Real estate research site NeighborhoodX looked at the relationship of the ratios of prices to rents in some of the Boston area’s more affordable cities and neighborhoods.

Why? “Asking price can be seen as a measure of the long-term prospects of a neighborhood,” NeighborhoodX research director Constantine Valhouli said over email. “Asking rent can be seen as a reflection of what the neighborhood is like right now.”

Below is a chart with the ratios in Boston’s Lower Mills, Mattapan, Roslindale, and Hyde Park as well as in Chelsea, Everett, and Malden.

“All but two of these neighborhoods have very similar asking prices, between $252 and $279 per square foot,” Valhouli said. “So, at first glance, they look similar. But when we compared the asking price to the annual rent, you begin to see which neighborhoods might be further along in their gentrification.”

The ratio in both Chelsea and Malden is 10.8 times the annual rent. Everett housing prices are a bit higher, at 11.72 times the annual rent.

In Boston proper, Hyde Park’s ratio is 12.56 times the annual rent and Roslindale’s is 13.43 times. This suggests that someone is willing to pay more to live in these neighborhoods as an owner-occupant than in Chelsea or Malden, according to Valhouli.

For context, he noted that the prices in Lower Mills—which Valhouli described as arguably one of the more desirable neighborhoods within Dorchester—are 19.22 times the annual rent.

A couple of further bits of context from Valhouli:

Mattapan’s housing prices are 16.92 times the annual rent, which seems like a bit of an outlier. This is perhaps because the other regions studied have relatively similar annual rents, $22.22 to $25.54 per square foot. By contrast, the asking rent in Mattapan is only $15.60 a foot for the listings analyzed in this study.

And here are the neighborhoods in terms of rental yield on $1 million in investment.