Before you offer on a home in Massachusetts, run its address through the official registry: the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry, run by Sex Offender Registry Board. It is free, it takes two minutes, and it is the check listing sites never do for you.
Run the check
Check the records behind the address before you offer.
Check any address — free preview1. Open the official Massachusetts registry. 2. Search by the home's street address (a radius or map search works best). 3. Note the counts within a quarter mile, a half mile, and a mile — distance bands tell you more than a single pin. 4. Repeat the search the week you close. Registries update as people move and register new addresses.
Can you get an exact count in Massachusetts?
Partly — Massachusetts's official search can produce a count, but only through the route below (a subset, a radius detour, a CAPTCHA or a display cap), so getting the number takes an extra step.
How it works: SORB public search (sorb.chs.state.ma.us, behind a reCAPTCHA entry) by name, city/town, county, ZIP or address radius returns countable lists, but only Level 3 and post-July-12-2013 Level 2 offenders are online — Level 1 is never public — so ZIP counts are subset counts.
Worth knowing: NSOPW's legacy mass.gov path is retired (403 path); mass.gov/sorb is the current agency hub and the SORB search host sorb.chs.state.ma.us returned 200 today.
Method checked against the NSOPW state directory on 2026-11-04.
How to read what comes back
Treat the addresses as reported addresses: the system depends on registrants reporting moves and on agencies processing them, so the map is a strong signal, not a guarantee. Judge the pattern around the address — how many, how close, typical for the area or an outlier — and remember the registry lists only people required to register; it is not a crime map.
Check the records behind the address before you offer.
Check any address — free previewHow CurbFacts uses this data
A CurbFacts report summarizes the same public registry data as ZIP-level counts for the address — never offender names or photos. The full Massachusetts records guide and the Massachusetts disclosure guide cover the rest of the record file.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get an exact registrant count for a Massachusetts address?
Partly. SORB public search (sorb.chs.state.ma.us, behind a reCAPTCHA entry) by name, city/town, county, ZIP or address radius returns countable lists, but only Level 3 and post-July-12-2013 Level 2 offenders are online — Level 1 is never public — so ZIP counts are subset counts.
Who runs the Massachusetts registry?
The Sex Offender Registry Board — the official search is the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry. It is free; if a site asks you to pay for registry results, you are on a data broker.
Does a CurbFacts report show offender names or photos?
No. Reports show the count of registrants in the home's ZIP from state registry data, and link you to the official registry if you want the underlying public record.
Sources: mass.gov · mass.gov:443 · nolo.com · policygenius.com
See what the listing doesn't say.
Every CurbFacts report pulls the public records behind an address — flood determination, registry, tax reset, price history, permits, and what's planned nearby — and shows its sources.
Check any address — free preview