Practical Living in Hull, MA

Incorporated 1644, and How Hull Ended Up in Plymouth County

Hull was incorporated in 1644 and named for Kingston upon Hull, England, making it one of the older incorporated towns in this part of Massachusetts -- the original peninsula was known to the Massachuset people as Nantasket, and Plymouth Colony had already established a trading post there in 1621, meaning organized English commercial activity here predates the Pilgrims' own permanent settlement expansion.

Hull sits in Plymouth County today, but it reached that county through the same administrative sequence already documented for neighboring Cohasset: Hull originally belonged to Suffolk County; when Norfolk County was created in 1793, Hull was included in it alongside Cohasset and Hingham; then in 1803, Hull and Hingham were transferred to Plymouth County, while Cohasset was not. That is the short version worth knowing -- the fuller story of why Cohasset was left behind as a Norfolk County exclave is that neighboring town's own history to tell, not Hull's.

Geography is the single defining fact of this market: Hull's total area is 26.9 square miles, but only 2.8 square miles of that is land -- 24.1 square miles, or 89.6%, is water. That makes Hull the most water-dominated town on the South Shore by a wide margin, reflecting Boston Harbor waters and the many named coves, harbors, and guts around the peninsula rather than simply open ocean. Hull is roughly 20 miles from Boston by land, but only about 5 miles by water -- a gap that directly explains why ferry service, covered below, is such a genuinely competitive commuting option here.

The Commute: No Commuter Rail, but an MBTA Ferry From Pemberton Point

Unlike Scituate and Cohasset, both served by their own stations on the MBTA Commuter Rail Greenbush Line, Hull has no commuter-rail service at all. Its distinctive transit asset instead is ferry service, run in partnership with Boston Harbor City Cruises and Bay State Cruise Company under the MBTA brand: the F1 route runs direct between Hingham and Rowes Wharf in Boston, while the F2H route connects Hingham, Hull's own Pemberton Point terminal, Logan Airport, and Long Wharf.

General service runs roughly 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays, with a one-way fare of $9.75; MBTA Commuter Rail Zone 6-and-above passes are also accepted, and seniors and riders with disabilities receive roughly half-fare pricing. The Logan Airport stop connects to a free Massport shuttle serving all airport terminals, and the route makes a seasonal stop at Georges Island. Pemberton Point is Hull's own in-town terminal, meaning residents can board a direct-to-Boston-Harbor ferry within the town itself rather than driving to a neighboring town's rail station. This page did not confirm current exact sailing-frequency numbers or precise crossing time in minutes for the Hull-inclusive route -- anyone planning a specific commute should pull the MBTA's own live schedule directly.

Property Taxes: Not Confirmed for Hull -- Check the Town Directly

Massachusetts towns set an annual tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value under the state's Proposition 2½ levy-cap system. Hull's own current rate could not be confirmed from a primary source in the research behind this page -- direct attempts against the Town of Hull's own Assessors' tax-rate page and against statewide comparison tables did not return Hull's specific figure. Anyone budgeting a specific purchase should pull the current rate directly from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue's Division of Local Services "Tax Rates by Class" database, or contact the Town of Hull Assessors' Office directly, rather than assume a rate carried over from any neighboring town.

Home-value figures also vary meaningfully by source and vintage rather than pointing to one clean number: Ownwell's own data gives a median home value of $536,850 and a median annual tax bill of $6,012, at a median effective tax rate of 1.12%; Zillow's own home-value index runs meaningfully higher, at $731,712, up 2.2% year-over-year; and Redfin's own median sale price runs higher still, at $725,000. These plausibly reflect different measurement methods and different data-vintage windows rather than a contradiction -- the honest takeaway is that Hull's home values, on every one of these measures, run well below Cohasset's, Scituate's, and Marshfield's own figures, consistent with Hull offering some of the more affordable Boston-adjacent, water-view real estate on the South Shore.

Schools: Hull Public Schools

Niche currently rates Hull Public Schools a B overall -- "an above average public school district," in Niche's own language -- ranking the district #128 of 217 Massachusetts school districts statewide and #14 of Plymouth County districts. That is a meaningfully lower statewide rank than Cohasset's #47 or Scituate's #45, and it is worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over. One figure genuinely stands out in Hull's favor, though: an 8:1 student-teacher ratio, well below the roughly 16:1 national average Niche cites for comparison.

The district's structure changed significantly and recently: Memorial Middle School closed in 2024, and the traditional three-school setup gave way to a current two-school structure -- Jacobs School, now serving pre-K through grade 8, and Hull High School, serving grades 9 through 12. Total 2025-26 enrollment across both schools is 690 students, a real, dramatic decline from the roughly 1,250 students reported for the district under its older three-school structure. Teams compete as the Hull Pirates in the South Shore League. Anyone with a school-age child should confirm current program offerings directly with Hull Public Schools rather than assume the older three-school structure still applies.

Population: A Dense Small Town, Hovering Around 10,000

Hull's population figures show real cross-source variance worth flagging rather than smoothing over: Wikipedia's 2020 Census figure is 10,072, while a separate secondary source puts the same nominal 2020 figure at 10,478. More recent estimates cluster in a similar band -- roughly 10,100 in 2021 through 2023, and a 2026 projection of about 10,053 -- describing the town as essentially flat, drifting within a roughly 100-to-150-person range over the past several years rather than following one clean trend line. The defensible framing is a range: roughly 10,000 to 10,150 year-round residents in recent years, not one precise current-year figure.

What is not in doubt is density: even at the most conservative population figures above, Hull's roughly 2.8 square miles of land housing over 10,000 residents makes it one of the most densely populated small coastal towns in Massachusetts on a per-land-square-mile basis -- a direct consequence of the extreme land-to-water ratio described above.

Zoning, the Municipal Electric Utility, and Other Practical Notes

Hull is a confirmed-compliant town under the state's MBTA Communities Act zoning mandate -- it appears on the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities' own list of municipalities approved for their Section 3A multi-family zoning district, and it does not appear on a separate, published list of towns still defiant of the Act as of the law's December 31, 2025 deadline. Hull's own path to compliance appears to have been comparatively uncontroversial, unlike the more contested process some neighboring towns went through.

Electricity in Hull is supplied by the Hull Municipal Light Plant (HMLP), a municipally owned utility operating since 1894 -- meaning Hull's status as a public-power town predates even its own now-retired municipal wind-turbine program by more than a century. HMLP is governed by an elected Board of Light Commissioners and can be reached at 15 Edgewater Road, Hull, MA 02045, phone 781-925-0051. A May 2026 Town Meeting vote separately restructured HMLP's governance, ending the Town Manager's direct oversight of the utility and returning full statutory authority to the elected Light Board, though that change requires state legislature approval to take full effect.

What This Page Does Not Confirm -- Ask the Town of Hull Directly

In the interest of being direct rather than filling gaps with guesses: this page does not assert a specific FEMA Community Rating System (CRS) flood-insurance discount class for Hull, and it does not assert a specific current property-tax rate. Hull's hazard-mitigation plan references CRS participation generally, but this page does not carry forward a specific class number, since none was independently confirmed for this town -- do not assume Hull shares a class number confirmed for any other town in this cluster.

This page also does not name a specific grocery store, hospital, or address-specific school-zone assignment for Hull, because none of those details were independently confirmed in the research behind this page. Before treating any such service detail as final for a specific address, contact the Town of Hull directly, or check with Hull Public Schools for the current, address-specific answer. What this page can confirm is the larger structural picture: a town incorporated in 1644, reaching Plymouth County by way of the same 1793/1803 transfer sequence documented for Cohasset, a peninsula that is 89.6% water, a ferry-based commute rather than a rail-based one, a B-grade school district under a recently restructured two-school system, and a population holding roughly steady around 10,000 to 10,150 residents. Nothing on this page is financial, legal, or relocation advice -- confirm time-sensitive figures directly with the Town of Hull before making a decision.