Why do people always want to live in Old Greenwich?
As usual, Old Greenwich is a neighborhood that has done well this year, just as it did last year, and pretty much every year in the past 20 year when compared to other parts of town. What is it about Old Greenwich that people find so attractive? I grew up in Old Greenwich and it has always been a little bit of Norman Rockwell, a good bit of international, and usually a lot of fun.
Every August, when I was in junior high, I would take over an Old Greenwich paper route from one of the hardworking Haggerty boys and get to see lots of interesting parts of OG. (The Haggertys were smart. They went to camp in Maine every August while I rode my bike delivering papers in 90-degree heat and hoping that the Good Humor truck was still parked on Shore Road for my very cold toasted almond bar. I had lots of interesting people on my route. There was the grandmother who always had cookies for me on Friday, collection day. Then there was the gorgeous waterfront house with the empty liquor bottles in foyer where a well know rock band was spending the summer. It was, and still is, a fun place to grow up.
Where and What is Old Greenwich?
For those who are reading this in California, Italy or Westchester. Old Greenwich is a village in the southeast corner of the Town of Greenwich. At the south end, it has Greenwich’s premier waterfront park, Greenwich Point. In the middle you have another great park donated to the town by the Binney family of Crayola Crayon fame.
Between the two parks you have the 2 block long downtown area of small shops that actually sell useful goods and services. CVS’s arrival, and grabbing up some prime parking spaces, is still controversial among many old timers.
The area between the village and the point is called “south of the village”. Then you have the Post Road, I-95 and Metro-North to take you back to OG when you are away. North of the Post Road, you have Havemeyer Park built after WWII for returning soldiers and sailors and their families. All the streets are named after WWII generals and admiral. Nicknamed Have-a-Baby Park during the post war baby boom, it is still living up to its name. North of Palmer Hill Road, you have Hillcrest Park, where my debutante ball date lived, before she started going out with Michael Bloomberg.
Old Greenwich has 4 different zones. Just north of Greenwich Point you have Lucas Point, which is an R-20 zone (20,000 sf lots often called the “half acre” zone though you only need 0.46 acres for a conforming lot.) All of the rest of the South of the Village area is an R-12 zone (12,000 sf, our “quarter acre” zone.) North of the Metro North station and continuing into Havemyer Park, you are in the R-7 zone of 7,500 s.f. and a little bit of R-12 just south of Palmer Hill Road. The Hillcrest Park area north of Palmer Hill Road is our only 1 acre, RA-1 zone in Old Greenwich.
In the main though, Old Greenwich is composed of an R-12 zone south of the Metro-North railroad tracks and an R-7 zone from there up to Palmer Hill. These two zones comprise 91% of the sales in Old Greenwich. At the south end of Old Greenwich, where Lucas Point is located, the small R-20 zone represents 4.5% of the sales in Old Greenwich. Hillcrest Park, where there is the RA-1 zone is only 4.1% of OG’s sales.
Interestingly, the average sales price of the half-acre, R-20, lot is about 50% higher than average price for the one-acre, RA-1 lot. This is because most of the R-20 sales in Lucas Point are direct waterfront properties fronting Long Island Sound and get a premium.
Inventory
For all the attention that Old Greenwich gets it does not have a lot of listings. It is even worse in 2024, we are down this year in inventory with only 13 listings in Old Greenwich. Given its desirability you need to come with money, the lowest priced listing at present is $1.15 million.
Sales
Also, because Old Greenwich doesn’t’ have a large zone on the water, it traditionally hasn’t had the highest sales prices in town. However, this year we have had 3 sales over $5 million, with the highest priced sale so far this year at $9.65 million, which was 103% of list price. (Russ and I also had a 4th OG private sale over $5 million, bring total OG high-end sales to 4.)
In 2024, we have had 13 public sales through the end of October and have another 15 contracts. The market continues hot with 5 of the 13 sales in April. Where you really see how hot this market is when you look at the months of supply. Most people consider less than 6 months of supply to be a seller’s market. We have 2.6 months of supply, when you include the contracts waiting to close or what I call a super-seller’s market.
With only 13 listings and 13 sales our months of supply look rather jagged, due to the law of small numbers. One more sale can bring the MoS way down. The most sales we have in any price range is only 3 sales. We have had 5 sales off-market. Of the off-market sales, 3 of the 5 were under $1.5 million, so our “low” end isn’t quite as tight as the charts show. At the high end, over $5 million, we have 3 listings and 3 sales plus one contract.
At the same time in one of the hottest markets and hottest neighborhoods, we had 4 listings expire unsold. We still have value buyers, as we have had all post-recession,. People don’t want to be seen as overpaying; however, we have lots of demand for the supply that we do have. As a result, all but 2 of our 13 sales have gone for full list or over list price.
The Future and the Past
After the Great Recession, Old Greenwich prices trended higher initially and then were essentially flat from 2014 to 2018. Even before Covid, OG prices started rising and took off this year. As you can tell, by the number of OG houses that were sold for over list, the demand is there, but so is a dearth of low-end houses and at least we have some listing at the high-end, both are pushing the average sales price dramatically higher.
We have very little inventory, and at least in OG, no signs of any strong uptick in inventory. As a result, you can expect months of supply to stay low. One caveat here is that the US is running huge deficits and presidents often use their first year in office to tighten the screws on the economy, but that is next year’s problem Our present higher interest rates are having no noticeable impact on sales, though they may be affecting the number of listings.
Stay tuned and count yourself lucky if you live in OG (or grew up there).
