August 2026 Greenwich Market Report

Last month, I predicted that August sales were not going to be as good as July sales. Now this isn’t much of a prediction, as that is the norm in most years. June or July are our peak month for sales, with lower sales in the vacation month of August. I expected that because we had 74 sales in July and only had 70 contracts, that we wouldn’t be seeing sales grow in August this year.

What I didn’t expect was that actual August sales this year would be the lowest this century, with the exception of August 2009 in the heart of the Great Recession. Our sales this August were close to August 2009. In that recession August, we had only 36 sales. In August 2026, we had 37 sales, only one more than we had in August 2019. We also didn’t have any prior Augusts this century that were even close. No August sales in the 30’s, 40s, or even the low 50’s.

Prior to this August, our second lowest August for single family home sales in Greenwich, Connecticut, was in 2011, when we had 55 sales. This means that we broke the second lowest by 33%. For comparison purposes, our highest August sales were in Covid year 2020, when we had 108 single family home sales in Greenwich.

The issue in 2009 and 2011 was lack of demand. The issue this August is record low inventory with plenty of demand at every level. We started the month of September with only 75 listings. This is down from last August’s record low of 96 listings. On a percentage basis, we are down 22% from even that record low.

It makes you wonder if there is some base amount of inventory that we can’t go below, at least in August. We started 2026 with only 57 listings, so we are not close to that, but this is August, our slowest summer month, but it’s still a summer month. Over the last 10 years, we have averaged 72 sales in August, or almost twice what we sold this August.

Why is inventory so low?

So what is causing this exceptionally low inventory? The short answer is that it is really hard to know. What motivates (demotivates?) people to not put their houses on the market? Clearly, this is a post-Covid issue. We have never seen inventory levels like we have seen in the last 4 years. You have to go back to the end of 1991 for our previous all-time low of 291 listings in December 1991. In the Covid era, we dropped below that previous all-time low of 291 listings in July 2021 and have seen a steady drop ever since.

As you can see from the dark blue bars in the chart above, inventory is low in every price range. Below $800K, we have no inventory. Even above $10 million, we only have 18 listings, compared to 25 listings last August.

The continuing record-low inventory seems to be due to several factors, particularly in Greenwich:

1. Lots of homes are owned by two-income families. As a result, when a company offers an executive a transfer with a promotion and pay raise, the family has to decide whether it’s a net benefit to the family. This is particularly so if the spouse may not find as good a job in the new location as he or she has now. Many of our families are staying put, and companies are just transferring less people.
2. Greenwich homeowners used to downsize when they retired and were empty nesters.
   1. Many of these retirees are gridlocked. Our super-low inventory means that they have little to purchase; hence, they stay in their homes. The condo inventory is also very low. Right now, you have 31 “choices”. Five of those 31 listings are co-ops, leaving 26 condos; however, 4 of those “condos” are actually boat slips. (When I was growing up in Old Greenwich, there was a veteran who lived on a WWII PT boat anchored in Greenwich Cove. Unfortunately, our town regs prohibit full time boat residence. (Then again, would boat living be better than trailer parks that the state is pushing?)
   2. The other problem for families is that many retirees aren’t actually empty nesters. With the rise of the boomerang adult children, families still need those extra bedrooms. Housing has gotten so expensive that even many recent college and grad school graduates can’t afford to buy a house, or even rent in a good area.
3. Taxes, particularly federal taxes, are a big disincentive to sell.
   1. Under federal income tax law, the sale of a principal residence is treated as a capital gain. You have to pay federal taxes at the rate of 23.8% on the gain in a sale of a house in Greenwich. (20% capital gains tax and 3.8% Net Investment Tax, aka the Obama tax). The one exemption at the federal level is $250,000 per person or $500,000 per couple, if they have lived in the house for 2 of the previous 5 years.
   2. You will also have the Connecticut state capital gains tax at 6.99% if you are in the top Connecticut tax bracket. Connecticut, to its credit, does give an unlimited exemption if the house was the owner's principal residence for 5 of the previous 8 years and if the seller is over 65. You also have the state conveyance tax, which is 2.5% over $2.5 million. (Greenwich gets 0.25% of the 2.5%)
   3. So selling is expensive, but morbidly, you can save taxes if you actually die in your house. Your estate gets a bump up in basis and does not pay these capital gains taxes. The result is that we have a lot of elderly widows in houses that are expensive to maintain, but they want to save their children from these taxes.
   4. Second homes are also an issue in Greenwich. We have a lot of people from NYC and other places, both here and abroad, with second homes in Greenwich. For these homeowners, they don’t get the $500,000 federal couples exemption, nor any Connecticut exemption from taxes, so selling is even more expensive. Then again, they usually have a lot of appreciation. Overall, Greenwich has been a good investment this century.
   5. There are presently bills in Congress to raise this exemption, which hasn’t been increased since it was enacted in 1997. If you think this law needs an update, you can call Rep. Jim Himes and Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal. Between now and the election, this legislation just might pass. After the election, it is less likely to pass given the huge deficits we are running. If you bought even a modest Greenwich house more than 20 years ago, you will likely pay this tax.
4. Recently, you also have the high prices of Florida luxury houses and condos. In years past, many Greenwich people moved to Florida to retire. Prices were lower, and they could take part of their equity to buy a nice place and still have an ample nest egg. The problem is that even as many places in Florida have seen price drops after big run-ups, this has not been the case with the high-end market. That end of the market continues to appreciate, with high net-worth people from the U.S., Europe, and South America moving there. Higher prices there mean less movement from Greenwich. Also, the cost of living has risen in Miami, so that living expenses are higher in Miami than in NYC. I still have trouble with that, but a well-written article in the WSJ says it’s true. Miami is also the metropolitan area with the most days and highest temperature-humidity index. Phoenix has higher temperatures, but it’s still more comfortable than August in Miami, at least per ChatGPT. This has led to what my Carolina’s Compass colleagues call halfbacks. People from the Northeast retire and move to Florida, but can’t stand the heat and humidity. They move halfway back to the mountains of North Carolina and other cooler places.

I’m sure there are other factors. Please drop me a note if you have thoughts about why inventory refuses to rise.

The good news is that it will rise in September, as a bunch of other agents and I will be listing houses when the fall market starts after Labor Day.

August highlights

In Greenwich, two areas are doing better than last August. Our sales from $4-5 million are up this year. We also have seen a 95% jump in sales from $6.5 million to $10 million. Last year through August, we had sold 21 houses in this higher price range. This year we have sold 41 houses from $6.5 – 10 million. Part of this seems to be buyers dropping down from the over $10 million houses to the next bracket down.

For the rest of the market, you are looking at months of supply measured in weeks. The one exception to this is the over $10 million market, where we have 6.9 months of supply. Having said that, the ultra-high-end is normally closer to a year of supply, so it is tight. Our 21 sales over $10M have already exceeded our historical average of 14 sales over $10 million.

We also have over 5 months of supply from $800K to $1M, but that’s only because we briefly have 4 listings in that price range and only 5 sales so far this year. Really low inventory means 4 listings make a big difference.

Stay tuned, and lets hope for some big changes in the fall market.

Mark Pruner is a sales executive with Compass Connecticut. He is a co-founder of the Greenwich Streets Team with Russ Pruner, Dena Zarra, Tim Agro, and Felipe Dutra. He can be reached at 203-817-2871 or [email protected].