Sales Up, Prices Up, Contracts Down, and Taxes
By Mark Pruner | mark.pruner@compass.com | 203-817-2871
Our most dramatic first-half Greenwich real estate statistic is that our sales prices are up 19% from the first half of 2024. At the end of H2 2025 our median sales price for a single-family home in Greenwich is $3.25 million. This is up $608,453 from our 2024 first half median sales price of $2.73 million. At the same time prices are dropping in what were the U.S.’s hottest Covid markets nationwide.
Listing prices up 21%
For another dramatic jump, our average LIST price is up 21% from $7.09 million in 2024 to $8.57 million this year. These big jumps are being driven by a dearth of inventory below $1.5 million. Right now, we only have 4 listings below $1.5 million and only 1 house listed for less than $800,000. (It is listed for $695,000 at 58 Riverdale Ave. The house is a 1,123 s.f house with 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and is on 0.12 acres.) At the other end of the market, we 5 houses listed for over $34,000,000.
Sales over $10 million up 67%
Another remarkable stat is that our sales over $10 million are up 67% from only 7 sales in the first half of 2024 to 13 sales this year. Our Greenwich Streets Team still has the highest sale at $21 million, but there are 13 listings over that price that could set a new record for the year.
Greenwich House sales up slightly in first half of 2025, but it was a bumpy ride
Our total first half house sales are 232 homes, up 2.7% from last year. At the same time, our inventory at the end of the first half of 2025 is only 133 listings, down 16% from 2024 and down 81% from the first half of 2019. Every week this year set a new record low for inventory in that week of the year.
While sales are up, we have not had a smooth ride so far this year. In fact, we took some extreme bumps to get to slightly improved 2025 sales. In January and February, sales were well below our 10-year average due to very low inventory. Then came March 2025 with only 19 sales, the second worst of this century.
Our worst March was in the heart of the Great Recession, March 2019, with only one less sale at 18 sales. The major drop in March 2025 sales was caused by increased tariff concerns leading to a major drop in stock prices, which are the main source of cash for high-end deals in Greenwich. As a result, most buyers under contract delayed their March closings so the value of their stock holdings would have time to recover.
In April, stock prices recovered and sales more than doubled from 19 sales in March to 40 sales in April and surging to 59 sales in May. With stock prices up, buyers were rushing to close in April and May, before the stock market dropped again. These quicker contract closing meant that the number of contracts shrank, leading to our third worst June for overall sales. Of course, if you just look at the first half total sales number, all the ups and downs cancelled each other out and you missed all the drama of month-to-month sales.
Market still very tight
You would think that with contracts and sales down that we don’t have a very good market and in the main you’d be wrong. Of the 59 sales that we had in June, 41of them, or 71%, went for full list or over list price. The median days on market, i.e. from listing date to non-contingent date, was only 13 days. The median sale price to original list price (OLP) was 101% of the OLP.
With the average sales price up 21% from last year, and the number of sales up 3% our total dollar volume of sales went up by 20%. In the first half of 2024, we sold $805 million of houses; in the first half of 2025 our total sales volume was up $163 million to $968 million.
Greenwich market over $3 Million
The upper half of the market is doing well, as people are looking for a more stable investment. This makes the whole market look good, because our high-end is so high it drags up our median and average sales prices and our total sales volume, by much more than the 3% increase in overall sales might indicate.
Very little inventory under $6.5 million
The lower half of our market is not doing nearly as well, mostly because of the lack of inventory. Under $1.5 million, we have the aforementioned 5 listing. From $1.5 million to $3 million we have 36 listings, which sounds much better, but we have plenty of demand for that inventory. The result is that we are looking at less than 3 months of supply when you add in the contracts for the whole market under $6.5 million, which I call a super-seller’s market.
For the upper half of the lower half of the market, the second quartile from $1.5 million to $3 million, we have sold 57 houses, and we have another 40 houses under contract, which has sucked up a lot of new inventory. Only over $6.5 million do we have enough inventory to meet the demand that we have. Even over $6.5 million, we only have 6.5 months of supply with contracts and 10.3 months of supply over $10 million. These numbers are still at much lower months of supply than we have seen in many years.
With inventory so low, it will take either a lot more inventory or a lot less demand to get to anything that looks like a balanced market.
We’ve seen some remarkable appreciation with the median sales price up 75% from 2019. A better indicator is probably price/sf, since it less affected by the sales price. Our price/s.f. is up 62% from 2019. Even this stat is distorted by lack of inventory in the lower price range and the high-end shifting median up for both stats.
One Big Beautiful Bill Should Help Greenwich
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, now enacted, continues those tax policies that make the biggest difference in Greenwich house prices. Hence, the biggest change wrought by the Big Beautiful Ast is no change. It just makes permanent, the tax bracket reductions in Trump’s 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. This removes the uncertainty as to what may happen to federal income tax rates. The BBA also did not change the carried interest taxation, meaning high-end houses still have a good solid funding source for many of our residents in private finance.
No major changes
The most discussed change is the increase of the State and Local Tax deduction from $10,000 to $40,000. In 2018, we had a big influx of buyers from Westchester County, whose SALT deductions were capped at $10,000 by the 2017 TJCA. When you look closer at the new SALT deduction, it is not going to apply to most Westchester home sellers. Hence the likelihood of a big jump in Greenwich sales is small.
Higher SALT deduction has limited usefulness
The standard deduction was increased from $16,000 to $32,000. As a result, many people will use that instead of itemizing deductions including the higher SALT deduction. The SALT deduction also phases out over $500,000 of modified adjusted gross income (MAGI). By the time you get to $600,000, the increased SALT deduction is gone and reduced to its base of $10,000. In money terms, the additional $30,000 in SALT deductions only saves a maximum of $10,500 ($30,000 SALT increase x 35% tax bracket). If you are in the highest 37% bracket, the SALT deduction is already gone, since it now starts at $751,600, well over the $600,000 SALT deduction phase out.
The only people who will benefit are those who itemize deductions and don’t have a MAGI over $600,000. We still have much lower property taxes in Greenwich and those lower Connecticut tax brackets, so we will continue to see downsizers move across the border. We will still get lots of Westchesterites downsizing as they have for decades, but the increased SALT deduction will only result in a few people moving to Connecticut
Higher estate tax exemption
A bigger impact will be from the increased estate tax and lifetime gift tax deduction increasing to to $30 million for couples and $15 million for singles. Moving to other states (Florida, for instance), for estate purposes will benefit a smaller group of estate beneficiaries.
All in all, the BBA is a plus for Greenwich and other Gold Coast, Connecticut towns, which is better than the problems it may create outside of real estate.
Mark Pruner is a Sales Executive with Compass Connecticut at 200 Greenwich Ave. He, along with Russ Pruner, is a founder of the Greenwich Streets Team at Compass. He can be reached at 203-817-2871 or mark.pruner@compass.com.
