"We've had as much as four feet of sand placed by the floodwater in our garage."
Newburyport city councilor Mark Wright said that about a nor'easter that hit Reservation Terrace, his neighborhood near the north end of Plum Island, inside Newburyport's town line. A short walk south, past a boundary marked by nothing more than a street sign, the same storm hit houses that pay a different tax rate, carry a different parking permit, and call a different town hall when something needs fixing.
Most buyers looking at Plum Island treat it as one market. It shows up that way on every portal, in every search filter, in every "Plum Island homes for sale" query. But the island has no government of its own. It never has. The developed north and center sections are split between two towns, Newburyport and Newbury, and that split is not a footnote. It is the reason the two halves of the same beach have handled the same erosion crisis so differently, and it is a real, recurring cost that shows up on a closing statement long after the ocean view stops feeling like the only variable that matters.
Where The Line Actually Runs
Plum Island is an eleven-mile barrier strand at the mouth of the Merrimack River. The developed neighborhoods, roughly 1,200 homes packed into the northern and central stretch, split unevenly between the two towns: about 800 sit in Newbury's slice, and about 400 sit in Newburyport's, a distribution that has held steady for years because the island is close to fully built out. South of that, the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge and Sandy Point State Reservation take up most of the remaining land, with the far southern tip touching Rowley and Ipswich in name only, since almost nothing there is residential.
There is no Plum Island select board, no Plum Island assessor, no single office that sets policy for the whole strip of sand. Every decision, from beach parking to storm response to how fast a demolition permit gets processed, runs through whichever town hall owns that parcel.
What The Same View Costs Depending On Which Side You're On
Newburyport's certified fiscal year 2026 residential tax rate is $9.26 per $1,000 of assessed value. Newbury's is $7.51 per $1,000, one of the lowest rates in Essex County. On a home assessed at $1,000,000, before any exemptions, that gap is the difference between a $9,260 annual bill and a $7,510 one. Over a decade of ownership, that is roughly $17,500 that never shows up in a listing description, a staging photo, or a comparable sales report, because both houses are marketed under the same neighborhood name.
| Newburyport | Newbury | |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 residential tax rate | $9.26 per $1,000 | $7.51 per $1,000 |
| Homes on Plum Island (approx.) | 400 | 800 |
| Share of the town's total tax levy from the island | About 6% | About a third |
| Resident parking | Staffed lot with tiered daily and holiday rates | $25 annual permit, largely unstaffed enforcement |
The tax rate gap is worth noting on its own. The share-of-levy row is the more important number, because it explains almost everything else about how the two towns behave when the ocean starts taking the island back.
Why One Town Fights Harder For The Sand
Plum Island generates roughly $7 million in combined property tax revenue for the two towns each year. For Newburyport, a larger city with a broader tax base, that money is about 6% of its total annual levy. For Newbury, it is close to a third of everything the town collects. When a storm erodes a stretch of beach or damages a row of houses, the two towns are not losing the same thing. Newburyport is losing a slice. Newbury is losing a load-bearing piece of its budget.
That asymmetry plays out in the record. In December 2025, WBUR reported on a FEMA buyout of a cottage on 75th Street, on the Newburyport side of the island, where the owner accepted about $1 million to leave and let the house be demolished. FEMA covered most of the cost, but the deal required a 10% local match, and the Newburyport City Council ended up pulling from funds that had been set aside to replace fire hydrants elsewhere on the island, a tradeoff that drew objections from residents worried about utilities being shorted to pay for one buyout. A 2021 Army Corps of Engineers study found the beach near Reservation Terrace losing about 53 feet of sand a year, a rate the Corps itself called far above the long-term regional average.
Groups on the ground have been pushing both towns for a permanent funding fix rather than one-off buyouts. In an open letter, a group of Reservation Terrace residents pushed for a dedicated funding mechanism modeled on the Salisbury Beach Trust Fund, one that would route "$2 of every parking fee" into a standing dune-preservation account rather than leaving erosion fixes to whatever each town's annual budget can spare.
That kind of proposal, and the multi-town coordination behind groups like the Merrimack River Beach Alliance and the Plum Island Foundation, exists precisely because no single town can solve island-wide erosion on its own budget. Newbury, Newburyport, and Salisbury jointly applied for a fiscal year 2026 state Coastal Resilience Grant to fund shoreline stabilization modeling, a sign the towns cooperate when the money comes from outside. But cooperation on a state grant application does not erase the underlying math. When a storm hits, Newbury has more riding on that stretch of sand than Newburyport does, and that difference in stakes has shaped, and will keep shaping, how hard each town pushes for dredging, seawalls, and buyout dollars.
The Parking Permit Is A Small Preview Of A Bigger Pattern
Buyers rarely think about beach parking until their first summer weekend on the island, but the contrast between the two towns' systems is a compact preview of how each one runs things. Newburyport's Plum Island Point lot is staffed, metered by the day, and charges different rates on weekdays, holidays, and weekends, with residents needing a sticker from the Harbor Master's office to get the discount. Newbury's system is quieter and cheaper on paper: a $25 annual resident permit, purchased once a year, enforced not by a paid attendant but by the police department patrolling the streets. Neither system is better or worse. They are simply different administrative postures, run by different offices, funded by different budgets, and that same pattern repeats itself in building permits, inspections, and how quickly a call to the town gets returned.
What This Means Before You Fall For A Listing
None of this shows up in a portal search filtered by "Plum Island." A buyer comparing two houses with similar assessed values, similar square footage, and similar proximity to the water can end up with a materially different annual carrying cost, a different permitting office to work with on any future renovation, and a different set of neighbors organizing around erosion funding, depending entirely on which side of an unmarked line the parcel sits.
Before getting attached to a specific house, it is worth confirming which town's assessor database the parcel actually appears in, since Northern Boulevard and Plum Island Turnpike addresses generally fall in Newburyport while Plum Island Boulevard and the streets further south are Newbury. That single lookup answers the tax rate question, the parking question, and points you toward the right building department for any future work.
A Few Questions Worth Answering Before You Write An Offer
Does it matter which town my house is in if I don't care about beach politics? Yes. The tax rate, the parking permit rules, the building and inspection department, and even which town meeting you would need to attend to weigh in on future zoning all depend on the answer, regardless of how often you plan to think about erosion funding.
Can I tell which town a listing is in just from the street address? Usually, but not always. The safest step is a quick parcel lookup with the relevant assessor's office before you get emotionally attached to a specific house, since the island's town line does not follow an intuitive pattern from the road.
Does the tax gap show up in resale value? Not in a way either portal tracks separately, since both sides are marketed under the same "Plum Island" label. But a gap of roughly $1,500 to $2,000 a year on comparable assessed values is a real number worth modeling into a long-term ownership budget, not a rounding error.
Plum Island rewards buyers who look past the beach photos and ask which town actually owns the parcel. That single fact touches the tax bill, the parking pass, and the political fight over the sand itself. If you are comparing houses on the island and want a clear read on which side of that line makes sense for your budget and plans, Lynne Hendricks can walk you through it property by property. Let's Connect.
