The Real Cost of Owning Property in Eastham, Massachusetts
Eastham enters FY2026 with two genuinely new, dated cost stories most competitor sites haven't caught up to: its first-ever residential tax exemption, and a home-value picture that's more inconsistent across sources right now than almost any other Cape Cod town built on this site so far - one of the only towns showing a year-over-year price decline on Zillow's own index while a second source shows sold prices rising 6% and inventory jumping 282%. This page lays out what's actually confirmed: a split FY2026 tax rate ($7.71 residential, $7.66 for other classes), the long-run assessed-value curve behind that rate, the brand-new 3% exemption and the board debate that produced it, the honest multi-source price spread rather than one cherry-picked figure, and the 14.45% short-term-rental tax stack with a real structural difference from neighboring Dennis. It's also honest about the gaps: no Eastham-specific CCIAOR breakout, no confirmed FEMA flood-discount tier, and a competitor's own market-data page that returned empty this research pass.
Property Tax: A Split FY2026 Rate, and a Two-Decade Value Climb
Eastham's FY2026 tax rate is $7.71 per $1,000 of assessed value for residential property and $7.66 per $1,000 for all other property classes (commercial, industrial, and personal property) - confirmed directly via the town's own Assessing Department page. Cape Cod Bliss's town-by-town FY2026 compilation lists the headline rate as $7.71, "unchanged from FY2025," which should be read as the residential figure holding flat rather than evidence the classes were split in FY2025 too. In regional context, Eastham's $7.71 residential rate sits on the higher end of the Cape Cod spread: Sandwich is highest at $10.19, Chatham lowest at $3.67, and Eastham runs meaningfully higher than Mid-Cape neighbors like Dennis ($4.29) - worth flagging plainly rather than downplaying for anyone comparing towns.
The town's own residential-tax-exemption debate materials also surface a genuinely useful long-run number most competitor sites don't show: Eastham's median assessed home value climbed from $192,300 in 2000, to $393,000 in 2015, to $816,000 in 2024 - roughly a fourfold increase in nine years between 2015 and 2024 alone. That curve is assessed value, not sale price, and it's the town's own figure, not a real-estate portal's - useful context for understanding both the current tax bill and how much of today's price level reflects a genuinely fast run-up in the second half of that period.
FY2026's First-Ever Residential Exemption - Genuinely New, Not Longstanding
FY2026 is Eastham's first year ever offering a residential tax exemption (RTE), and that "first-ever" framing matters: per the Provincetown Independent (Sept. 10, 2025), the Select Board voted 3-2 to adopt a 3% exemption, "joining the other three Outer Cape towns [Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown] for the first time." This directly corrects Cape Cod Bliss's own framing, which lists Eastham alongside Wellfleet as towns that "already utilize" RTEs - as if it were long-standing policy rather than a brand-new FY2026 change. Don't take "Eastham has a residential exemption" as evidence it's been around for years; this is its inaugural year.
The dollar impact is real but modest: the 3% exemption equals $24,332 off the average assessed residential value, saving roughly $116 a year for a median-value home - a number small enough that the board itself debated it directly. Finance Director (now Town Manager) Rich Bienvenue and Vice Chair Suzanne Bryan pushed a deliberately cautious "phased approach" starting at 3%, while member Jamie Demetri argued for 5% or higher, and public comment pointed to neighboring towns already offering exemptions of 20-35%. Anyone weighing this as a factor in a purchase decision should treat $116/year as a starting point for a phased policy, not a ceiling, and confirm the current-year percentage directly with the Eastham Assessor's office rather than assume it holds at 3% going forward.
Home Values: A Genuinely Inconsistent Multi-Source Picture
Prices for Eastham are more inconsistent across sources right now than most other Cape towns built on this site so far, and that spread should be shown rather than collapsed into one number. Zillow's ZHVI (typical home value) puts Eastham at $817,155 as of May 31, 2026 - down 1.0% year over year, one of the only Cape towns on this site showing a year-over-year price decline rather than a gain. Realtytrac, the most numbers-dense source found, gives a meaningfully higher median home value of $855,546, a median listing price of $899,000 (May 2026), a median sold price of $810,600 (May 2026, up 6.05% from $764,400 a year earlier), $536 per square foot, 107 homes for sale in May 2026 (a striking 282% year-over-year inventory jump), 46 homes sold in May 2026 (down 4.2% from June 2025's 48), and 4 properties in foreclosure with 3 more in pre-foreclosure. Zillow's decline alongside Realtytrac's rising sold price and ballooning inventory both point toward the same underlying story - a real softening or rebalancing in this specific market - even though the two sources don't agree on direction for the "typical" figure itself.
Niche.com cites a lower median home value of $732,200 (alongside median rent of $1,747), undated on the page itself - treat that as Niche's own lagging aggregate rather than a current-market figure. The Housing Assistance Corporation and Cape Cod Commission (ACS-based reporting, published April 6, 2025) give a median home price of $750,000, against median household income of $72,683 and an income of approximately $225,585 needed to afford that median home at standard lending ratios - a real affordability gap most competitor pages don't calculate. That same report cites median rent of $1,692 and an income of $67,680 needed to afford it. Altogether, current typical/median figures cluster roughly $730,000-$900,000 depending on source and whether it's list price, sold price, or a smoothed index - a wider spread than this site has documented for most other Cape towns. CCIAOR, the most authoritative regional MLS source, publishes only Cape-wide figures for 2025 ($790,000 single-family median, $494,500 condo median) and does not appear to break out Eastham individually in its public reporting - a genuine gap, not filled in with a guess. Cape Cod Bliss's own Eastham market-data page returned as an empty template, with dashes where the actual figures should be, on this research pass - a documented competitor failure, not a data source this page relies on.
Renting It Out: A 14.45% Tax Stack, Ownership Caps, and a Real Difference From Dennis
Eastham's Chapter 116 short-term-rental bylaw took effect January 1, 2025, defining an STR as a rental of a whole or partial dwelling for 30 consecutive days or fewer. It requires Board of Health registration (plus state registration via MassTaxConnect), registration in the actual owner's name even when a property manager operates the unit, and caps any single owner at two registered STR units (cottage colonies under single ownership excepted). Corporations are barred from owning STR units outright; LLCs, trusts, and S-corps qualify only if every member is a natural person, and STRs are prohibited on income/affordability-restricted units. Penalties escalate: noncriminal fines of $100/$200/$300 for a first/second/third-plus violation, civil penalties up to $5,000 per violation, and Board of Health authority to suspend or revoke certificates, barring repeat offenders for up to three years. A separate, longer-standing Rental Certificate Program (for longer-term rentals) charges $75 per unit and requires an annual water-quality test (town-water properties exempt) plus a rental inspection in year one and every 3-5 years after; unlicensed rentals risk fines up to $300/day.
On the tax side, Eastham's combined short-term-rental rate is 14.45%: the state excise at 5.7%, Eastham's local-option rate at 6%, and the Cape Cod & Islands Water Protection Fund excise at 2.75%. That total happens to match Dennis's own 14.45% STR stack, but the two towns get there differently - Eastham has not adopted the optional Community Impact Fee that Dennis charges (3%), so Eastham's total reaches the same number only because its local-option rate (6%) is a full point higher than Dennis's combined local-option-plus-impact-fee structure. Worth knowing before treating "14.45%" as a single Cape-wide standard: the components underneath it genuinely differ town to town.
What This Page Can't Tell You
A handful of real figures simply couldn't be confirmed this round, and this page states that plainly rather than filling the gap with an invented or borrowed number. Eastham's specific FEMA Community Rating System discount tier isn't confirmed - the town's own page confirms general Cape-town eligibility for 5%, 10%, or 15% flood-insurance discounts, but not which tier Eastham itself has earned. CCIAOR's own town-level 2025 median sale price for Eastham specifically wasn't located; the region publishes only Cape-wide figures. Cape Cod Bliss's Eastham market-data page rendered as an empty template on this research pass, so whatever current figures it's meant to show couldn't be independently verified. The Cape Cod Commission's Eastham-specific Housing Profile PDF wasn't retrieved this pass; a search-portal redirect stood in its place. No sourced summer/seasonal population multiplier specific to Eastham was found, unlike the Cape-wide or Provincetown-specific figures documented elsewhere on this site. No utility costs, homeowners' or flood-insurance premiums for a specific address, or condo/association fees at Eastham-specific granularity turned up in the research behind this page, and none are estimated here.
For a specific property's assessed value, current tax bill, or the exact current-year residential exemption percentage, contact the Eastham Assessor's office directly. For STR or long-term rental certificate registration, contact the Eastham Board of Health. For an up-to-date, MLS-sourced price comparison rather than the Zillow, Realtytrac, or Niche figures cited here, talk to a local real estate agent working Eastham specifically. And for an actual insurance premium, flood-zone determination, or utility-cost estimate for a specific address, a licensed insurance agent and the relevant utility provider are the only sources that can give a number worth budgeting around. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, insurance, or financial advice.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Data sourced from: the Town of Eastham's own Assessing Department page (eastham-ma.gov/159/Assessing), confirming the FY2026 split tax rate of $7.71 per $1,000 for residential property and $7.66 per $1,000 for other property classes. Cape Cod Bliss's FY2026 town-by-town property-tax-rate compilation, used both to corroborate the $7.71 residential figure and to flag its own framing error describing Eastham as a town that "already utilizes" a residential exemption. The town's own residential-tax-exemption debate materials, cited via the April 30, 2025 Provincetown Independent piece, for the historical assessed-value curve ($192,300 in 2000; $393,000 in 2015; $816,000 in 2024). The Provincetown Independent (Sept. 10, 2025, "This Year's RTE in Eastham Will Be Just 3 Percent"), for the Select Board's 3-2 vote adopting Eastham's first-ever residential exemption, the $24,332 assessed-value offset, the approximately $116/year savings for a median-value home, and the named board debate (Rich Bienvenue and Suzanne Bryan's phased approach, Jamie Demetri's push for 5% or higher, and public comment citing neighboring towns' 20-35% exemptions). Zillow's ZHVI figure for Eastham ($817,155 typical home value, down 1.0% year over year, as of May 31, 2026). Realtytrac's May 2026 market data (median home value $855,546; median listing price $899,000; median sold price $810,600, up 6.05% year over year; $536 per square foot; 107 homes for sale, a 282% year-over-year inventory increase; 46 homes sold; 4 properties in foreclosure, 3 in pre-foreclosure). Niche.com's undated median home value ($732,200) and median rent ($1,747) figures, flagged here as a likely-lagging aggregate rather than a current-market figure. The Housing Assistance Corporation / Cape Cod Commission's ACS-based report (published April 6, 2025), for median home price ($750,000), median household income ($72,683), income needed to buy ($225,585), median rent ($1,692), and income needed to rent ($67,680). CCIAOR's full-year 2025 region-wide MLS report ($790,000 single-family / $494,500 condo, Cape-wide), cited to disclose that CCIAOR's own Eastham-specific figure could not be located this pass. Cape Cod Bliss's own Eastham market-data page, cited specifically as a documented competitor failure (an empty template with dashes in place of figures) rather than as a data source. The Town of Eastham's Chapter 116 short-term-rental bylaw (effective January 1, 2025) and its own Rental Certificate Program materials, for STR registration requirements, the two-unit ownership cap, corporate-ownership bar, escalating fine structure, and the separate long-term rental certificate program's $75 fee and inspection schedule. The confirmed 14.45% short-term-rental tax stack (5.7% state excise + 6% Eastham local option + 2.75% Cape Cod & Islands Water Protection Fund excise), compared here against Dennis's own identical 14.45% total to show the two towns reach that number through different components - Eastham has not adopted a Community Impact Fee, unlike Dennis. This page could not confirm Eastham's specific FEMA Community Rating System discount tier, CCIAOR's own town-level 2025 median sale price for Eastham, the Cape Cod Commission's Eastham-specific Housing Profile PDF, a sourced seasonal population multiplier for Eastham, or any Eastham-specific utility, insurance-premium, or HOA cost figures, and none of those gaps are filled in with invented numbers here. Figures change; confirm all current numbers directly with the Town of Eastham Assessor's Office, the Eastham Board of Health, or a licensed insurance agent before making any financial decision. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, insurance, or financial advice.