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A new report from commercial real estate site Commercial Cafe has found the 10 best Boston-area suburbs for prospective homebuyers looking for the shortest commutes into Boston.
Melrose, Belmont and Reading topped the report’s list, which compared commuting times, housing costs, schooling and crime rates for communities with 25,000 or more people between 5 and 30 miles of downtown Boston. Travel time represented 40 percent of the total score assigned to each community, while home affordability made up 30 percent of the community’s score and school quality and crime rate made up 15 percent.
The average commute time by car or mass transit was calculated by Google directions using the typical trip time for arriving in Boston between 7:40 and 8:10 on a Monday morning. Housing values were based on the five-year U.S. Census Bureau estimates (2013-2017) of the median price of owner-occupied housing units.
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With a 23-minute commute, good schools and substantially lower home values than tony Belmont, Melrose beat out even Belmont’s 20-minute average commute time. The report identified Medford as having the shortest commute time, with an average of 14 minutes.
The 10 communities with the shortest commutes in the report’s focus area were as follows, with 2018 median single-family and condominium sale prices as identified by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman:
- Medford
- 14-minute commute
- Condo: $515,000
- Single-family: $611,500
- Malden
- 19-minute commute
- Condo: $350,000
- Single-family: $486,450
- Belmont
- 20-minute commute
- Condo: $645,500
- Single-family: $1.15 million
- Melrose
- 23-minute commute
- Condo: $421,250
- Single-family: $645,000
- Woburn
- 27-minute commute
- Condo: $430,000
- Single-family: $485,000
- Braintree
- 31-minute commute
- Condo: $362,250
- Single-family: $485,000
- Dedham
- 33-minute commute
- Condo: $323,000
- Single-family: $499,000
- Reading
- 34-minute commute
- Condo: $397,500
- Single-family: $597,500
- Arlington
- 35-minute commute
- Condo: $580,700
- Single-family: $788,250
- Milton
- 39-minute commute
- Condo: $547,500
- Single-family: $685,500
