly 0.53% of purchase price per month. That puts it squarely in appreciation-first territory, and the numbers confirm it without ambiguity. At a $750,046 median home price against a $2,756 median rent, the cap rate pencils at 2.87%, well below the cost of debt at 6.85%. Run the standard 20% down underwrite and you get a monthly mortgage of $3,932, estimated expenses of $964, and an estimated cash flow of negative $2,140 per month. That is not a rounding error or a bad deal, that is the market. Cash-on-cash comes out at negative 14.89%. The appreciation score of 58 is the only pillar here with anything to say, and even that comes with an asterisk: home price growth year-over-year was just 0.8%, which is barely ahead of inflation and not the kind of trajectory that bails out a deeply negative carry.

The investor this market suits is narrow: someone with substantial liquidity who is willing to fund a monthly deficit in exchange for long-term land appreciation and personal or estate-planning utility. Think second-home buyer who wants a property that earns some offset income, not a yield-focused landlord. A pure cash-flow buyer has no business here at these numbers. A value-add operator would need to find an asset so deeply discounted off that $750,046 median that it could close the gap between a 2.87% cap rate and something approaching a 5-to-6% yield, and that is a difficult hunt on the Cape, where distressed inventory is scarce. The affordability index of 19 out of 100 and the corresponding affordability score of 19 tell you the resident renter pool is already stretched. That limits your ability to push rents aggressively to improve returns, and it narrows the pool of long-term tenants who can sustain market-rate leases without stress.

No economic anchors or employer data were provided for Barnstable, so it is worth noting what the demographic context in the data does and does not support. A median household income of $90,447 sounds respectable until you hold it against a $750,046 median home price: that ratio is over 8x income, which is why the affordability index is as low as it is. A population of 229,436 across the county means this is not a dense urban core, and the Cape's economy is heavily seasonal in nature, though the data does not quantify that directly. Stability scores at 50 out of 100, exactly middling, which suggests neither a recession-proof anchor economy nor an obviously fragile one.

The tax and insurance picture is one of the few elements that does not actively hurt the story. The state-average effective property tax rate is 1.23%, flagged as "normal," and when combined with insurance at 0.26% of value, the blended monthly tax-and-insurance load comes to $931. That is a real number on the carry cost sheet but not an outlier. The honest caveat here is that 1.23% is a state-average estimate from Tax Foundation 2024 data, and actual county or township rates in Barnstable can differ, so verify the specific parcel before finalizing your underwrite.

The primary risk is concentration. This is a resort and second-home market, which means rental demand is disproportionately tied to seasonal and short-term occupancy patterns. If regulatory pressure on short-term rentals tightens at the municipal level, as has occurred in many coastal markets, the already-thin long-term rental yields compress further. The data scores Barnstable in the 9th national percentile overall and ranks it 12th out of 14 Massachusetts counties, which is an unambiguous signal about where it sits relative to alternatives.

Compared to its neighbors, Barnstable is not the worst value proposition in the state but it is close. Suffolk County carries a near-identical median price of $747,013 but generates $3,307 in median rent for a rent-to-price ratio of 0.0531, meaningfully better than Barnstable's 0.0441, and scores 45 overall versus Barnstable's 42. Norfolk and Middlesex counties post similar prices with similar ratios and both score 46. The clearest alternative is Bristol County at a $524,316 median price, a rent-to-price ratio of 0.0466, and an overall score of 49, the best in this peer group. An investor allocating capital in Massachusetts for buy-and-hold rental income should look at Bristol first. Barnstable makes sense only if the buyer has specific reasons tied to the Cape itself, whether personal, estate-related, or a short-term rental thesis they have underwritten against local ordinances, and even then, they should go in knowing the long-term rental math does not work at prevailing prices.