Hull, MA: What Nobody Tells You Before You Buy
Hull sells itself, accurately, on the most affordable Boston-adjacent water views in this site's South Shore cluster, a genuinely dramatic peninsula, and a real ferry commute that beats driving. All of that is real. What a listing sheet is far less likely to walk you through is that Hull's own property tax rate could not be confirmed from any source in the research behind this page; that two population counts for the same nominal Census year disagree by more than 400 people; that the town's two wind turbines, once a real point of civic pride, are both gone as of late 2025; that a genuinely underused Kennedy-family history predates the far more famous Hyannis Port compound; and that Hull's schools rank the lowest of five South Shore towns, even with a real bright spot inside that ranking. Every figure below is sourced, and every place the record is incomplete, unresolved, or genuinely surprising, that is disclosed rather than smoothed over.
Hull's Property Tax Rate Could Not Be Confirmed From Any Source
For a small Massachusetts town, this is a genuinely unusual gap: the research behind this page was unable to confirm Hull's actual current property-tax rate, the dollar-per-$1,000-of-assessed-value figure that everyday Massachusetts town pages typically publish without much trouble. Direct attempts to pull the figure from the Town of Hull's own Assessors' page and from two statewide tax-rate comparison sites all failed to return Hull's specific line item — the town's own page returned an error, and the comparison tables returned surrounding page structure without Hull's actual number.
What does exist, from Ownwell's property-tax trends page, is a median effective tax rate of 1.12% (against a stated Massachusetts median of 1.15%), a median home value of $536,850, and a median annual tax bill of $6,012. An effective rate is a useful directional figure, but it is not the same thing as the town's actual $/$1,000 mill rate that your own closing paperwork and escrow figures will be based on. Treat Hull's exact current tax rate as an open item and confirm it directly with the Town of Hull Assessors' Office, or a Massachusetts-licensed real estate or tax professional, before you budget around any number — including the 1.12% figure above, which is an average, not your specific bill.
Population: Two Numbers for the Same Census Year, and Neither Fully Confirmed
Most small towns hand you one clean population figure. Hull hands you two that do not agree, for the same nominal data point. Wikipedia's own infobox, citing the 2020 Census, gives 10,072 residents. World Population Review, also describing itself as reporting the 2020 Census figure, gives 10,478 — a gap of more than 400 people that this research could not resolve, because a direct fetch of the Census Bureau's own QuickFacts page for Hull failed repeatedly.
The more recent secondary estimates cluster closer to Wikipedia's lower figure and to each other: Neilsberg puts Hull at roughly 10,118 (2021), 10,069 (2022), and 10,108 (2023); DataUSA gives a 2024 estimate of 10,138; World Population Review's own more recent projection puts 2026 at 10,053. Taken together, the fair, defensible summary is that Hull's year-round population has been essentially flat, hovering somewhere around 10,000 to 10,150 residents, for the past several years — a range, not a single precise current-year number, and one that has not been confirmed against an authoritative Census Bureau source in this research.
The Wind Turbines Are Gone — Both of Them
If you have seen Hull described as the town with the wind turbine visible from the highway, that description is now out of date. Hull Wind One went up in December 2001 near Pemberton Point and Hull High School, a 660 kW Vestas turbine described at the time as the first commercial wind turbine on the East Coast, producing up to 3.5% of the town's electricity. Hull Wind Two followed in 2006 at the town landfill, a larger 1.8 MW turbine supplying roughly 7.5% of the town's electrical needs.
Both are gone now. Hull Wind One went out of service in 2021 after roughly two decades of operation, and a full overhaul was priced at around $1.5 million for a turbine model no longer in production — the town chose not to make that investment. Wikipedia's own account states both turbines were demolished in 2024, but a Hull Times headline dated December 11, 2025 describes the demolition of what it calls the town's last wind turbine, most likely Hull Wind Two at the former landfill site. This research could not fully reconcile that discrepancy — the safest framing is that Hull's original municipal turbines were taken out of service and demolished sometime between 2024 and December 2025. Either way, a buyer coming to Hull expecting to see the turbine as a landmark will not find one standing.
The Kennedy Family Summered in Hull Before Hyannis Port Existed
This is a genuinely underused piece of Hull's history. A Tudor Revival mansion built in 1901 on the peninsula's Allerton Hill was purchased in 1915 by Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald — "Honey Fitz" — as a summer home for his family, including daughter Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Her own young family, including a young John F. Kennedy, is described as having rented a smaller nearby cottage while gathering at the larger Fitzgerald house for family dinners. That means the Fitzgerald-Kennedy family's South Shore summer life began in Hull, years before Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. bought the Cape Cod property that became the famous Hyannis Port Kennedy Compound.
It is worth stating this precisely rather than overselling it: Hull hosted the family's summer life first, and the house itself still stands on Allerton Hill, but the Kennedy Compound was never in Hull. If a listing or a tour ever implies otherwise, that is more marketing than history.
Schools Rank Lowest in the Cluster — With One Real Bright Spot
Hull Public Schools carry an overall B grade from Niche and rank #128 of 217 Massachusetts districts statewide — meaningfully the lowest ranking of any of the five South Shore towns in this cluster, behind Duxbury (#20), Scituate (#45), Cohasset (#47), and Marshfield (#61). That is a real, sourced gap, not something to smooth over. Inside that ranking, though, sits a genuinely strong number: an 8:1 student-teacher ratio, against a 16:1 national average, alongside a 92% graduation rate and an average SAT score of 1230.
The district's own structure also changed recently, and some older sources still describe it wrong. Memorial Middle School closed in 2024; grades 6 and 7 moved into what is now Jacobs School (pre-K through grade 8), and grade 8 moved to Hull High School (grades 9 through 12) — a two-school structure, not the older three-school Jacobs/Memorial/Hull High setup some outdated pages still describe. Total enrollment for 2025-26, per the state's own Department of Elementary and Secondary Education data, is 690 students (427 at Jacobs, 263 at Hull High) — a real, dramatic decline from the roughly 1,250 students the district served under the old three-school structure. If you are comparing Hull's schools to its neighbors, an honest read is: solidly above-average by Niche's own framing, with a genuinely favorable teacher ratio, but not competitive with Duxbury, Scituate, or Cohasset on the overall ranking.
No Commuter Rail — But a Genuinely Competitive Ferry Commute
Unlike Scituate and Cohasset, both served by the MBTA Commuter Rail's Greenbush Line, Hull has no commuter-rail station at all. If train access to Boston matters to you, that is a real difference worth knowing before you compare Hull to those two neighboring towns.
What Hull has instead is a transit advantage those towns do not: a direct ferry from Pemberton Point, at the peninsula's own northern tip. The MBTA's F1 and F2H routes, operated in partnership with private ferry operators, run Hull-Hingham-Boston service roughly 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays, with a one-way fare around $9.75 and MBTA Commuter Rail Zone 6-and-above passes accepted. The reason this is a genuine commuting option rather than a novelty: Hull sits only about 5 miles from Boston by water, versus roughly 20 miles by land, so the ferry route is dramatically shorter than the drive. This research did not confirm current exact sailing frequency or crossing time in minutes — pull the MBTA's own live schedule for that level of detail before you plan a commute around it.
Home Values: Three Sources, Three Different Numbers
Ask which figure a listing is using before you compare Hull to another town, because the answer varies meaningfully here. Zillow's own home-value index (ZHVI) puts Hull at $731,712, up 2.2% year over year — by a wide margin the lowest ZHVI of any town confirmed in this five-town South Shore cluster, consistent with Hull's own positioning as some of the more affordable Boston-adjacent water-view real estate on the South Shore. Redfin's median sale price runs close to that, at $725,000, based on November 2025 transaction data. Ownwell's own trends page gives a notably lower figure: a median home value of $536,850.
These plausibly reflect different things — a live index value, a recent transaction median, and a broader assessed-value-based estimate, on different data-vintage windows — rather than one of them simply being wrong. No single number here has been reconciled into one authoritative figure. Cite whichever source you are using, and do not average the three together or present a blended number as "the" Hull home value.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Data sourced from: the Town of Hull Assessors' Office (direct fetch attempts for a current tax rate failed) and Ownwell.com's property-tax trends page (median effective rate 1.12%, median home value $536,850, median annual tax bill $6,012). Wikipedia's "Hull, Massachusetts" infobox (2020 Census population of 10,072) versus World Population Review's conflicting 10,478 figure for the same nominal data point, with Neilsberg.com and DataUSA.io year-by-year estimates (2021-2024) used for directional context; repeated attempts to fetch the U.S. Census Bureau's own QuickFacts page for Hull were unsuccessful. The UMass Amherst Wind Energy Center, a December 2022 Boston Globe article ("Hull considers fate of nonfunctioning wind turbine"), and a December 11, 2025 Hull Times headline on Hull Wind One (installed 2001) and Hull Wind Two (installed 2006), both now demolished. Buildings of New England's "Honey Fitz Summer House" history, corroborated by Wikipedia's "Nantasket Beach" article and JFK Presidential Library archival photograph captions, on the 1901 house purchased in 1915 by John F. Fitzgerald. Niche.com's Hull Public Schools rankings (overall B, #128 of 217 statewide, 8:1 student-teacher ratio) compared against this cluster's other towns' own research files (Duxbury #20, Scituate #45, Cohasset #47, Marshfield #61); Wikipedia's "Hull Public Schools" article and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's own district-profile data (org code 01420000) on Memorial Middle School's 2024 closure and current 690-student enrollment. The MBTA's own ferry-service pages for the F1 and F2H routes from Pemberton Point. Zillow's ZHVI figure of $731,712 (late June 2026 data), Redfin's median sale price of $725,000 (November 2025 data), and Ownwell's trends-page figure of $536,850. Nothing here is financial, tax, or legal advice — for a current property-tax rate, a specific school placement, or a purchase-specific real estate figure, confirm directly with the Town of Hull and a Massachusetts-licensed real estate professional.