You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Greenwich real estate market was in trouble, if you only looked at our September 2025 sales. We had only 30 single family home sales this September. That is a 19% drop from September 2024 and a 48% drop from August this year. In fact, it is our second worst September this century. Only the Great Recession September of 2008 had lower sales with 26 sales, compared to this September’s 30 sales.
That certainly seems pretty bad and in some ways it is. We are not selling much, but once again it’s due to lack of inventory, not lack of demand. We started the month with only 96 listings. Once again, an all-time low for that week’s inventory. Our 96 listings were the end point of a 3-month slide in inventory, which is normal in the third quarter. Inventory additions slow down after May. What wasn’t normal was just how low the numbers were.
When inventory gets so compressed, standard rules start to break down like in the heart of a neutron star. Effects that normally aren’t such big factors become magnified, when much of the rest of the market is stripped away. One of these factors is the number of listings that had been on the market for long periods of time. Normally, these slower movers are masked by a constant flow of new inventory.
In August that didn’t happen. We didn’t have enough new inventory come on, and stay on the market, to mask the number of listing queens that were hanging out there on the market. By the beginning of September, half of the market was listing queens. The falling leaves of September brought hope of rising fall inventory. That’s just what happened in this fall market, just like every other fall market. Inventory went up, but then the circling vultures got it. (All references to vultures and listing queens are for dramatic purposes only.)
We started this September with only 96 listings. This is only 16% of the 594 listings that we had at the beginning of September 2019. Put another way, we had 6.25 listings in 2019 for every one listing we had the beginning of the last month. In September, all those sellers (and their agents) who had been waiting for our Greenwich residents and New Yorkers to return and fill up those empty parking spaces on Greenwich Avenue, finally listed their houses as the fall market began after Labor Day.
From 96 listings at the beginning of September, we went up to 108 listings the first week, then 122 listings, and by the third week of September, we were up to 131 listings. A remarkable increase of 36% in inventory in just three weeks (but remember that neutron star and different rules at very low inventory).
This increase of 35 listings is actually about what we saw in 2019 in that fall market, but back then that increase was only a 4% increase in inventory. Still inventory was up this September and that should be celebrated; unfortunately, not for long. By the fourth week of September, buyers had swooped in and much of that new inventory under contract. The result was that inventory started dropping again as more houses went to contract than came on the market. As of the beginning of October, inventory has slipped back to only 118 single family home listings leaving only 22 new listings still on the market.
The really remarkable thing can be seen when you look at what did sell in September. Of our 30 sales, half were blue moons, listings that came on and went to contract within the same month. (This actually means that the inventory is not quite as bad as it looks, as these intra-months listing/sales were never counted in inventory.) Bottom line, there are a lot of hungry buyers out there with cash that have lost out on prior offers and are looking to buy.
You can really see this when you look at months of supply in all but one price range. Overall, we have 2.7 months of supply, meaning months of supply really should be measured in weeks for the market under $6.5 million. The one exception to that is the price range from $600 – 800K, where we have 9 months of supply, the same amount of MoS that we have over $10 million.
Once again, we are in neutron star rules where things are so compressed that normal rules break down. This year we have only sold 3 houses from $600 – 800K due to minuscule inventory. For a few days here in the fall market we have 3 listings in that price range. Two of them have been on for less than 6 days and both of them are likely to go to contract in the next 6 days. When they do, that price range will be back to 3 months of supply where the rest of the market is.
From $800K to $6.5 million, we have had, and continue to have, a super-seller’s market with less than 3 months of supply. Given where the fall market supply is going, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be getting better for a while. Our sales year-to-date are down under $4 million dollars due to lack of inventory. Over $4 million our sales are doing remarkably well, since we have more inventory. Over $10 million our sales are doing incredibly well.
Over $10 million we have 9 months of supply. This seems like a lot compared to 2.7 months of supply, but it is the lowest number that I know of for this price range (at least without going back and opening 180 monthly reports over the last 15 years to see if any month was lower.) The other remarkable thing is that months-of-supply at the ultra-high-end are likely to get even better. When you throw in our 13 contract over $10 million waiting to close, we only have 7 months of supply, also unheard of.
Where we have inventory, we have sales. If you can list this month rather than wait for next year’s spring market, I’d give it serious thought. We do have more listings coming, we are working on three right now and I know other agents are too. Our market can handle a lot more listings let’s hope for more late fall market listings.
