A buyer writing an offer in Beverly this summer is not bidding into one market. They are bidding into one of four, and the citywide median tells them almost nothing about which one. That gap between the number on the portal and the number that actually applies to the house in front of them is where deals get mispriced, offers get beaten, and sellers leave money behind.
Beverly is unusual on the North Shore because the MBTA Newburyport/Rockport Line puts four active stops inside one city: Beverly Depot, Montserrat, North Beverly, and Beverly Farms. Each stop anchors a submarket with its own housing stock, its own price-per-square-foot behavior, and its own competitive rhythm. Read the citywide median without that context and the number is closer to a rumor than a comp.
The math the median hides
As of July 2026, Movoto reported a Beverly median list price of $734,000 at $440 per square foot, with a median 38 days on market. Redfin's October 2025 read had the median sale at $773,000 with homes going pending in about 15 days and an average sale roughly 2% above list, a Compete Score of 92. Zillow's most recent average value sits at $751,857, up 1.9% year over year, with pending in about seven days.
Those numbers are directionally useful and locally misleading. Break them apart by station area and the shape of the market changes:
| Submarket | Recent median | Price / sq ft | What it usually buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beverly Depot (downtown) | Mixed condo and single-family | Highest $/sq ft in the city | Walk-to-train condos, historic multis, new mixed-use above retail |
| Montserrat | Central Beverly single-family | Middle of the pack | Older single-families, small multis, coastal-adjacent lots |
| North Beverly | $750K (Redfin) | $386/sq ft | Larger homes on land west of Route 128, car-oriented |
| Beverly Farms | $837K (Redfin) | $398/sq ft | Shingle-style character, coastal setting, park-and-ride rhythm |
Look at the two right-hand columns together. Beverly Farms carries the highest headline price and one of the lower price-per-square-foot readings in the city. North Beverly, with a lower headline, prints an even lower $/sq ft. The Depot area, with generally smaller headline prices on attached product, prints the highest $/sq ft. The median is not lying. It is averaging across four markets that price square footage in opposite directions.
Why the price-per-square-foot inverts as you move east
Once you cross into Beverly Farms and the coastal east side, buyers are paying for land, setback, mature trees, and the shingle-style vocabulary that Prides Crossing built in the late 19th century as a retreat for industrial-era summer estates. The house is often larger than what a downtown buyer would consider, and the lot is doing a lot of the pricing work. That pushes the total price up and the per-square-foot number down.
Downtown is the mirror image. A studio, one, or two-bedroom unit near Beverly Depot is priced on walkability to a station that anchors both branches of the Newburyport/Rockport Line, which means every train on both branches stops there. The $/sq ft climbs because the buyer is paying for the platform, not the yard.
North Beverly slides lower on both axes. Homes sit west of Route 128 in a more car-oriented pattern, and the station offers easier parking. The MBTA Route 451 bus links North Beverly Station to Salem Depot, but the city itself frames that route as a neighborhood connector rather than a Boston commuting solution. For buyers who need parking, storage, and a garage more than they need a five-minute walk to the platform, the $386/sq ft number is the tell.
What just changed near the Depot
The most consequential recent change in Beverly is not a price move. It is a supply move.
Barnat Development broke ground in May 2026 on Holmes Beverly Phase II, adding 52 units next to the Depot and bringing the complex to roughly 119 apartments, with one in five reserved as workforce housing. The financing pairs about $10 million in Opportunity Zone equity with roughly $21 million in HUD-insured debt arranged through Berkadia, per Hoodline's reporting. Barnat's principal has framed the project as the next iteration of transit-oriented housing on the North Shore.
Zoom out and Holmes Phase II is one piece of a larger pattern. The city's MBTA Communities compliance district sits largely within a half-mile of Beverly Depot, which is where the city has pointed most new multi-family capacity. The City of Beverly's Plans & Studies page also lists an active Beverly Depot Mobility Hub design effort funded by a Housing Choice Capital Grant, along with a downtown parking strategy and an Arts District 2.0 plan tied to Cabot Street.
For a buyer, that changes the offer environment near the Depot in two specific ways. First, the pipeline of attached product means the near-Depot single-family is a rarer bird than the citywide inventory count implies, and it tends to draw compressed timelines when it lists. Second, downtown condo buyers now compete against a broader menu of new rental supply, which puts more pressure on condition, floor plan, and building fees than on square footage.
Montserrat is the working commuter's middle
Montserrat is the station most buyers underrate. It opened in 1874, sits between Spring Street and Essex Street with easy 128 access, and functions as a park-and-ride for the broader North Shore. The housing around it leans toward older single-families and smaller multis, with proximity to Rice's Beach, Sally Milligan Park, and Hospital Point Lighthouse.
The transaction friction here is different. Montserrat inventory often reads as "coastal-adjacent" in the listing copy but was built for a different era of family, which means inspection scope tends to be wider: knob-and-tube remnants, older heating systems, and finished-basement work done without permits show up more often than in newer North Beverly builds. Budget your inspection contingencies accordingly.
The Prides Crossing footnote
Prides Crossing station is on the map and off the schedule. Its Wikipedia entry documents that the MBTA temporarily closed it in December 2020 and made the closure indefinite in April 2021, citing low ridership and accessibility. A 2018 count clocked 15 daily boardings, and Beverly Farms station is 0.7 miles east.
For buyers looking at Prides Crossing homes, the practical rail option is Beverly Farms, not the shuttered flag stop. That matters when a listing description leans on "steps from the train." Verify what "the train" means before you write an offer priced on transit access.
Writing an offer that matches the submarket
A single offer strategy across all four submarkets will lose in at least two of them. Match the offer to the market you are actually bidding into.
- Near Beverly Depot. Assume compressed timelines and a shallow single-family bench. Financing needs to be pre-underwritten, not just pre-approved. Escalation clauses tend to be more effective here than in the eastern submarkets.
- Montserrat. Widen inspection scope and expect systems questions. Sellers here are more open to reasonable repair credits than in the Depot's condo stack because the buyer pool is smaller and more discerning.
- North Beverly. Land and layout drive value. Do the appraisal math on $/sq ft rather than list price when comparing homes, because the range on square footage inside the same neighborhood is wide.
- Beverly Farms and Prides Crossing. Days on market run longer, so writing an offer at list is often reasonable. Verify the actual rail stop the property uses and confirm any deeded beach access in writing before closing.
FAQ
Is Beverly's market cooling in 2026? Signals are mixed and submarket-specific. Movoto shows the citywide median list down about 2% month-over-month and roughly 4% year-over-year on $/sq ft as of July 2026, while Zillow's average value shows a 1.9% year-over-year increase and Redfin's October 2025 read had the citywide median sale up 6.2% year over year. The honest read is that the citywide direction depends on which submarket is transacting that month.
Which Beverly submarket has the shortest days-on-market? North Beverly's recent Redfin figure is 14 days, edging out the citywide 15-day Redfin number and running well below the 38-day Movoto figure that includes slower-turnover eastern inventory. Downtown near the Depot generally runs quickest on well-priced condos.
Does the Holmes Beverly expansion affect resale values downtown? It affects the mix of what a downtown buyer considers more than the pricing of the single-family stock. Renters absorb most of the new supply, and the single-family and small-multi inventory near the Depot remains structurally thin.
Are there Beverly neighborhoods without any station access? Ryal Side, Cove, and Centerville sit outside the immediate walksheds of the four active stations and lean on Route 128, Route 1A, and Route 62 for access. Buyers there are trading rail proximity for lot and layout.
If you are comparing Beverly to Salem, Hamilton, or Manchester-by-the-Sea and trying to figure out which submarket your budget actually reaches, that conversation is worth having before you write your first offer. Kris Gergler works across all four Beverly station areas and can map your criteria against the current inventory in each. Let's connect.
