The short version is this. A two bedroom in Watertown rents for a median of $2,900 and takes 21 days, based on 121 rentals that closed in the six months ending 26 August 2026. Plan on about $6,000 in cash to actually move in. And Watertown is a fast market: over the last six months, 71 percent of rentals went at or above the original asking price. If you're a renter here, you don't have three weekends to think about it.
I pulled every closed Watertown rental in the MLS for the last 25 months, 945 of them, and ran the numbers myself. Nobody else publishes this, so I do. It gets updated every month, and the other towns I cover are at the markets page.
These are rented prices, not asking prices. What tenants signed for, not what landlords hoped for. Three windows because the short one is current and the long one is stable. Anything with fewer than ten rentals behind it I leave out rather than pretend it means something.
| Bedrooms | Last 3 months | Last 6 months | Last 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | too few | too few | too few |
| 1 bedroom | $2,400 (23) | $2,400 (41) | $2,400 (67) |
| 2 bedroom | $2,900 (69) | $2,900 (121) | $2,800 (223) |
| 3 bedroom | $3,600 (39) | $3,600 (73) | $3,500 (108) |
| 4 bedroom | $4,325 (16) | $4,450 (27) | $4,200 (38) |
| All rentals | $3,100 (151) | $3,025 (266) | $2,950 (441) |
Medians. Number of closed rentals in parentheses. Windows end 26 August 2026. Watertown closed only a handful of studio and five bedroom rentals in the whole period, so those rows stay blank.
| Type | 2br median | 2br days | 3br median | 3br days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apartment | $2,800 (277) | 23 | $3,200 (114) | 28 |
| Condo | $2,875 (102) | 30 | $3,625 (22) | 34 |
| Townhouse or duplex | $2,825 (80) | 16 | $3,600 (86) | 26 |
| Single family | too few | too few | $4,100 (21) | 23 |
Full 25 month period. Townhouses and duplexes rent in 16 days, faster than anything else in town, same pattern I found in Waltham. One thing worth a line on its own: East Watertown ran a $3,000 median across 97 rentals, a touch above the town as a whole.
Priced right: 17 days. Overpriced: 48 days, and a $200 cut anyway.
945 closed Watertown rentals, 25 months
The median Watertown rental takes 26 days, and this is one of the faster markets I track. Twelve percent of units rent within a week of listing. Twenty nine percent are gone inside two weeks.
Here's the math on pricing. Units that rented at or above the original asking price took a median of 17 days. Units that ended up cutting took 48 days, and the median cut was $200 a month. Overpricing a Watertown rental doesn't get you more rent. It gets you an extra month of vacancy and then the lower number anyway.
Across the full 25 months, 53 percent of Watertown rentals went at exactly the original ask and another 10 percent went above it. In the last six months that combined figure hit 71 percent, which tells you demand right now is real.
| Time on market | Rentals | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under a week | 115 | 12% |
| 8 to 14 days | 164 | 17% |
| 15 to 30 days | 256 | 27% |
| 31 to 60 days | 220 | 23% |
| 61 to 90 days | 111 | 12% |
| More than 90 days | 79 | 8% |
All 945 rentals, 25 months.
About $6,000 for a typical two bedroom.
A little over twice one month of rent. 464 two bedroom rentals.
This is the number that surprises renters, and no listing shows it. Massachusetts lets a landlord collect first month, last month, a security deposit up to one month, and a lock fee. In practice in Watertown:
So if you're budgeting for a $2,900 apartment, budget six grand in cash to get the keys. If that changes your search, better to know now. Reach out and I'll send you what I currently have available.
This is my favorite part of the report, because these numbers don't exist anywhere else. I compared every feature within the same bedroom count, so a two bedroom is only ever measured against another two bedroom, and I threw out any comparison with fewer than ten rentals on either side.
| Feature | Share of rentals | Rent difference | Speed difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| A half bath | 17% | +$700 | 4 days slower |
| Second full bathroom | 29% | +$600 | 9 days slower |
| Air conditioning | 64% | +$588 | 2 days slower |
| Fireplace | 22% | +$600 | 4 days faster |
| Private outdoor space | 28% | +$438 | 7 days slower |
| Dishwasher | 89% | +$400 | 3 days faster |
| Laundry in the unit | 47% | +$325 | 4 days slower |
| Shared laundry in the building, none in the unit | 46% | $398 less | 2 days faster |
| Built before 1940 | 52% | $414 less | 7 days faster |
| Pets allowed | 61% | +$168 | no clear effect |
| Second parking space | 54% | about $50 | 4 days faster |
| Walking distance to a T stop | 33% | about $69 | no clear effect |
Median differences within bedroom count. I kept the bottom rows in on purpose. A report that finds a premium on every feature is a report you shouldn't trust.
The Watertown surprise is parking. A second space is worth about $50 a month here. In Waltham, one town over, the same comparison comes out at $375. Watertown renters walk, bike and ride the bus to Harvard Square and the Arsenal district, and the market prices that plainly. If you own here, don't count on the driveway to carry your rent.
What does carry it is air conditioning. Nearly $600 a month against units without it, the biggest amenity effect in town, and a third of Watertown rentals still don't have it. With half the rental stock built before 1940, a mini split install is about the highest return upgrade a Watertown landlord can make.
Those numbers describe what a unit was listed with, not what I verified in person. Agents who fill out listings carefully also tend to be marketing better units, so some of what any single feature appears to be worth is really the value of a well made listing and a better building. The bathroom, fireplace and year built rows rest on hard structural fields and are the most reliable. The amenity checkboxes are directional.
August closes 4.5 times as many rentals as February, and the market moves fastest from April through August, three weeks door to lease. The slow season is real though: October and November rentals take twice as long, 43 and 44 days. For a landlord the message is simple. If your lease ends in late fall, fix that. Push the next one to a summer end date, because the same unit that rents in three weeks in July sits for six in October.
| Month | Rentals closed | Median days to rent |
|---|---|---|
| January | 43 | 42 |
| February | 37 | 24 |
| March | 81 | 27 |
| April | 70 | 22 |
| May | 104 | 22 |
| June | 91 | 26 |
| July | 96 | 21 |
| August | 166 | 21 |
| September | 75 | 28 |
| October | 79 | 43 |
| November | 56 | 44 |
| December | 47 | 34 |
Two years pooled, 945 rentals.
| Bedrooms | Median size | Rent per square foot |
|---|---|---|
| Studio | 530 sqft | $3.99 |
| 1 bedroom | 734 sqft | $3.08 |
| 2 bedroom | 1,132 sqft | $2.54 |
| 3 bedroom | 1,402 sqft | $2.44 |
| 4 bedroom | 2,106 sqft | $2.12 |
The Watertown two bedroom is big. A median of 1,132 square feet, about 140 more than the same unit in Waltham, which is a lot of the reason the rent runs higher. Square footage comes from the listing agent and is approximate, so trust the pattern more than the exact cents.
Flat, and I can show it three different ways, which almost never happens this cleanly.
First, the headline. Median rent across all bedrooms was $2,900 in the twelve months ending August 2025 and $2,950 in the twelve months ending August 2026, up 1.7 percent.
Second, the two bedroom, which is half this market by itself: $2,800 in both windows. Identical, on 223 closings each side.
Third, the same units against themselves. Across 47 cases where one Watertown unit rented twice at least six months apart, the median change was exactly zero. Twenty one went up, seventeen held, nine went down.
The short version is Watertown rents didn't move over the past year. A market can be flat on price and still be fast, and that's exactly what this one is: rents holding still while 71 percent of units go at or above ask. Landlords aren't reaching, and renters aren't getting relief either.
| Bedrooms | 12mo to Aug 2025 | 12mo to Aug 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 bedroom | $2,300 (61) | $2,400 (67) | up 4.3% |
| 2 bedroom | $2,800 (223) | $2,800 (223) | flat |
| 3 bedroom | $3,375 (110) | $3,500 (108) | up 3.7% |
| 4 bedroom | $4,600 (33) | $4,200 (38) | down 8.7% |
| Same unit, rented twice | 47 matched pairs | flat | |
The four bedroom drop is real but rests on 33 and 38 closings, so read it gently. Studios had too few closings to show.
| Included | Share of rentals |
|---|---|
| Water | 75% |
| Sewer | 65% |
| Parking | 50% |
| Trash | 49% |
| Grounds maintenance | 48% |
| Snow removal | 32% |
| Laundry facilities | 31% |
| Hot water | 15% |
| Heat | 14% |
Only one in seven Watertown rentals includes heat, half the rate I found in Waltham. Budget for the gas bill here, especially in that pre 1940 stock.
Own a rental in Watertown? This is my home market and these are the numbers I price units with every week. If you want to know what yours should rent for, send me the address and what it last rented at, and I'll tell you what I'd list it for and how long I think it takes. No charge and no pressure, it's a five minute exercise for me.
Renting instead? Get in touch and I'll send you what I have available, and here's my general guide to Watertown if you're new to the area.
Source. Every figure on this page is calculated from closed rental transactions recorded in MLS Property Information Network: 945 Watertown rentals, studios through five bedrooms, settled between 26 July 2024 and 26 August 2026. These are rents tenants actually signed, not asking prices.
Method. I use medians, not averages, because a few very expensive units would drag an average around. Time on market is the MLS days on market field. Any figure resting on fewer than ten rentals gets left out entirely.
What's approximate. Square footage, amenities and included utilities are entered by listing agents and aren't independently verified. Five records carry out of town zip codes from data entry errors; they stay in the town totals because MLS records them as Watertown. August 2026 is partial, through the 26th.
Corrections. If you find an error, tell me. I'll fix it and note it in the log below. That's the deal.
Based on information provided to and compiled by MLS Property Information Network, Inc. covering the period 26 July 2024 through 26 August 2026.