Fairfield County Market Report: August 2026

The August numbers are in. Across the nine towns I cover, Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, New Canaan, Westport, Fairfield, Norwalk, Wilton and Ridgefield, 346 single-family homes closed last month, along with 111 condominiums and co-ops.

The one number everyone asks about first is the one that barely moved. The median single family sale came in at $1,408,500, against $1,400,000 in August of last year. That is a difference of less than one percent, which in a market this size is basically no difference at all. What did change over the past year is how these homes sold, and that turns out to be the more interesting story.

August 2026 by the Numbers

Single-family sales, August 1 through 31, compared against the same month last year.

Closed sales: 346, down from 371 in August 2025, a decrease of 6.7%.

Median sale price: $1,408,500, up 0.6% from $1,400,000 a year earlier.

Price per square foot: $487 at the median, up 5.6% from $461 last August.

Days on market: a median of 20 days, compared to 15 a year ago.

Over asking: 68% of August's sales closed above their list price, up from 60% last August.

Supply: 488 single-family homes on the market as of September 10, roughly a month and a half of inventory at August's pace, with another 312 under contract.

Condominiums and co-ops: 111 closed at a median of $524,000, against 108 at $528,750 a year ago. Slightly more sales, essentially the same price.

More Competitive and Slower at the Same Time

We're used to seeing these two figures move in opposite directions. When more buyers are bidding a home above its asking price, homes tend to sell faster, not slower. In August both moved at once, and they did it across every price range.

Under $1,000,000, the share of sales closing above asking went from 59% last August to 70% this August, while the median time on market went from 14 days to 21. For homes selling between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000, the number going above ask went from 70% to 77%, and from 14 days on market to 19. For homes that sold between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000, the number that went for more than asking price went from 48% to 61%, and from 16 days on market, up to 20. Above $3,000,000, the share of homes going for more than ask jumped from 45% to 53%, days on market went from 16 days to 18.

Four price ranges, all of them more competitive than a year ago, all of them took longer to get under contract. The explanation is that this area really trades at two speeds, and the dividing line has nothing to do with price.

Of August's 346 sales, 236 sold above their asking price. Those homes took a median of 15 days. The other 110 sold at or below asking, and those took 38 days. That is the whole market in two sentences. A home either catches a bid in the first two weeks or it settles in for more than a month, and there is not much in between.

What Is Different at the Top

The high end of the market did behave differently in August, though not in the way people usually assume. Homes above $3,000,000 did not take longer to sell. At a median of 18 days they were actually the quickest of the four ranges.

What they did not do was attract competing offers. Only 53% of sales above $3,000,000 closed over asking, compared to 77% in the $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 range, and the typical $3M+ home closed at 100.4% of its list price, which is to say right at it. Homes that sold for between one and two million closed at 105.6% of list price.

This is reasonable for the month of August. The buyer for a three million dollar house has somewhere else to be in August, and so does the seller. Fewer of them are in town competing for the same listings. The houses still sell, they just sell to one buyer at the asking price rather than to one of three buyers competing to pay above it. August's largest sale fit the pattern exactly: a classic waterfront estate in Darien with just under 6,000 square feet of house sitting on two private acres in Tokeneke, closed at $8,850,000 after just eight days on the market.

Around the Nine Towns

August medians by town, with the number of sales for each. A single month in a single town is a small sample, so treat the smaller counts as a snapshot rather than a valuation.

Greenwich: $3,195,500 across 17 sales, a median of 16 days on market.

New Canaan: $3,162,500 across 34 sales, 15 days.

Darien: $2,995,000 across 31 sales, 11 days, the fastest of the 9 towns last month.

Westport: $2,660,000 across 34 sales, 20 days.

Wilton: $1,322,500 across 26 sales, 20 days.

Ridgefield: $1,300,000 across 35 sales, 32 days, the slowest of the nine.

Fairfield: $1,182,500 across 60 sales, 20 days.

Stamford: $1,100,000 across 67 sales, 20 days, the busiest town of the month.

Norwalk: $805,000 across 42 sales, 20 days.

If You Are Buying or Selling This Fall

If you are selling, the first two weeks are the whole game. Two out of every three sales in August closed above asking, and nearly all of those did it quickly. The homes that went past that window did not simply take longer, they ended up selling at or below what they asked for. Pricing to draw a crowd early is worth more than pricing for room to negotiate later.

If you are buying, the 38 day number is the one to watch. A listing that has been sitting for a month is a different conversation than one that came out on Thursday, and August produced a fair number of them. There were 488 homes on the market as of this week, which offers buyers real choice when compared to the standards of the last few years.

September and October are usually the busiest stretch of the Fall, and the 312 homes currently under contract will fill the closed column over the next two months. If you're thinking about a move before the holidays, I'd be happy to have a conversation about what your home would likely bring today and what's actually available in the towns you're considering!

A note on methodology: closing figures above come from SmartMLS records for the nine towns named at the top, exported September 10, 2026, and cover single-family homes unless stated otherwise. Condominium figures combine condominiums and co-ops. Active and under contract counts are as of September 10, 2026. Greenwich MLS listing activity is not included in these figures, which draw exclusively from SmartMLS, so Greenwich sales figures may be incomplete. These numbers describe the market as a whole and are not a valuation of any individual home. Matt Caiola is a licensed real estate agent in the state of Connecticut with Higgins Group Private Brokerage.