Halifax, MA Tier 3

Tier 3 · solid schools · 26 miles from downtown Boston, about 62 minutes door-to-door at peak · 85% of households own their home.

Halifax, Massachusetts
Halifax · photo via Wikipedia

About Halifax

Halifax is a middle-tier school district south-east of Boston, about 26 miles from downtown Boston as the crow flies and 62 minutes door-to-door at peak, and moderately priced by Massachusetts standards: roughly $625k for a 4BR house and $355k for a 2BR condo. The residential rate is $14.50 per $1,000, on the high side for Massachusetts, which on a $625k house works out to about $9,100 a year. Commuter rail runs downtown in about 54 minutes, against a 62-minute peak drive. The district sits in the 70th percentile statewide on MCAS. The Monponsett ponds and a rail stop.

At a glanceHalifax
Schoolssolid schools Tier 3
Commute to Boston~62 min at peak · 26 mi · rail ~54 min Tier 4
Home price (4BR)$625k Tier 2
Property tax$14.50 per $1,000 · ≈$9,100/yr Tier 3

The vibe of Halifax

Residential suburbs & small townsRail-servedmedium confidence

Low-key, lower-density, and well provided with recreation programs, playgrounds and athletic fields; mixed in housing stock, from multifamily properties and smaller condos to higher-priced single-family homes, with limited cultural offerings, mostly residential, and moderate gathering options.

Energy4
Compact town center4
Family amenities3
Culture4
Visitor presence2
Public gathering places6

Six 1–10 scales for the intensity of each quality, not a score of how good the place is. Higher just means more of that thing. Family amenities counts public recreation infrastructure, not who lives here; these never use race, ethnicity or other protected characteristics, and never measure safety. See the methodology.

The good

About $625k for a 4BR, under the $750k median of our set.

The bad

About 62 minutes door-to-door — a real commute, even with the train.

The ugly

About $9k a year in property tax — the one housing bill that never amortises, never refinances and never ends.

Drawn from Halifax's own numbers on this page, not from local reputation — we don't have a strong editorial view on every town.

$625k
4BR / 2BA house (est.)
$480k
3BR townhouse (est.)
$355k
2BR condo (est.)
$14.50
Tax per $1,000 (FY2026)
62 min
Peak drive to Boston (modeled)
🚆 54 min
Commuter rail · ~54 min to terminal
85%
Homeowners (ACS 2019–23)
7,749
Residents

Where it is

📍 Halifax · Boston is on the same map for scale

What it takes to live here

To buyMedian price (est.)
4BR / 2BA detached house$625k
3BR / 2BA townhouse$480k
2BR condo$355k
Property taxes (FY2026)$14.50 per $1,000 (1.45%)

Each row opens live listings on Redfin for that home type at or below that price, in ZIP 02338. Prices here are modeled estimates; what Redfin shows is the real market today, and the two will not match.

To rentPer month (est.)
4 bedrooms$3,640/mo
3 bedrooms$3,357/mo
2 bedrooms$2,750/mo
1 bedroom$2,237/mo

Rents are HUD FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents for Halifax’s ZIP codes — 40th-percentile standard-quality units, so a nice single-family will ask more. Prices are market estimates, not appraisals. Each row opens rentals of that size in ZIP 02338. The search is not capped at the figure beside it: these are benchmark rents rather than asking rents, and filtering to one would hide most of what is actually listed.

Public elementary & middle schools

1 public school in Halifax — 1 middle
Elementary / middleK–6 · 530 students

Public schools of Halifax’s district, from the DESE 2025–26 enrolment report. These are the schools assigned by address, not by choice. A regional district’s schools appear on every member town’s page; charter schools are public but allocated by lottery and are listed separately below, and the public high school is named in the rankings that follow.

Public School Rankings

Official Massachusetts data (DESE)Result
MCAS achievement70th percentile statewide
Student growth (SGP)49th percentile
4-year graduation rate97.7%
DESE accountabilitySubstantial progress toward targets

Each publisher ranks a different unit (district, locality, or a single school) with its own methodology — shown separately, never blended. DESE figures come from the latest official state reports; MCAS percentile is the district’s statewide rank on % Meeting/Exceeding expectations, ELA + Math. Our editorial school tier above is a separate summary.

School building projects: No major full-school construction or comprehensive rebuild with a published total project budget was located in the live MSBA, municipal, school-project, contractor, and local-news review completed in July 2026. This does not mean no school capital work occurred.

Charter School Options

2 charter schools near Halifax
Adjacent town · BrocktonTuition-free · lottery6–12 · Charter (public, tuition-free) · growth 50th pct · 96.3% graduate · Moderate progress toward targets · $21k/pupil
Adjacent town · NorwellTuition-free · lotteryK–12 · Charter (public, tuition-free) · growth 46th pct · 96.2% graduate · Moderate progress toward targets · $18k/pupil

Charter schools are public and tuition-free. Admission is by lottery, not address — a seat is never guaranteed. Because they are public, the state publishes their results: MCAS percentile, accountability status and per-pupil spending come from DESE. Several charters here are alternative or recovery high schools that enrol students already off-track, so their MCAS and graduation figures are not comparable with a traditional school’s.

Available Private School Options

15 private schools in Halifax and within 12 miles
Adjacent town · East Bridgewater7–12 · Specialized / placement · 24 students · placement/specialized
Adjacent town · KingstonPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 249 students · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · Hanover7–12 + SP · Specialized / placement · 90 students · placement/specialized
Adjacent town · West BridgewaterPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 55 students · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · Middleborough1–12 · PK/K–12 · 60 students · ~$28k–$44k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · Middleborough9–12 + SP · Specialized / placement · 50 students · placement/specialized
Adjacent town · DuxburyAISNE accreditedPK–8 · Elementary / middle · files no enrolment with the state
Calvary Chapel AcademyNiche #108 · B
Adjacent town · RocklandPK–12 · PK/K–12 · 156 students · ~$10k–$20k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · Rockland8–12 + SP · Specialized / placement · 113 students · placement/specialized
Adjacent town · AbingtonPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 305 students · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Cardinal Spellman HighNiche #90 · A-
Adjacent town · Brockton9–12 · High school · 513 students · 13.9:1 student-teacher · ~$18k–$28k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · BrocktonPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 432 students · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · Brockton2–12 + SP · Specialized / placement · 54 students · placement/specialized
Adjacent town · NorwellAISNE accredited6–8 · Middle school · files no enrolment with the state
Adjacent town · Holbrook2–9 · PK/K–12 · 2 students · ~$18k–$28k/yr (est.)

Schools within 12 miles of Halifax, from the MA DESE 2025–26 non-public enrollment report plus the Niche ranking of Massachusetts private high schools. Tuition shown as an estimated range by school type, grades and region — not school-published pricing. A parochial school and an independent day school are priced very differently, so treat these as a starting point and confirm with the school. Niche ranks private high schools only, so an elementary school never carries a number; where one shows a letter instead, that is Niche’s own overall grade, which reaches schools no ranked list does. Neither is a state measure — private schools sit no MCAS and report no results to Massachusetts. That Niche extract is also partial, so a school showing neither was not judged and found wanting; it may simply not have been in it. Student numbers are the figure schools do report, from the same DESE return. Where a student-teacher ratio is shown it is students over full-time-equivalent teachers in the federal Private School Universe Survey, 2021–22, the most recent published — a rough guide to class size, not a class size, and not a ranking either. It is shown only where that survey and the state agree on how many pupils the school has, which is why many schools here have none. Accreditation comes from the AISNE member directory, which records whether a school holds AISNE or NEASC accreditation — the two split the work by age rather than compete, AISNE taking the elementary and middle schools and NEASC the secondary ones. It means an outside body has reviewed the school against published standards on a ten-year cycle. It is not a measure of results, and its absence is not a mark against a school: plenty are not members at all. That directory is also where the schools marked files no enrolment with the state come from. They are real schools that simply make no return to Massachusetts, so the state holds no size for them and this page can show none — and for those, the grade range is read off AISNE’s age bands rather than taken from the school, so treat it as approximate and confirm with the school.

What’s around Halifax

rural485 people per square mile across 16 sq mi rural — under 500 people per square mile

What’s hereCount
Cafés and coffee shops
See the list
1
Bookshops0
Museums, theatres and galleries
See the list
1
Colleges and universities0
Public libraryHalifax, Holmes Public Library

Density is Census population over land area. Café, bookshop and culture counts are what is mapped in OpenStreetMap — a volunteer map, so a well-mapped town looks busier than a thinly-mapped one. Read a low count as “little mapped here”, not “nothing here”. Colleges are active degree-granting institutions in the federal IPEDS directory; enrolment and campus housing capacity are its 2023 figures. The public library comes from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, which lists library systems rather than every branch. These figures describe places, never the people in them — see our methodology.

Census snapshot
ACS 2019–2023 (via MAPC DataCommon)Share
Homeowner households85%
White (non-Hispanic)92%
Asian (non-Hispanic)1.0%
Latino / Hispanic3.0%
African American (non-Hispanic)1.0%
These figures are neutral census facts, shown for every town equally. They are never used to filter, rank, or recommend towns — see our methodology and the federal Fair Housing Act.

Town spending & civic data

HalifaxFigure
Residents7,749
Municipal budgetFY2025, DLS Schedule A$28.7M
School district spending$12.5M
Spending per pupil DESE, total expenditures$20,263
School spending per resident$1,607
Affordable housing units (Ch. 40B inventory)340

Municipal budget is Halifax’s FY2025 General Fund total expenditures from its DLS Schedule A filing — the appropriated operating budget, excluding self-supporting enterprise funds. School spending is the Halifax district’s total expenditures from the DESE Per Pupil Expenditure report. Affordable-housing counts reflect the state Subsidized Housing Inventory. These figures are shown as neutral facts and never used to rank or filter towns.

Data status

FigureStatus
Home pricesCalibrated to the Zillow Home Value Index and Redfin market pages. For comparison, not appraisal.Preliminary
Property tax rateFY2026 residential rate per $1,000, from municipal assessor and treasurer pages.Preliminary
RentsHUD FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents, by ZIP.Sourced
School dataDESE published state reports. Publisher ranks carry their own edition and denominator. The school tier is editorial.Sourced
CommuteRail times for the 75 towns we could verify against the MBTA's published timetable are real scheduled journeys, transfers included. Where a town has rail but no verified journey, its rail time is modeled too, and the town page says so. Driving is modeled from distance with corridor adjustments, and station access is a flat allowance. Not measured by a routing API.Measured + modeled

This community was added after the original hundred, so its prices and tax rate are preliminary estimates pending verification against municipal and census records. Data last reviewed . Full detail on every source is in the methodology.

Realistic alternatives to Halifax

Towns you could plausibly shortlist instead: comparable price and school tier, similar size and density, same part of the state.

NortonTier 3
Also Tier 3, lower tax at $12.50 per $1,000
East BridgewaterTier 3
Also Tier 3, $650k for a 4BR and 57 min to Boston
West BridgewaterTier 3
Also Tier 3, $675k for a 4BR and 58 min to Boston
RaynhamTier 3
Also Tier 3, about $75k more expensive
PlymptonTier 3
Also Tier 3, 6 min further from Boston
HopedaleTier 3
Also Tier 3, higher tax at $16.50 per $1,000

Surprisingly similar in character

Close across the six vibe dimensions but not a substitute — a different price bracket, a different end of the state, or both.

WrenthamTier 2
Both quiet and spread out · $275k dearer
CharltonTier 3
Both quiet and spread out · 26 min further out
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