Home Prices Spike Sharper On Cape Than In Most Of MA – And Fall, Too: Report

CAPE COD, MA —The already-hot market for homes on Cape Cod has grown scorching, a new report shows.

Each of the peninsula’s 15 towns saw the median sale price of single-family properties soar at least 40 percent over the past five years, the Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

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And seven of the 20 communities with the sharpest spikes statewide are on the Cape. The largest jump took place in Provincetown, where the median sale price was $2.14 million in 2025 – a 94.9 percent increase, nearly a doubling, from the 2020 level.

The median sale price is the level at which half the properties sold for more and half for less. The Globe analyzed real estate data across 294 Massachusetts cities, towns and villages where at least 25 homes traded hands last year.

The newspaper’s number-crunching revealed other hot spots. North Shore towns such as Wenham and Manchester-by-the-Sea recorded price increases of over 50 percent. There were also big bumps in several western Massachusetts towns and in the Pioneer Valley.

But the Cape is the region where sale prices appear to have risen most uniformly, according to the Globe’s report. Even the three towns with median sale price increases of less than 50 percent were not far under: Bourne, 45.5 percent; Orleans, 49.7 percent; and Wellfleet, 44.2 percent.

The five-year trend spilled over into some communities just off the Cape. Prices rose 51.1 percent in Plymouth, and 50 percent in Wareham. On Martha’s Vineyard, Oak Bluffs recorded a 53.9 percent increase; Tisbury, a 60.3 percent climb; and West Tisbury, a 63.5 percent rise.

But more recently, the high-flying home-buying has plateaued and even plunged.

A separate comparison by the Globe, examining the change in median sale prices from 2024 to 2025, shows Cape properties have been some of the state’s biggest losers during that time.

In Harwich, where the median price climbed 56.3 percent over the past five years, the level sank 6.3 percent from 2024 to stand at $750,000.

The Cape community where home prices fared best over the past year was Orleans, whose median sale price of $1.18 million represented a modest increase of 12 percent from 2024. The town ranked only 37th statewide for that bump.

To read the Globe’s complete findings, click here.

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See Also:

Home Sales Down Everywhere In MA, But Cape Might Be An Exception

Historic Provincetown Hotel Goes To Auction: Report