Neighborhood Guides

August 17, 2026 By Krista Recker

Merrymount generally commands above-citywide prices in Quincy. Every major third-party source puts its median well above the city's, with recent 2026 estimates ranging from roughly $810,000 to $878,000 depending on which site you check and what each one is actually measuring. That reflects its coastal setting, its older housing stock, and a substantial single-family presence in a city where the citywide median is pulled down by heavy condo volume.

It is also a small, low-turnover pocket. Sales counts here are thin, which means a handful of closings can move a published neighborhood median by six figures in either direction. Treat any single number you see for Merrymount as directional, not as a price.

What you get for the money is a quiet, established, tree-lined residential area with Quincy Bay nearby, a large city park at the edge of the neighborhood, and a walk or short drive to Quincy Center and the Red Line. What you give up is choice. You may wait months for the right house to come up, and when it does, you will not be the only one who noticed.

Who This Applies To

You should read this if you want a single-family home in Quincy with a yard, a quiet street, and water within walking distance, and your budget reaches into the high $700,000s or the $800,000s.

You should read this if you have been outbid in Wollaston or Squantum and want to know whether Merrymount is the same competition at a different address.

You should read this if you are a longtime Merrymount owner thinking about selling, and you want to understand why your neighborhood's numbers look nothing like the citywide headline.

You should skip this if your budget tops out in the low $600,000s and you need a condo. Merrymount has relatively few, and Quincy Center, Wollaston, and North Quincy will give you far more to choose from.

Where Is Merrymount and What Are Its Boundaries?

Merrymount's boundaries are informal. They are customary neighborhood lines, not a legally adopted city zoning district or a school-assignment map, and they vary among local maps, listing platforms, and longtime residents.

Broadly, Merrymount is the residential area east and southeast of Quincy Center, sitting inland from Quincy Bay and generally between Quincy Center and Adams Shore. Merrymount Parkway, Sea Street, and the Southern Artery are the main routes in the area, and interior streets like Merrymount Road, Bayview Avenue, and Standish Avenue are residential and curving rather than gridded.

One thing worth knowing: the neighborhood label and the park name do not line up neatly. The City of Quincy lists Merrymount Park at Hancock Street and Merrymount Parkway within Wollaston, not within the Merrymount residential area. That is a good example of why the label alone should not drive a decision. Ask your agent to confirm a specific listing's location and school assignment rather than relying on a neighborhood name in a listing headline.

How Much Do Homes Cost in Merrymount?

Expect to be in the high $700,000s or above for a single-family home in Merrymount, with room in both directions depending on condition, lot, and water proximity. That is an illustrative planning range based on current listings and recent published estimates as of August 2026, not an appraisal or a guarantee.

The published numbers deserve a warning label, because the major sites are measuring four different things and none of them are the same thing. Here is what they actually show:

Figure and source (retrieved August 2026)	What it measures	Number
Merrymount median sale price, Redfin neighborhood page	Median of closed sales in the neighborhood over a trailing period	About $809,700, up roughly 21.8% year over year
Merrymount median sale price, Homes.com	Median of closed sales, different period and property mix	About $854,000, up roughly 18%
Merrymount typical home value, Zillow	Automated valuation index across homes, not closed sales	About $878,600
Merrymount median asking price, active listings across Zillow, Movoto, and Redfin	What sellers are asking today, not what buyers paid	Roughly $754,000 to $825,000
Quincy citywide typical home value, Zillow Home Value Index, data through March 31, 2026	Automated valuation index across all Quincy property types	$675,959, up 0.6% year over year
Quincy citywide median sale price, Redfin, three months ending May 2026	Median of closed Quincy sales across all property types	About $655,000
Merrymount Walk Score	Third-party walkability score, not an official measure	57, ranked Quincy's eighth most walkable neighborhood

Figures retrieved from Redfin, Zillow, Homes.com, Movoto, and Walk Score in August 2026. These sources disagree meaningfully because they measure different windows, different property types, and in some cases valuations rather than closed sales. Single-month neighborhood medians in Merrymount are especially unreliable given how few homes sell here at once.

The practical read for a buyer: do not price a Merrymount house off a citywide median, and do not price it off a neighborhood median either. Price it off recent closed sales of similar property type on nearby streets, and expect competition on anything well-presented.

What Kind of Homes Are in Merrymount?

Mostly older single-family houses, with Capes, Colonial Revivals, gambrels, and mid-century colonials on lots that are modest by suburban standards but generous by Quincy standards. Mature oaks and cherry trees line a lot of these streets, and many houses have driveways and garages, which is not a given in the denser parts of the city.

There are condos and multi-family properties here too. They are a smaller share of the market than the single-family stock, but the neighborhood is not exclusively single-family, and small two to four unit properties do trade on streets like Merrymount Road. When a condo does list in this pocket it tends to move quickly, because there is so little competing product.

Many homes in the area were built before 1978, so lead is a real line item. For any pre-1978 home, ask for the federal lead disclosure and any Massachusetts Letter of Full Compliance or Letter of Interim Control, and review the property record and seller disclosures for that specific address. A licensed lead inspection can identify lead hazards. Also budget for the systems that come with older housing: heating, electrical service, roofs, windows, and water management around the foundation on lower-lying streets.

What Is the Commute Like from Merrymount?

There is no Red Line station inside Merrymount. Quincy Center station is the closest, and it is a genuine transit hub, served by the Red Line, commuter rail, and multiple bus routes. Depending on which street you live on, getting there is a walk of roughly 15 to 25 minutes, a short drive, or a bus ride. MBTA Route 216 connects Quincy Center with the Sea Street and Houghs Neck corridor.

Treat every travel time here as approximate. Service, frequency, and door-to-door timing vary by address, time of day, and current conditions, so check the MBTA Trip Planner for real timing and service alerts before you commit to a commute assumption. By car, the Southern Artery and Route 3A lead toward Quincy Center, Braintree, and the expressway, and downtown Boston is commonly a drive of roughly 20 to 35 minutes depending on the hour and how the Southeast Expressway is behaving.

The honest version: Merrymount is a good transit neighborhood, not a great one. If a five-minute walk to the platform is your requirement, North Quincy and Wollaston serve you better. If you want a quiet street and are fine with a longer walk or a short drive to the train, Merrymount works well.

What Is There to Do in Merrymount?

Merrymount Park is the anchor. It runs roughly 80 acres and was donated to the city by Charles Francis Adams II in 1885. The City of Quincy's park inventory lists Adams Field, Coletta Field, a playground, lighted basketball and tennis courts, the Mitchell and McCoy softball facilities, Pageant Field with Little League fields and a picnic facility, and Adams Walk. As noted above, the City places the park itself within Wollaston, so if the park is your reason for buying, check how far your specific street actually is from it.

The water is the other draw. Quincy Bay sits just north of the area, and the Quincy Shore Reservation and Wollaston Beach corridor run up the shoreline from there. Caddy Memorial Park, which the City describes as more than 15 acres of fields and marsh with a play area, a lookout tower, and picnic tables, sits along the same stretch.

The area also has a civic identity that most Quincy neighborhoods do not. The Merrymount Association is an active nonprofit neighborhood association for neighbors and homeowners in Merrymount, with membership, community resources, and local events. And Quincy's 75th Annual Flag Day Parade took place on Saturday, June 13, 2026. It stepped off at Hancock and Coddington Streets in Quincy Center, proceeded north on Hancock Street to Merrymount Parkway, and culminated in a flag-raising ceremony and fireworks at Pageant Field. If you buy in this part of the city, that parade comes right past you every June.

For history buffs, the name is not decorative. Merrymount takes its name from the early English settlement known first as Mount Wollaston. In the mid-1620s, Thomas Morton became associated with the settlement and with the name Ma-re-Mount, later rendered Merry Mount or Merrymount. In 1627, Morton and his companions erected a maypole and held a May Day celebration that included English settlers and Indigenous people, and the episode provoked opposition from nearby Plymouth Colony leaders. Morton was arrested in 1628 amid broader disputes over his conduct and trade, and the Merrymount story later became one of the best-known episodes in early Quincy history.

What Schools Serve Merrymount?

Merrymount Elementary School is a Quincy Public Schools K-5 school that identifies itself as serving the Merrymount neighborhood. Quincy High School and North Quincy High School are the city's two comprehensive high schools.

Do not stop there. Quincy Public Schools assigns students by specific home address, and portions of a marketing-defined neighborhood can land differently than you expect. Verify the exact address in the QPS school-assignment directory before you make a decision that depends on it.

Is Merrymount in a Flood Zone?

Flood-zone status is address- and parcel-specific, not neighborhood-specific. It can change within a block, and a mapped zone is only part of the risk picture. For any property you are serious about, review the current FEMA flood map, elevation information, any prior-loss and disclosure information, and the lender's own flood determination for that parcel.

On the requirement itself, the rule works in two directions. A federally regulated or federally insured lender generally must require flood insurance for a building located in a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area when the loan is federally backed. Outside a mapped SFHA, flood insurance may still be advisable, and a lender or loan investor may still require it under its own policy.

Massachusetts adds a limit that most national flood articles never mention. For residential property with one to four units, Massachusetts law generally prevents a creditor from requiring coverage above the outstanding principal balance, from requiring contents coverage, or from requiring a deductible below $5,000. You are still free to buy broader coverage voluntarily, and in a coastal city that is often the smarter call. I have a full post on flood insurance in Quincy that walks through this in detail.

Premiums under FEMA's Risk Rating 2.0 vary widely even between neighboring homes, so get property-specific quotes from both the NFIP and the private market before you go under agreement rather than budgeting off a neighborhood average.

How Does Merrymount Compare to Nearby Neighborhoods?

The price bands below are approximate 2026 orientation ranges drawn from current listings and published estimates, not appraisals. Confirm any of them against recent closed sales for the specific property type you are shopping.

If this describes you	The area that usually fits
You want a single-family home with a yard near the water and your budget reaches the high $700,000s and above	Merrymount
You want coastal Quincy nearer the citywide median and will accept smaller mid-century houses	Adams Shore, generally the $600,000s to low $700,000s
You need to walk to a Red Line platform in under 10 minutes and want condo options in the $500,000s	Wollaston or North Quincy
You want the highest-end single-family water views in Quincy and can go past $1,000,000	Squantum, where single-family medians have run around $1,000,000
You want a driveway, a garage, and the fastest highway access in the city, and you commute by car	West Quincy, generally the $700,000s
You want newer construction, elevators, and building amenities rather than an older house	Marina Bay or Quincy Center

The short version: Merrymount and Squantum are the two established, water-adjacent, single-family-heavy areas in Quincy where you should expect to compete. Adams Shore is the value version of the same idea. Wollaston and North Quincy trade yard for train.

Quincy is subject to federal and state fair housing law, and this comparison is based on objective criteria only: price, housing type, transit access, and location.

The Bottom Line

Merrymount is a small, high-demand residential area where the constraint is inventory, not price growth. Expect to be in the high $700,000s or above for a single-family home, expect to wait for the right one, and expect company when it lists.

The mistake I see buyers make here is treating a citywide Quincy median as their anchor and then feeling blindsided by Merrymount pricing. They are not measuring the same thing. Quincy's citywide number blends hundreds of condo sales. Merrymount is a single-family-heavy area near a park and the bay, and it prices accordingly.

The mistake I see sellers make is the opposite one: pricing off a published neighborhood median that was driven by two unusually large sales. With this little turnover, the comparable sales that matter are the specific, recent, similar properties nearby, not the headline number on a listing portal.

This post is educational and not legal, tax, insurance, or financial advice. For a specific property, get advice from your attorney, lender, and insurance agent.

If you want to see what has actually sold on a particular Merrymount street in the last six months, or you want a real net sheet before you list, reach out through the contact page and I will put the numbers together for you.