Plymouth, MA Tier 3

Tier 3 · solid schools · 39 miles from downtown Boston, about 78 minutes door-to-door at peak · 80% of households own their home.

Plymouth, Massachusetts
Plymouth · photo via Wikipedia
4BR house
$775k
$575k townhouse · $425k condo
Dearer than 54% of MA towns
Property tax
$9,700/yr
$12.55 per $1,000 on that house
Higher than 57% of MA towns
To downtown Boston
78 min
Commuter rail · ~66 min to terminal
Further than 72% of MA towns
Schools
51st pct
growth 47th · 92% graduate
Ahead of 51% of MA districts

marks the Massachusetts median of $750k for a 4BR, $9,100 in tax and 62 min to Boston. Prices and the tax bill are estimates, not appraisals.

About Plymouth

Plymouth is a middle-tier school district south-east of Boston, about 39 miles from downtown Boston as the crow flies and 78 minutes door-to-door at peak, and moderately priced by Massachusetts standards: roughly $775k for a 4BR house and $425k for a 2BR condo. The residential rate is $12.55 per $1,000, on the high side for Massachusetts, which on a $775k house works out to about $9,700 a year. Commuter rail runs downtown in about 66 minutes, against an 81-minute peak drive. That rail time is modeled, not read off the timetable. The district sits in the 51st percentile statewide on MCAS, and Niche ranks it 108th of 236. America's Hometown — coastline, new construction, and Kingston-line rail nearby.

The good, the bad, the ugly

From the data
Good

About $775k for a 4BR, under the $750k median of our set.

Bad

About 72 minutes door-to-door — a real commute, even with the train.

Ugly

Mid-tier schools in a state where the next town over often isn't — that gap is the whole local conversation.

Schools and child caresolid schools · 51st MCAS · 11 schools

Public elementary & middle schools

11 public schools in Plymouth — 9 elementary and 2 middle
ElementaryK–5 · 646 students
ElementaryK–5 · 529 students
ElementaryK–5 · 489 students
ElementaryK–5 · 374 students
ElementaryK–5 · 343 students
ElementaryK–5 · 241 students
ElementaryPK · 210 students
ElementaryK–5 · 199 students
ElementaryK–5 · 188 students
Middle6–8 · 922 students
Middle6–8 · 612 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 26 center-based · 18 family child care44
Licensed places, all ages The ceiling these programs may operate to1,842
Places in centers Commercial premises, licensed room by room1,692
Places in family child care A provider’s own home, mixed ages together150
Infant & toddler places in centers Age bands ending under three; family programs are not broken down315
Preschool places in centers Roughly 33 months to kindergarten869
Head Start programs Federally funded, income-eligible1

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 315 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#108 of 236 MA districts · B
SchoolDigger 2025 · City/locality test-score rank#207 of 361 MA localities
Official Massachusetts data (DESE)Result
MCAS achievement51st percentile statewide
Student growth (SGP)47th percentile
4-year graduation rate91.7%
DESE accountabilityModerate 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 Plymouth
In PlymouthTuition-free · lottery9–12 · Charter (public, tuition-free) · 27.9% graduate · In need of focused/targeted support · $21k/pupil
In PlymouthTuition-free · lottery5–12 · Charter (public, tuition-free) · growth 58th pct · 92.9% graduate · 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

3 private schools in Plymouth and within 12 miles
In Plymouth5–12 · Middle / high · 25 students · ~$28k–$44k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · KingstonPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 249 students · ~$8k–$15k/yr (est.)
Adjacent town · DuxburyAISNE accreditedPK–8 · Elementary / middle · 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 Plymouth, 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 Plymouth

Historic & visitor destinationsCoastalStrong cultureRail-servedhigh confidence

Active, town-centered/mixed, 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 strong cultural identity, major visitor destination, and exceptional public realm.

Energy7
Compact town center6
Family amenities3
Culture9
Visitor presence10
Public gathering places9

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$775k 4BR · ≈$9,700 tax
To buyMedian price (est.)
4BR / 2BA detached house$775k
3BR / 2BA townhouse$575k
2BR condo$425k
Property taxes (FY2026)$12.55 per $1,000 (1.26%)

These are modeled estimates, not listings. Each row opens the real Redfin market in ZIP 02360, one of 2 in Plymouth, and the two will not match.

To rentPer month (est.)
4 bedrooms$3,390/mo
3 bedrooms$3,080/mo
2 bedrooms$2,560/mo
1 bedroom$2,160/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 FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents for Plymouth’s ZIP codes

Home values over the last decade

Plymouth home values, 2016–2026Zillow Home Value Index for Plymouth, 2016 to 2026: $350k to $665k, up 90 per cent.$313k$508k$703k20162026
Plymouth, 2016 to 2026: $350k to $665k, up 90% in 10 years — 6.6% a year compounded.
If a $775k house grew at…5 yrs10 yrs15 yrs30 yrs
6.6% — Plymouth’s own last decade$1.07M$1.47M$2.02M$5.27M
3% — inflation, holding its real value$898k$1.04M$1.21M$1.88M

These are not forecasts. They are what $775k 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 Plymouth

suburban635 people per square mile across 96.4 sq mi suburban — 500–2,000 per square mile

What’s hereCount
Cafés and coffee shops
See the list

1 more is mapped without a name, so it cannot be listed.

10
Bookshops0
Museums, theatres and galleries
See the list

1 more is mapped without a name, so it cannot be listed.

19
Colleges and universities0
Public libraryPlymouth 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 households80%
White (non-Hispanic)88%
Asian (non-Hispanic)1.1%
Latino / Hispanic3.6%
African American (non-Hispanic)1.2%
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

PlymouthFigure
Residents61,217
Municipal budgetFY2025, DLS Schedule A$291.5M
School district spending$174.6M
Spending per pupil DESE, total expenditures$22,854
School spending per resident$2,852
Affordable housing units (Ch. 40B inventory)2,687

Budget: FY2025 General Fund total expenditures, DLS Schedule A · Schools: DESE Per Pupil Expenditure · Affordable units: state Subsidized Housing Inventory. Never used to rank or filter towns.

Realistic alternatives to Plymouth

MarshfieldTier 3
Also Tier 3, 14 min closer to Boston
SeekonkTier 3
Also Tier 3, about $100k cheaper
WestportTier 3
Also Tier 3, 8 min further from Boston
RehobothTier 3
Also Tier 3, $700k for a 4BR and 76 min to Boston
North AttleboroughTier 3
Also Tier 3, about $125k cheaper
AttleboroTier 3
Also Tier 3, about $155k cheaper

Surprisingly similar in character

Great BarringtonTier 3
Both a visitor draw and cultural · 70 min further out
WilliamstownTier 3
Both cultural and a visitor draw · $225k cheaper, 80 min further out

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Data statusreviewed August 14, 2026
FigureStatus
Home pricesCalibrated to the Zillow Home Value Index and Redfin market pages. For comparison, not appraisal.Estimate
Property tax rateFY2026 residential rate per $1,000, from municipal assessor and treasurer pages.Sourced
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 town’s prices and tax rate are sourced as described in our methodology. Data last reviewed . Full detail on every source is in the methodology.

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