Plainville, MA Tier 3

Tier 3 · solid schools · 28 miles from downtown Boston, about 65 minutes door-to-door at peak · 70% of households own their home.

Plainville, Massachusetts
Plainville · photo via Wikipedia
4BR house
$750k est.
$580k townhouse · $430k condo
Dearer than 49% of MA towns
Property tax
$8,500/yr
$11.29 per $1,000 on that house
Lower than 52% of MA towns
To downtown Boston
65 min
No MBTA rail
Further than 53% of MA towns
Schools
65th pct
growth 52nd · 95% graduate
Ahead of 65% of MA districts

marks the Massachusetts median of $750k for a 4BR, $8,800 in tax and 62 min to Boston. Prices and the tax bill are estimates, not appraisals, and Plainville’s prices are preliminary: not yet checked against sales.

About Plainville

Plainville is a middle-tier school district south of Boston, about 28 miles from downtown Boston as the crow flies and 65 minutes door-to-door at peak, and moderately priced by Massachusetts standards: roughly $750k for a 4BR house and $430k for a 2BR condo. The residential rate is $11.29 per $1,000, about average for Massachusetts, but on a $750k house that is still about $8,500 a year. There is no MBTA rail here, so the commute is by car. The district sits in the 65th percentile statewide on MCAS, and Niche ranks it 75th of 236. Plainridge Park and easy I-495 access.

The good, the bad, the ugly

From the data
Good

$11.29 per $1,000 keeps the yearly bill near $8k on that 4BR.

Bad

About 65 minutes to downtown at peak, and no rail to escape it.

Ugly

At 70% ownership, your neighbours are a moving target.

Schools and child caresolid schools · 65th MCAS · 2 schools

Public elementary & middle schools

2 public schools in Plainville — 2 elementary
ElementaryPK–2 · 318 students
Elementary3–6 · 317 students

These are assigned by address, not chosen. A regional district’s schools appear on every member town’s page. Charters are public but allocated by lottery, and are listed separately below.

DESE 2025–26 enrolment report

Before kindergarten

Licensed programs 7 center-based · 3 family child care10
Licensed places, all ages The ceiling these programs may operate to525
Places in centers Commercial premises, licensed room by room501
Places in family child care A provider’s own home, mixed ages together24
Infant & toddler places in centers Age bands ending under three; family programs are not broken down123
Preschool places in centers Roughly 33 months to kindergarten261

Licensed capacity is not availability. These are places programs may operate, not vacancies. The age split covers centers only — family programs report no breakdown, so 123 is a floor on infant care here, not a count of it.

MA Dept. of Early Education and Care, pulled 2026-08-02 · search current openings

Public School Rankings

Publisher rankingResult
Niche 2026 · Best School Districts#75 of 236 MA districts · B+
SchoolDigger 2025 · City/locality test-score rank#169 of 361 MA localities
U.S. News 2026-27 · Assigned high school#72 of 353 MA · King Philip Regional High School
Boston Magazine 2026 · Greater Boston high school#83 of 148 · King Philip Regional High School
Official Massachusetts data (DESE)Result
MCAS achievement65th percentile statewide
Student growth (SGP)52nd percentile
4-year graduation rate95.3%
DESE accountabilitySubstantial progress toward targets

Each publisher ranks a different thing. A district, a locality, or one high school, each by its own method — shown separately, never blended.

MCAS percentile is the district’s statewide rank on % Meeting/Exceeding expectations, ELA + Math.

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 Plainville
Adjacent town · FoxboroughTuition-free · lotteryK–12 · Charter (public, tuition-free) · growth 48th pct · 96.5% graduate · Moderate progress toward targets · $17k/pupil
Adjacent town · FranklinTuition-free · lotteryK–8 · Charter (public, tuition-free) · growth 53rd pct · Substantial progress toward targets · $18k/pupil

Admission is by lottery, not address — a seat is never guaranteed. Some charters here are alternative or recovery high schools enrolling students already off-track, so their MCAS and graduation figures are not comparable with a traditional school’s.

Public and tuition-free; results from DESE

Available Private School Options

16 private schools in Plainville and within 12 miles
Adjacent town · North AttleboroughPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 198 students · 10.1:1 student-teacher · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · FoxboroughAISNE accreditedPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 139 students · 6.1:1 student-teacher · ~$16k–$32k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · Attleboro9–12 · High school · 1,100 students · ~$18k–$28k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · AttleboroPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 223 students · 18.5:1 student-teacher · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · AttleboroPK–12 · PK/K–12 · 179 students · 7.8:1 student-teacher · ~$10k–$20k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · AttleboroPK–12 · PK/K–12 · 178 students · 7.6:1 student-teacher · ~$18k–$28k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · Attleboro3–12 + SP · Specialized / placement · 53 students · placement/specialized
Adjacent town · Mansfield6–12 · Middle / high · ~$9k–$18k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · MansfieldPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 247 students · 15.3:1 student-teacher · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · MansfieldPK–5 · Elementary · 59 students · 6.6:1 student-teacher · ~$18k–$30k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · WalpolePK–8 · Elementary / middle · 341 students · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · Walpole1–12 + SP · Specialized / placement · 103 students · placement/specialized
Adjacent town · Walpole7–12 · Middle / high · 44 students · ~$38k–$50k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · SharonPK–5 · Elementary · 188 students · ~$9k–$18k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · SharonAISNE accreditedPK–5 · Elementary · 101 students · ~$22k–$36k/yr (est.)
Montrose SchoolNiche #60 · A+
Adjacent town · MedfieldNEASC accreditedK–12 · PK/K–12 · files no enrolment with the state

Tuition is an estimated range by school type, not school-published pricing — a parochial school and an independent day school are priced very differently. Private schools sit no MCAS, so no figure here is a state measure.

How to read this list

Schools within 12 miles of Plainville, 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.

The vibe of Plainville

Residential suburbs & small townsmedium 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 amenities6
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.

What it takes to live here$750k 4BR · ≈$8,500 tax
To buyMedian price (est.)
4BR / 2BA detached house$750k
3BR / 2BA townhouse$580k
2BR condo$430k
Property taxes (FY2026)$11.29 per $1,000 (1.13%)

These are modeled estimates, not listings. Each row opens the real Redfin market in ZIP 02762, and the two will not match.

By bedroom countMedian value (Zillow)
3BR home$580k

Not the same kind of number as the table above. These are Zillow’s observed medians for the middle third of the market at that bedroom count, as of July 2026; the prices above are this site’s estimates for one particular property. They are measuring different things and will not agree. Zillow publishes the bedroom split for houses and condos together, so a “3BR home” here blends both, where each estimate above prices one building type and says which. And 5+ BR means five bedrooms or more: Zillow’s buckets stop at five, so that figure carries the largest houses in Plainville and sits above what a plain five-bedroom median would be.

To rentPer month (est.)
4 bedrooms$3,510/mo
3 bedrooms$3,180/mo
2 bedrooms$2,650/mo
1 bedroom$2,230/mo

These are benchmark rents, not asking rents. HUD sets them at the 40th percentile of standard-quality units, so a nice single-family will ask more — which is why the links are not capped at the figure beside them.

HUD FY2027 Small Area Fair Market Rents for Plainville’s ZIP codes

Home values over the last decade

Plainville home values, 2016–2026Zillow Home Value Index for Plainville, 2016 to 2026: $369k to $613k, up 66 per cent.$340k$491k$642k20162026
Plainville, 2016 to 2026: $369k to $613k, up 66% in 10 years — 5.2% a year compounded.
If a $750k house grew at…5 yrs10 yrs15 yrs30 yrs
5.2% — Plainville’s own last decade$966k$1.25M$1.60M$3.43M
3% — inflation, holding its real value$869k$1.01M$1.17M$1.82M

These are not forecasts. They are what $750k becomes at a fixed rate, shown for two rates because nobody can tell you which one the next thirty years will bring. The last decade included a period of unusually fast growth across Massachusetts; repeating it for thirty years would be a strong assumption. The inflation row is the conservative case — a house that holds its value and earns nothing beyond it. History from the Zillow Home Value Index, a whole-town index that sits at a different level from the 4BR estimate above and is used here for the trend.

What’s around Plainville

suburban905 people per square mile across 11 sq mi — suburban — 500–2,000 per square mile

What’s hereCount
Cafés and coffee shops
See the list
1
Bookshops
See the list
2
Museums, theatres and galleries0
Colleges and universities0
Public libraryPlainville 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 2020–2024, US Census BureauShare
Homeowner households70%
White (non-Hispanic)84%
Asian (non-Hispanic)1.9%
Latino / Hispanic6.7%
African American (non-Hispanic)3.1%
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

PlainvilleFigure
Residents9,945
Municipal budgetFY2025, DLS Schedule A$44.4M
School district spending$14.0M
Spending per pupil DESE, total expenditures$20,325
School spending per resident$1,410
Subsidized housing (Ch. 40B)581 units on the state inventory, of 4,364 year-round homes13.31%at or above the state’s 10% threshold

Budget: FY2025 General Fund total expenditures, DLS Schedule A · Schools: DESE Per Pupil Expenditure · Subsidized housing: Ch. 40B Subsidized Housing Inventory, EOHLC, as of 30 September 2025; the percentage is over year-round housing units counted in the 2020 Census. Never used to rank or filter towns.

Realistic alternatives to Plainville

KingstonTier 3
Also Tier 3, higher tax at $12.82 per $1,000
HopedaleTier 3
Also Tier 3, about $150k cheaper
RaynhamTier 3
Also Tier 3, $700k for a 4BR and 66 min to Boston
MilfordTier 3
Also Tier 3, about $100k cheaper
NortonTier 3
Also Tier 3, about $100k cheaper
MillisTier 3
Also Tier 3, 13 min closer to Boston

Surprisingly similar in character

LunenburgTier 3
Both quiet and spread out · $200k cheaper

More on Plainville

Read next

A school rating is an average. Of how many schools?
The district is two schools, so its rating is a promise about the exact building your child would attend.
6 min read
The cheap towns grew fastest. The expensive ones made far more money.
5.2% a year over the last decade, near the bottom in percentage terms — which in an expensive town can still be the larger gain in dollars.
7 min read
Private school is not a plan B for a weak school district
Only 3 accredited private schools within twelve miles, which is the thin end of the state's supply.
7 min read
A paid-off condo and private school, or a mortgage in a better district?
A condo here is $430k against $750k for the house — the gap that pays for a lot of tuition, worked through in full.
10 min read
Data statusPrices preliminary · data updated October 9, 2026
FigureStatus
Home pricesCalibrated to the Zillow Home Value Index and Redfin market pages. For comparison, not appraisal.Preliminary
Median value by bedroom countZillow Home Value Index by bedroom count, July 2026, houses and condos together — Zillow publishes no single-family-only bedroom split. Observed medians, so they will not match the modeled prices above. The top bucket is five bedrooms OR MORE, because Zillow’s buckets stop at five: it carries a town’s largest houses and runs well above a true 5BR median, which is why it is labelled 5+ everywhere. Absent for Boston’s 18 neighborhoods, which are not cities and have no series, and for the smaller towns at the top bucket.Sourced
Property tax rateFY2026 residential rate per $1,000, from the Division of Local Services’ Tax Rates by Class, for every municipality. Towns with a residential exemption bill owner-occupied homes less than this.Sourced
Census shares and homeownershipAmerican Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates, US Census Bureau, for every municipality. The survey does not report Boston’s neighborhoods, so none are shown for them. Never used to rank, filter or recommend.Sourced
RentsHUD FY2027 Small Area Fair Market Rents, by ZIP, in effect from 1 October 2026.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 are preliminary estimates, not yet checked against sales. Its tax rate, like every town’s, is the state’s certified FY2026 figure. Data last updated . Full detail on every source is in the methodology.

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