Mid-Country Ultra High-End Hot
- Overall sales exceed last year despite record low inventory every week this year
- Super-sellers’ market all the way up to $5 million
- Highest demand in years for houses over $6.5 million
- Sales over $10 million on pace to double previous record sales
Record Low Greenwich Inventory Continues
It seems that since Covid, most people want to stay in their houses in Greenwich, and in Fairfield County and in the Northeast. In Greenwich, our weekly 2025 inventory numbers have never exceeded the same week in 2024. Since peaking this year at the end of May with a paltry 151 single family homes, our inventory has fallen steadily, closing out the end of August with an astoundingly low 96 house listings.
Luckily, we are getting some new inventory this week, the official opening of our fall market. We have snuck back up to 107 listings. That is still only 16% of inventory we had at the beginning of September 2019.
House Sales are Higher
Even with the record low inventory this year, 30% lower than last year, our sales are actually 4% higher than last year. This is due mainly to the blue moon listings; my name for listings that come on and go to contract in same month. As a result, these listings are never counted in the month end inventory and actually make inventory look tighter than it is. Even so, inventory is very tight.
The other reason that sales are up this year over last year is that contracts are down from last year. Seeing our contracts drop in July and August is normal, but they plummeted this year starting in July and accelerating in August. We opened the month of July with 109 contracts and by the end of August this year we had only 48 contracts. The result was that sales went up to 362 sales through August 2025, which is 15 more sales this year.
In 2025, Greenwich sales have been particularly bumpy. This year, we were above 2024 sales level in February, May and July and below 2024 sales in March, June and August, though only by a smidgen in those last two months.
Greenwich Real Estate market is very tight at nearly all price ranges
With inventory at record lows every week this year and the stock market hitting several record highs, we have a super seller’s market all the way up to $6.5 million. All of these price ranges have less than 3 months of supply. Overall, we only have 2.1 months of supply or 9 weeks of supply, which means if nothing else came on, we’d be out of inventory in only 9 weeks.
Let’s hope that we get lots more inventory in the fall market, but so far it doesn’t look promising. We only have 4 Coming Soon listings. (You can market the listing, but you can’t show the house until a Coming Soon listing goes active.) We have also had only 8 new listings so far in Greenwich.
In our Compass office meeting this week we had some listings being prepped to go active on the GMLS. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anywhere near what we needed in the way of announcements by agents to get back to a more balanced market. Now this is Labor Day week, a four-day week, so the real story of the strength of the fall market will be told with next week’s listings.
The truly remarkable story is how well our high-end market is doing. We actually have some inventory over $5 million with 57 or our 101 listings being over $5 million, resulting in some amazing sales numbers, but more about that later.
When you look at the market overall, our inventory is down at every price, except for $5 – 6.5 million where we have 4 more listings than we had in August 2024. From $800K to $5M we are down by 22 listings this year in that price range leaving only 33 listings on the market.
If we don’t have inventory, we don’t have sales. Under $1 million we only have 5 sales, under $600K, we have no inventory and not a single sale this year. Compare this to the new record high for the median U.S. sale price of $443,000.
Where we have inventory above $5 million, we have 35 more sales. The result of inventory skewing to the high-end is that our total sales volume has jumped. At the end of August 2024, we had $1.23 billion in sales. This year that number jumped to $1.55 billion or 26% higher. That kind of jump makes the Tax Collector and the BET happy as property conveyance taxes are also up.
Our median price is also up. In August last year, our median sales price was $2.85 million. This year it is $3.25 million or a jump of 14% in sales price. Now for those of you who have been reading my column for a while, you know that much of this sales price increase is due to a shift in 2025 to more expensive houses selling.
If we take a look at two other metrics that are not as affected by shifts in what price ranges are selling the appreciation while still positive is not as dramatic. Our sales price to assessment ratio is up 6.3% and our price per square foot is up 5.5%. Nice appreciation, but not double digits.
We are continuing to see more than half of our houses selling for full list or over list. In August this year, 61.5% of our houses sold for full list or over list. Our highest percent over list was 5 Hunter Street that listed for $1.25 million and went to contract for $1.58 million or 26% over list in only 11 days.
August has continued a trend that we have seen for the last three years: low inventory, quick sales more often than not for over list price, but something really remarkable has happened this year. The more I looked at the more remarkable it was.
Market Over $5 million breaking records and over $10 million it’s 2x previous record
This year we are on a record pace to sell 38 houses over $10 million. Our previous record was 19 sales back in 2007, the height of the go-go digits’ decade. This year we have already broken that old record of 19 sales with 25 houses sold over $10 million in just 8 months.
If sales continue at the present rate, we will sell $597 million in sales over $10 million. This would break the old record of $314 million set in 2023 by $284 million. In the first 8 months of this year, we have already broken that 2023 full year record with $409 million of houses over $10 million.
At the same time that sales are setting records our inventory is down, meaning that months of supply for the over $10 million market is also way down to only 8 months of supply. Just last August, we had 21 months of supply of houses over $10 million. Back in 2017, we had more than 8 years of supply of these ultra-high-end houses.
As noted, our over $10 million inventory is down 4 listings to 25 beautiful houses this year a 14% drop. At the same our sales over $10 million are up 127% from 11 sales last year to 25 sales this year. Last year our over $10 million sales totaled $144 million. This year that number is $398 million in sales volume.
The other really remarkable thing is just how high these sales are. Last year, our two highest sales were just over $16 million. This year we have 7 sales over that number with the highest sale being $43.5 million followed by a $43 million listing that is under contract. Next, we have 3 sales at exactly $21 million (our Greenwich Streets Team had the first $21 million sale this year. 🙂
Our 25 publicly reported sales over $10 million are not the whole story. We have 4 additional private sales over $10 million. One of these sales is the second highest sale this year at $28 million. It is in mid-country Greenwich, where 14 of the public sales are located and three of the private sales. In addition, our sales over $5 million are doing remarkably well and should have a record year also, just not as big a percentage jump as the over $10 million market.
So, what’s driving all these sales? There seem to be four main factors:
- Stocks are at record highs and people have more money to spend
- Many people think stocks are over-priced and won’t stay at these record highs. Greenwich real estate looks like a good alternative investment
- Real estate has always been a good hedge inflation, while the volatility of the stock market and the economy are encouraging people to look for more stable investments
- Zohran Mamdani, NYC mayoral candidacy has a lot of high-net worth individuals concerned. We saw this when Bill de Blasio was elected.
As long as stocks stay up and people are concerned that they may be coming down, our high-end market should continue to do well.
Mark Pruner is a founder of the Greenwich Streets Team at Compass along with his brother Russ and Dena Zara. He can be reached at 203-817-2871 or mark.pruner@compass.com.
