Single Family Homes in Cambridge

Cambridge single family homes are among some of the most in-demand single family homes in ALL of Massachusetts. Why? A few questions:

  1. They are a scarce resource. In fact, as of this writing (12/17/2025) there were only 110 single family homes that sold in ALL of Cambridge in ALL of 2025. That’s right, we are talking roughly only two sold on average per a week. 

  2. Many buyer types want them. You have young professional couples who enjoy the only 1 or 2 T stops to downtown Boston (roughly 10-15 minute commute time). You have the MIT professors. You have the Harvard professors. You have the MIT or Harvard parents. You have the MIT or Harvard graduates who now live and work in Cambridge. You have biotech executives and scientists in Kendall Square. You have families all types. It’s an area that attracts many different people who would LOVE to be in Cambridge.

  3. Cool Stuff within blocks. Most of the other high priced towns around Boston are suburban, driving kind of places to get to cool stuff. Not so in Cambridge. The vast majority of neighborhoods have multiple parks, multiple cool cafes, multiple grocery stories, many, many dozens of restaurants, and many, many dozens of fantastic cultural things to do on a weekly basis…all within minutes. So yeah, cool stuff makes people want to be here!! 🙂

Here's a detached single family home I helped a client purchase in East Cambridge 

Now, the next question you are probably wondering is how much can you expect to pay for a single family home in Cambridge? The median sale price in 2025 was $2.989M, so in general you can expect to spend a lot. 

Most single families in Cambridge under $1.5M fall into one of three categories:

  1. Total gut job AKA you can’t buy it and live in it. You’ll need to spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the home livable.

  2. Very small. As in 1,500 square feet or smaller and in many cases, 1,200 square feet or smaller. Usually we are talking tight 2 or 3 bed single families and if you’re lucky two very tight full bathrooms.

  3. Awkward layouts. Usually at this price point the homes either have a small bedroom count and nicer layout/flow OR they have a larger bedroom count but the flow is very awkward.

If you want a 4-bedroom house, expect to start at $1.8M+ in most scenarios. Occasionally you can get lucky and get one for less, but I think this is a reasonable starting place and they just go up from there. 

When you get to the mid $2M range, you start seeing what I would consider nice single families that start checking a lot of boxes that buyers look for in Cambridge: historical charm, updated, nice flow, solid above grade square footage. 

Then you start to see the really nice houses at the $3M to $7M range - these are often very colonials or victorian homes, on very large lots in very prime locations - Avon Hill, West Cambridge, and around Harvard Square to name a few areas I see these sort of special homes.

If you have a question about your Cambridge single family home OR if you’d like to buy one, give me a call at 617-833-7457.