How many apartments for rent are available in Belmont, MA right now?
Belmont has almost no large apartment buildings, to the point that national rent trackers covering only buildings with 50 or more units cannot publish a Belmont average at all. Supply here is mostly floors of two- and three-family houses plus a short list of named developments. Roomster is showing 26 apartments for rent around town, concentrated in Waverley, along Trapelo and Belmont Street, and around Cushing Square. Everything falls inside ZIP 02478, and since Belmont covers only about four and a half square miles hemmed in by Cambridge, Arlington, Lexington, Waltham and Watertown, a search returning dozens of results is almost certainly pulling in the neighboring towns.
How much does it cost to rent an apartment in Belmont, MA?
Budget roughly $2,150 for a studio, $2,350 for a one-bedroom and $2,750 for a two-bedroom, with three-bedrooms near $3,475 and four-bedroom house floors around $4,600, putting the townwide average close to $2,795. You will see higher numbers quoted elsewhere, some trackers placing Belmont one-beds in the $2,900s, and the disagreement is genuine rather than careless: with so few big buildings, a handful of new leases at The Bradford or The Royal Belmont drags a small sample a long way. You can still find one-bedrooms under $2,300 in Waverley and on the Belmont Street side toward Watertown, typically older two-family floors with a landlord living downstairs. For context, Cambridge averages north of $3,500, so in this corner of the metro Belmont is the discount rather than the splurge.
What kinds of apartments for rent does Belmont actually have?
Three kinds, and telling them apart saves a lot of wasted searching. Most listings are a floor of a two-family house, a five- or six-room layout with a porch, a driveway space and often tenant-paid heat. Then come the purpose-built rentals: The Bradford in Cushing Square, the mixed-use project that replaced the old municipal parking lot, put a little over a hundred one- and two-bedroom apartments above roughly 38,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, and The Royal Belmont on Acorn Park Drive at the eastern edge of town offers studios through three-bedrooms with a pool and a fitness center, starting around $2,555. Third is the Belmont Hill stock, including the 121 townhouses at The Woodlands built after the 1999 rezoning of McLean Hospital's land, which reach the market as owner-listed condo rentals rather than through a leasing office.
Who pays the broker fee on a Belmont apartment for rent, and what can be charged up front?
As of August 1, 2025, Massachusetts requires the broker's fee to be paid by the party who hired the broker. If a landlord or a management company listed the apartment, the fee is theirs; a renter owes one only after hiring an agent directly to represent them, and a renter-paid landlord fee is treated as a Chapter 93A violation with triple damages and attorney's fees on the table. Separately, the most that may be collected at signing is first month, last month, a security deposit capped at one month's rent, and the cost of a new lock and key, which leaves no room for application fees, move-in fees or pet deposits. The change lands differently in Belmont than the headlines suggested, because a large share of the town's apartments for rent are posted by owner-occupant landlords who never hired a broker to begin with.
Is there rent control on apartments for rent in Belmont, and will 3A zoning add more?
There is no rent control in Belmont and there cannot be under current law, since Massachusetts voters abolished it statewide in 1994 and restoring it would take an act of the Legislature. What is genuinely changing is supply. Under the MBTA Communities Act, Belmont had to zone for at least 1,632 homes across a minimum of 27 acres. Town Meeting chose its map in November 2024 by a vote of 213 to 8, and the state gave final approval in April 2025. The new multifamily districts sit in Belmont Center and Waverley Square, which is where any meaningful new apartment supply will surface over the next several years. Zoning is permission rather than construction, though, so do not expect it to move this year's asking rents.
Are there apartments for rent near Belmont Center and Waverley stations, or should I look toward Alewife?
Both work, and they suit different commutes. Belmont Center and Waverley are Fitchburg Line stops in fare Zone 1, one stop out from Porter for the Red Line transfer and about 16 minutes from North Station, which is a good fit if you work downtown and can live with commuter rail frequencies instead of subway ones. If you need rapid transit all day, look at the east end of town toward Alewife, just over the Cambridge line, or plan on the 73 bus down Trapelo Road to Harvard, which is what most Belmont renters actually ride. One practical filter: Waverley station is below street level, reached by steep stairs, and is not accessible, so if that matters to you, concentrate your apartment search near Belmont Center.
