Look up your floorplan on the leasing site and you’ll see one price. Look up the same floorplan on RentCafe and you’ll see a range. On the 631 square foot one bedroom, checked on August 31, 2026, that range ran from $2,944 to $4,252. Same apartment, same day, a difference of more than $1,300 a month.
Nothing shady is going on. The low number has a lease term attached to it, and the leasing site says so. The $2,944 is a fifteen month price. A neighboring one bedroom shows $2,924 on a nine month term. The spread is the price of a normal lease length, and you should know yours before you compare your rent to anything else, including a mortgage.
Find Out What a Twelve Month Lease Really Costs You
Do this one thing before you renew. Ask the leasing office, in writing, what your apartment costs on a straight twelve month lease with no promotional credit applied. Not the advertised number, not the number tied to a fifteen month term, and not the number that assumes a look and lease credit you may not qualify for a second time.
A look and lease credit is being advertised right now, and the platforms don’t agree on its size, so we won’t print a figure. Ask what applies to your unit and what happens at renewal, because a credit that made year one work is not part of year two.
Credit where it’s due on transparency. Both the property’s own site and RentCafe now state that the prices shown are total monthly figures that include the mandatory recurring charges. Greystar, which manages The Block, settled a Federal Trade Commission case in December 2025 over advertised rents that left mandatory fees out, and the order requires the all in number to be displayed. As of August 31, 2026, this property is showing it. That makes your comparison cleaner than it would have been two years ago.
You Are Living in the Newest Building on the Street
The Block opened in October 2023, which makes it the youngest of the four Beverly Collection buildings and one of the newest addresses in the city. It’s 106 apartments over six stories, with 9,000 square feet of ground floor retail, and it wrapped the restored Joseph A. Appleton Building, once the Hotel Walter, into its corner rather than knocking it down.
You can walk downstairs to Salem Five, Harbor Sweets, Toscana Bar Italiano, OTTO Pizza, Crave, Taste Buds Kitchen and The Castle. Part of the courtyard is open to the public as an extension of Odell Park. And the building sits between Beverly Depot and the station’s parking garage, which is about as close to a commuter rail platform as a person can live.
None of that is an argument for leaving. It’s an argument for knowing exactly what you’d be giving up, and for pricing the alternative properly instead of guessing at it. Most people comparing rent to a mortgage assume the mortgage is the expensive option because it’s the bigger number on the page. That assumption survives only until you ask what each number buys and what happens to it in five years.
What Ownership Costs a Few Streets Away
Beverly’s entry point is condos. The median condo in the city was $484,000 in late August 2026, and a live search of one local brokerage’s listings the same week showed roughly fifteen condos under $500,000, from about $255,000 up. The city’s residential tax rate for fiscal 2026 is $10.91 per $1,000 of assessed value, so a condo at that median carries a tax bill in the neighborhood of $5,300 a year before any exemption.
Set that against a one bedroom at The Block. Even taking the friendlier end of the range, you’re sending somewhere around $35,000 a year to a landlord, and at the top of the range closer to $50,000. Five years of that is real money that ends with you owning what you own today.
What to do with that. Take your current all in monthly rent, the real twelve month number you asked for above, and bring it to a broker along with your income and your savings. Ask for the comparison as a monthly payment that already includes taxes, insurance and any condo fee, because the condo fee is usually the number that decides whether this works.
Your Commute Survives the Move
Part of what you’re paying for is the walk to the train, and buying in Beverly keeps it. Beverly Depot is Zone 4 on the Newburyport and Rockport line, $8.75 one way or $281 for a monthly pass, with the express reaching North Station in about 33 minutes and most trains landing between 35 and 45. Montserrat station covers the other side of the city. The Block’s Walk Score is 91, and plenty of Beverly’s condo inventory is in the same walkable core.
Worth knowing about your own block: in November 2024 Beverly’s Planning Board approved a modified 52 unit mixed use building at 119 Rantoul Street, seven of those units affordable at or below 80% of area median income. More homes are coming to this corridor. Every one of them is a rental, which is the pattern across the whole Rantoul Street build out. Supply you can rent keeps arriving. Supply you can own mostly doesn’t.
Where We Come In
GoldCoast Mortgage Service is an independent mortgage broker in Beverly, a few minutes from your lobby. John Donlon, who owns the company, has spent more than 25 years financing homes on the North Shore, and a lot of that work starts with a renter running the numbers for the first time. A bank offers you its own loans. As a broker, we shop your file across many lenders, which matters on a condo purchase, because the building has to qualify alongside the buyer.
We’ll pre-qualify you at no cost, so you know your actual budget before you spend a Sunday at open houses. And since you’re living somewhere genuinely good, we’ll say the obvious thing: if the numbers say stay put and save another year, that’s what you’ll hear from us.
Recommended Realtors for First-Time Buyers
We work regularly with two local agents who are good with first-time buyers and who won’t rush you:
- Arthur Martiroso, DNA Realty Group, 617-921-5015
- Joshua Riopelle, Simes City Realty, North Andover, 978-590-2741
You’re welcome to work with any agent you like. We mention them because renters often ask us who to call once the financing side makes sense.
Questions From Renters at The Block
My rent includes the mandatory fees. How do I compare that to owning?
Line up everything on both sides. Your all in rent against a mortgage payment plus property taxes, homeowners insurance, the condo fee and a realistic utility estimate. Anything less than that flatters buying, and a comparison built to flatter buying is worthless to you.
What if I’d have to leave in two or three years?
Then renting may well be the right answer. Buying takes time to earn back its closing costs, and a short horizon is the most common reason we tell someone to wait. Say so early and we’ll tell you straight.
Is a 2023 building’s rent a fair benchmark for a condo?
Not exactly. A 2023 apartment has finishes and amenities that an older Beverly condo at the median usually doesn’t. What ownership offers instead is a payment that stops climbing and equity that accumulates. Which of those you value is a real question, not a rhetorical one.
How much do I need for a down payment?
Less than the folklore says. The median first time buyer puts down about 10 percent, FHA allows 3.5 percent down with a 580 credit score, and the Massachusetts ONE Mortgage program starts near 3 percent with no private mortgage insurance. On a $400,000 condo, 3.5 percent is $14,000.
Does a condo fee just make me a renter again?
No, though it deserves scrutiny. The fee covers insurance, maintenance and reserves on a building you co own, and your monthly payment is building equity at the same time. What matters most is the association’s reserve fund, because a thin reserve is how owners get hit with a special assessment. We look at that alongside the unit.