Mark Pruner | January 21, 2025
When you look at Greenwich sales by neighborhood, you see some distinct differences. In 2024, most neighborhoods saw higher sales prices and lower inventory as demand exceeded inventory by a wide margin. This doesn’t appear to be the case in the Parkway districts and Julian Curtis districts, both of which saw big drops in their average sales prices in 2024. Look closer and both areas look pretty hot.
(First the standard disclaimer. I’m using the school district boundaries, because they are more useful than Greenwich’s 12 voting districts, which can ramble all over the place. I also prefer looking at sales by school districts, rather than the 11 districts that the GMLS uses. The main reason is that a third of all the sales reported on our MLS are in the South Parkway section. This section runs from the Merritt Parkway to the Post Road and from the Stamford border in the east to the New York state line in the west. The school districts divide this huge area into three school districts, Parkway, North Street and Glenville, which means better neighborhood analysis. When discussing these districts, I’m dropping the “school” since I’m only interested in the borders rather than the elementary school that gives each district its name.)
The North Street district in central mid-country continues to be the district with the most sales. It had 105 sales this year, but this was down slightly from last year’s 108 sales. This is also the district with the biggest drop in inventory going from 19 listings at the end of 2023 to only 8 listings at end of 2024.
Those two stats are connected. Lower inventory has led to lower sales in the North Street district. It’s actually remarkable that it did as well as it did given the drop in inventory. Demand held up well, while supply dropped resulting in the average sales price going up. Last year the average sales price in the North Street district was up to $4.21 million, an increase of $594,336 over last year’s average sales price or 16.4% in one year.
The next highest district for sales is the Parkway district with 93 house sales. This district is basically backcountry plus much of the 2-acre zone just south of the Merritt Parkway. When looking at the map, you might say of course there would be a lot of sales there, the Parkway district is by far our largest district. It has over a third of our land mass. It is, however, our lowest density zone as houses sit on 4 acres and 2 acres. Backcountry has by far the highest number of listings with 33 houses on the market at year end. The next highest district is Julian Curtiss with only 13 listings.
You could also argue that the Parkway district is less pro-seller than other areas as it has our lowest sales price to original list price ratio. The average house in the Parkway district sells for 96.5% of its original list price. Also, the average sales price/s.f. is only $680/s.f., which is exceeded by most of the districts further south. A major factor as to why the Parkway district has a middle of the road price/s.f. is that most of those houses have a lot of s.f. Additional square feet, particularly in older homes and home styles that are less favored by today’s younger buyers sell for less per square foot. (As discussed in more detail below.)
You can look at highest price two ways; the house that sold for the most money and the district that has the highest average price. In 2024, the house that sold for the highest price on the Greenwich Multiple Listing Service was 21 Vista Drive that sold for $31.5 million. This was formerly Ivanka Trump’s house, and it had been on and off the market for several years. When the house sold, it was not actively listed. As a sign of how much appreciation we are seeing, 21 Vista Drive was lasted in July of 2023 for $29.9 million and didn’t sell. The rising market and very low inventory resulted in a sales price that was more than the $29.9M that it was listed for in 2023.
That sale and five more sale over $10 million meant that the Julian Curtiss district had both the highest sales and the highest average sales price at $4.91 million. Averages can be deceptive. The Julian Curtiss District had 47 sales. As mentioned, 6 of these sales were for were in our gated waterfront communities and went for over $10 million. The district also had 12 sales under $2 million. The median for all sales in this district was $3.28 million, well below the $4.91 million average sales price.
The next highest average sales price was in the Parkway district $4.34 million. These were the only two districts with average sales prices over $4 million. The Parkway district also had by far the largest average house size of 6,400 s.f. This compares to the Julian Curtiss district where the average house size was only 4,356 s.f.
You might think that the Julian Curtis district with the highest priced house and the highest average price for house would also have the highest price/s.f. and you’d almost be right. People love waterfront houses and are willing to pay a premium for them to the tune of $1,021/s.f. For those houses not on the water in the Julian Curtiss district, which is most of them, people also really like living close to Greenwich Avenue with its shops and restaurants.
However, it turns out that Old Greenwich has the highest price/s.f. at $1,040/sf. In OG, you get a fair amount of waterfront, but you also get the village of Old Greenwich and two great parks in Greenwich Point and Binney Park.
It was a great place for Russ and me to grow up and it is arguably the hottest place on the east coast for successful young families. In Old Greenwich, the average sales price to original list price is 103.6%, also the highest in https://greenwichstreets.com/neighborhoods/greenwich. Median days on market is only 13 days to contract and many of the houses don’t make it to market as there are many private sales, two of which were by our Greenwich Streets Team. (Stay tuned for the report on the private sales market next month.)
So where can you find the most affordable houses? The short answer is not anywhere in Greenwich. Right now, we have no single-family homes listed for less than $1 million. Last year we had 30 sales under $1 million, but this was out of 500 sales or only 6% of our sales. All but 8 of those 30 sales were in the New Lebanon, Hamilton Avenue and Glenville districts.
Our most affordable houses are in the southeast corner in the New Lebanon and Hamilton districts, but in reality, it is only the New Lebanon district, where we had 17 sales under $1 million compared to only 4 sales in the Hamilton Avenue district. We did have 57 sales in the Glenville district, but the lowest priced sale was for $750,000 and only 10 Glenville houses sold for less than $1 million.
It’s great that we are seeing house prices rise for our long-term homeowners. Lots of people have lots of equity in their houses. Even people who only bought in the last 5 years have seen major appreciation. In 2019, our median sales price was $1.87 million, by 2024, the median price had risen to $2.88 million. This is a 54.4% increase in 5 years. One of the great things I’ve always liked about Greenwich is the diversity of people that live here. It’s just an interesting place to live, but arguably, it’s getting a little less interesting as fewer and fewer people of all types are able to afford to buy a house here.
In coming weeks, I’ll write about how we can keep Greenwich interesting with a diversity of housing and prices. If you have any thoughts, feel free to send them along.
Mark Pruner, along with his brother Russ Pruner, are the founders of the Greenwich Streets Team at Compass Real Estate. He can be reached at 203-817-2871 or [email protected].
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