Real Cost of Living in Duxbury, MA: Taxes and Prices

How Massachusetts Property Tax Actually Works: Proposition 2½

Start with the mechanism, because it is genuinely different from how many other coastal states set property taxes. Massachusetts towns do not simply pick a rate. Since a 1980 ballot law known as Proposition 2½, the total property-tax revenue a town may collect — its “levy” — is capped at 2.5% of the town’s total assessed value, and the levy is allowed to grow year over year by only 2.5% plus whatever new revenue comes from “new growth” (newly built or improved property), unless voters approve an override at town meeting or the ballot.

Only after that levy ceiling is set does a town back into a dollar rate. Duxbury’s assessors divide the year’s allowed levy by the town’s total assessed value at an annual public classification hearing, producing a rate expressed per $1,000 of assessed value — either a single rate applied to every property type, or a split rate that taxes commercial, industrial, and personal property differently from residential. Duxbury has consistently chosen a single rate for both residential and commercial property, per the town’s own Treasurer/Collector FAQ. The arithmetic looks similar to a simple mill rate once you see the final number, but the number itself is the output of a statutory revenue cap working backward — not a rate a Selectboard sets directly the way it might set a budget line.

The Confirmed Rate Trend: FY2023 Through FY2025

Here is what Duxbury’s own Assessing Department confirms directly: the rate was $10.69 per $1,000 of assessed value in FY2023, fell to $10.06 in FY2024, and ticked back up slightly to $10.14 in FY2025 — a figure the town’s Treasurer/Collector FAQ states explicitly as “$10.14 per one thousand of assessed valuation.” That three-year pattern is a town where rising property values are doing most of the work of keeping the rate roughly flat to slightly down, since Proposition 2½ caps the underlying levy rather than the rate itself: as total assessed value climbs, the same allowed levy divides out to a lower or steadier per-$1,000 number even without any decision to cut taxes.

That trend shows up in the underlying values too. Duxbury’s average single-family assessed value grew from about $238,500 in FY1991 to roughly $1,242,100 in FY2025 — more than a fivefold increase over three and a half decades, consistent with a town where valuation growth, not rate increases, has driven most of the change in what a typical owner’s tax bill actually is.

FY2026: A Real Signal, But Not a Confirmed Rate

Duxbury’s FY2026 picture has real, sourced context — it just does not include a confirmed dollar figure, and this page is not going to guess at one. Total assessed property value townwide rose 4.63% (about $326 million) to roughly $7.3 billion, and Duxbury’s Selectboard voted unanimously to keep a single tax rate again for FY2026, per SouthShore.news reporting. What was not confirmed in this research is the actual new per-$1,000 rate itself — the town’s classification-hearing materials were listed but not fully accessible with the final figure.

Given the FY2023-to-FY2025 pattern of the rate holding roughly flat to slightly down as valuations rise, a reasonable expectation is that FY2026 lands somewhere in a similar range to FY2025’s $10.14 — but that is an inference from the pattern, not a confirmed number, and this page deliberately does not state one. Anyone budgeting against a Duxbury purchase in FY2026 should pull the exact current rate directly from the town’s Assessing Department page or classification-hearing documents before relying on it.

Income Context: A Range, With a Caution Flag on One Source

Median household income figures for Duxbury vary meaningfully depending on the source and vintage, and this page deliberately hedges rather than picking one. Wikipedia’s town-article infobox, drawing on an older ACS estimate, gives $117,124 median household income and $136,245 median family income. A DataUSA.io profile fetched separately returned a higher $126,694 median household income figure alongside a $1.71 million median home value.

That DataUSA figure comes with a real caveat worth stating plainly: the same DataUSA fetch also returned a population figure of 1,994 — clearly wrong for a town the Census puts at roughly 16,000 residents, and likely the result of a mismatched Census tract or geography. Because that population number is internally inconsistent, this page treats the entire DataUSA profile with caution rather than citing its income figure, or its accompanying commute statistics, as reliable on their own. The more defensible read is that Duxbury’s median household income sits somewhere in the roughly $117,000-to-$127,000 range — genuinely affluent for Massachusetts either way — but a buyer should re-verify the current figure directly against Census QuickFacts or a recent American Community Survey release rather than anchoring to either number cited here.

Duxbury has no MBTA commuter rail station within town limits — the Kingston Line terminates at Kingston station in the neighboring town — so residents commuting into Boston rely on Route 3 driving plus a nearby-but-not-in-town rail option. That’s a real cost-of-living factor (vehicle costs, commute time) worth weighing alongside the tax and income figures above, even though this page does not treat the specific commute-time statistics from the flagged DataUSA source as independently confirmed.

What Homes Actually Cost: A Snapshot, Not a Median Sale Price

On the real estate side, Zillow’s own home-values page for Duxbury — fetched directly for this research — shows an average home value (ZHVI) of $1,147,098, up 4.7% year over year, with 59 homes for sale, a median list price of $1,283,433, and homes typically going pending within 11 days. That combination — rising values, a fast pending timeline, and a relatively thin 59-listing inventory — reads as a tight, in-demand market rather than a soft one.

Two things are worth being precise about. First, ZHVI is Zillow’s own aggregate value index, not a median sale price — it estimates typical value across the town’s housing stock rather than reporting what recently-sold homes actually closed for. Second, Redfin maintains its own Duxbury market-trends page, but it could not be directly fetched during this research, so this page deliberately does not state a Redfin median-sale-price or days-on-market figure. Inventing one would be worse than leaving the gap open — pull that number fresh, directly from Redfin or a local agent, at the time you are actually evaluating a Duxbury property.

A Practical Checklist Before You Rely on Any Number Here

First, treat $10.14 per $1,000 as Duxbury’s last confirmed rate, effective FY2025 — not necessarily the current one. Pull the actual FY2026 (or later) rate directly from the Town of Duxbury’s Assessing Department page before budgeting, since the exact current figure was not confirmed in the research behind this page.

Second, do not anchor to a single household-income number. The genuine range runs roughly $117,000 to $127,000 depending on source and vintage, and the higher DataUSA.io figure in particular should be re-verified against Census QuickFacts or a recent ACS release given that source’s internally inconsistent population figure. Third, treat Zillow’s $1,147,098 average home value and $1,283,433 median list price as a current snapshot of value and asking prices, not a confirmed median sale price — get a fresh, directly pulled Redfin figure or a local comparable-sales analysis before making an offer. Finally, confirm every figure on this page with the Town of Duxbury Assessing Department, the U.S. Census Bureau, and a Massachusetts-licensed real estate agent or tax professional before relying on it financially. Nothing here is tax, legal, or financial advice.