April 2026 Greenwich Market Report

In the famous opening scene of the movie Jaws, Chrissie Watkins goes for a late-night swim in the dark waters of Nantucket. She is only in the water for a short period of time, before she is chomped by the shark. Only a few know that Chief Brody’s police report indicates that Chrissie is from Greenwich, CT. This is what the Greenwich real estate market is like.

Except in Greenwich real estate, Chrissie is represented by our inventory, and the shark is represented by our contracts. For most of January and February, our inventory stayed above our contracts. Then in the third week of March, contracts surged and they ate up our inventory, taking it under. In early April, Chrissie fought back and was above water for couple of weeks as our inventory rose sharply.  Then along came the shark (in this strained analysis represented by buyers) and took our inventory under again, where it stands now.

We have only 90 single-family home listings and 107 contracts. This is startling; we have more contracts than we have listings. This has only happened once before in Greenwich real estate, and that was in the third week of December last year. Normally, our inventory exceeds our contracts by hundreds of listings. Half of those sharks that took our inventory under were from Greenwich. 

Back when I was growing up, almost 2/3rds of Greenwich buyers were already Greenwich residents when they bought. (That was back in the 1970’s. You’ll have to figure my age out yourself, but the decade is a hint.) The reason that Greenwich residents were often Greenwich buyers was due to the effect of compound appreciation. Houses appreciated every year, sometimes by double digits. This meant with only 20% down, you had tripled your equity in 6 years or so. Now that the family had 3 growing kids, everyone wanted more room, and you moved up. Six years later, you could do it again.

We are seeing the effect of compound appreciation again. In December of 2019, our median price/sf was $503. By April 2026, our median price/sf had grown to $896/sf or a 78% increase. People who bought in Greenwich in 2019, and there were only 526 of them, did very well. 

Our first-time homebuyers who invested then did well too. In 2019, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the year at 28,538; this week it was up to 48,861, or a 71% increase. Those buyers got appreciations and a place to live. 

Homeowners in neighboring towns did well, and many of them have elected to move up to Greenwich. So, when that listing came along, the sharks, lots of whom were from Greenwich, took it down quickly.

In Greenwich, the sharks take a little longer than the sharks in Nantucket before taking down a listing. Our median days on market so far this year is 24 days. To show you how the warm weather is bringing out the buyers, our median days on market for just the month of April 2026 was only 13 days. In 2025, our DOM was 30 days for the first four months of 2025 and 18 days on market for just April 2025. Clearly, 2025 was a tough time for an inexperienced buyer, and 2026 has been tougher.

A drop of only 5 or 6 days on market might not seem like much, but on a percentage basis, it is a lot. It’s effectively, getting to a non-contingent contract a week faster this year than last year.

Another way to look at the market is to compare contingent contracts to non-contingent contracts. At the end of April, we had 107 contracts, but only 15 of those 107 contracts were contingent contracts, i.e., lots of all-cash deals. It’s not quite as bad as it seems, as several non-contingent contracts had started out as contingent before the contingencies were removed. 

Of our 107 contracts, 33 of them were contingent at some point. Then again, that doesn’t mean that 31% of our 107 contracts had mortgage contingencies. Many of these contingent contracts were for non-mortgage reasons, a zoning issue, a structural inspection, radon testing, etc. Bottom line, if you want to compete in this market, cash is king. 

Another way to look at how tight the market is is to look at our sales price to original list price ratio. In April 2026, houses sold for 101% of their original list price. In most cases, that means an all-cash deal. It also means that most of those houses that sold for list or over list had multiple offers. Of our 36 sales in April 22 or 61% went for full list or over list. 

You can also look at the areas where contracts and April sales are down over last year to see how strong the market is. Normally, sales dropping indicates a market weakness, but not when you have record-low inventory. The number of contracts are down from $800,000 to $5 million. Our April sales are down from $1 million to $6.5 million. This is because inventory is very, very low from $1 million to $6.5 million. 

Under $1 million, sales aren’t down because we had no inventory last year under $1 million, and it’s the same this year. If you are looking for a single-family home in Greenwich under $1 million in Greenwich, I have 2 houses I can show you. For the year to date, we have sold 4 houses under $1 million. I do have 18 condos and co-ops that we can sell you under $1 million. Actually, it’s only 14 condos, as 4 of the “condos” are actually boat slips on the Mianus River. All of these “condos” are on a flat rectangular lot with excellent water views.  Unfortunately, you can’t live on a boat in Greenwich.