Living in Cape Cod & the Islands

Cape Cod and the Islands -- Massachusetts's most seasonally extreme and, on several measures, most expensive region -- span from Barnstable, the Cape's genuine year-round population and service hub (home to Cape Cod Gateway Airport and Cape Cod Hospital, the Cape & Islands' only major hospital), out to Provincetown's arts-colony-and-LGBTQ+-resort identity at the very tip of the peninsula, and across the water to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard's own genuinely distinct, ferry-only-access island markets. Housing costs run among the highest in this dataset -- Nantucket's typical home value reached approximately $2.63 million in mid-2026 -- driven by a genuine, currently documented year-round-housing crisis: per the Cape Cod Commission, only about 12% of Barnstable County's housing stock is rented year-round, and the region lost an estimated 9,000 year-round homes to seasonal conversion between 2010 and 2020. Falmouth's Woods Hole anchors a world-renowned scientific-research cluster (the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Marine Biological Laboratory), Chatham maintains the Cape's largest active commercial fishing fleet, and Orleans offers a quieter, more year-round-residential outer-Cape alternative to Provincetown's resort intensity. This region's honest hazard profile centers on nor'easters and genuinely accelerating coastal erosion (up to 12 feet per year in places) rather than hurricane landfall.

Explore Cape Cod & the Islands in depth

• Cost of Living & Housing in Cape Cod & the Islands
• Best Places to Live in Cape Cod & the Islands
• Moving to Cape Cod & the Islands
• Climate & Lifestyle in Cape Cod & the Islands

Places we've researched in Cape Cod & the Islands

• Barnstable -- Barnstable County
• Falmouth -- Barnstable County
• Nantucket -- Nantucket County
• Edgartown -- Dukes County
• Chatham -- Barnstable County
• Provincetown -- Barnstable County
• Orleans -- Barnstable County