How Often Homes Sell Over Asking in Fairfield County

Every listing you scroll past carries one number set in a larger font than the rest, and the first thing most people do with it is guess how real it is. A buyer wants to know if that's what it will actually take to walk away with the set of keys, and a seller wants to know whether it is the number that shows up on their closing statement. The measure that speaks to the concerns of both sides at once is the sale-to-list price ratio, and it is one of the few figures in this business that is useful to look at regardless of which side of the transaction you find yourself on.

Being an active real estate agent in the market, I have a good sense of where I feel homes are selling relative to ask, but I wanted to see what the data actually showed, so I pulled every single-family home that closed across Greenwich, Darien, New Canaan, Westport, Wilton, Ridgefield, Fairfield, Stamford and Norwalk between September 2025 and August 2026. There were a total of 3,102 sales during that period, and for each one I compared the closing price to the asking price the home was carrying when it went under contract, then sorted the results by town and by price range.

Across all 3,102 sales, the median home closed at 102.6% of its asking price, meaning that $100 in asking price led to $102.60 in closed sales. 61.4% of sales closed above asking, 10.0% closed at exactly the asking price and 28.6% closed below it. That is the headline, and it is also the least useful version of the number if you are a buyer or seller, because the answer changes a great deal depending on the town you are in and the amount of money you are spending.

What Sale to List Price Measures, and What It Hides

The math behind it is simple. Take the price a home closed at, divide it by the price it was asking when it went under contract, and you get a percentage. Anything above 100% means the buyer paid more than the seller was asking and anything below means they paid less. Every figure below is a median, meaning the middle value, so a town at 104% had half of its sales close above that mark and half below.

Here is the part that can get messy. The comparison is to the final asking price, not to the price the home started at. A house that listed at $1,500,000 in March, sat unsold for weeks, reduced the listing price down to $1,295,000 in June and then sold at $1,295,000 in July lands at exactly 100% using this methodology, in the same column as a house that priced correctly on day one and sold at asking inside of a week. Those are not the same outcome for the seller, and this statistic on its own cannot tell them apart. What separates them is days on market, which is why I have carried that figure alongside every ratio below.

The Nine Towns, Ranked

Here is the full year by town, sorted by median sale-to-list price. Every figure covers single-family closings between September 2025 and August 2026.

Darien led at a median of 106.2% of the asking price across 212 sales, with 68.4% of those sales closing above asking, 8.0% at asking and 23.6% below.

Wilton came in at 105.1% across 220 sales, and it posted the highest share of any town closing above asking at 71.8%.

Stamford followed at 104.3% across 575 sales, with 67.3% closing above asking.

Norwalk was next at 102.7% across 510 sales, with 63.1% closing above asking.

Fairfield ran 102.2% across 589 sales, the largest transaction volume of any of the nine towns, with 62.1% closing above asking.

New Canaan landed at 102.1% across 217 sales, with 57.6% closing above asking and 33.6% closing below it, the third largest share of below-asking sales of the nine towns.

Ridgefield sat just behind at 102.0% across 241 sales, with 57.3% closing above asking.

Greenwich finished at 100.8% across 217 sales, with 53.9% closing above asking and 36.4% closing below it.

Westport closed the year at exactly 100.0% across 321 sales, the only one of the nine towns where the median sale closed at the asking price and not a dollar over, with 46.1% closing above asking and 39.9% closing below.

Greenwich figures here are from SmartMLS only and exclude Greenwich MLS listings, so Greenwich activity is somewhat understated.

That order is not a ranking of demand, and it is worth saying why before it gets read that way. Stamford and Norwalk sit near the top because roughly 90% of what they sold last year closed below $2 million, where the buyer pool is deepest and the relative inventory is thinnest. Greenwich and Westport sit at the bottom because they carry the largest shares of sales above $5 million of the nine towns, at 19.4% and 11.2% of their volume respectively, and the top of any market tends to negotiate prices down more than at other price points. Darien breaks the pattern, closing 43.9% of its sales above $3 million, a larger share than Westport did, and still led every town with its sale-to-list price ratio of 106.2%.

The days on market column is the one that repeats itself. In all nine towns the homes that closed above the asking price went under contract in roughly two weeks, between 9 and 14 days on market. All of the spread sits on the other side of the line: the homes that closed below asking took about a month and a half to get under contract, and in New Canaan and Greenwich they took the longest of the nine towns at 58 and 60 days on market.

Where Over Asking Is the Norm, and What It Costs

In eight of the nine towns, more than half of last year's single-family sales closed above the asking price, which makes an offer at asking the starting point in most cases. The premium on top is not a rounding error either. Across all nine towns, the sales that closed above asking did so by a median of 7.9% over the final asking price, which worked out to a median of $100,000 more than the seller was asking.

Darien carried the largest typical premium at 10.5% above asking among the sales that went over, followed by Wilton at 9.5% and New Canaan at 9.2%. Stamford ran 8.3% and Fairfield 7.4%. Those are medians among the over-asking sales only, so roughly half of the homes that sold above asking in Darien last year went for more than 10.5% over.

The other side of the same coin is the homes that sold under asking, and they gave back much less than the over-asking homes gained. The median under-asking sale across all nine towns closed 3.5% below the final asking price, a median of $50,000 off. That asymmetry is the real shape of the year. When a home in this area sells below its asking price it usually concedes a modest amount, however, if it sells above the price tends to go well over.

The Price Range Matters More Than the Town Does

Split the same 3,102 sales by what they sold for rather than by where they were and the pattern gets a lot sharper. These are the same price ranges I used when I looked at what each budget affords in these nine towns. Each line carries the same figures as the town list above.

Under $600,000. 173 sales, a median of 100.0% of the asking price, with 46.2% closing above asking.

$600,000 to $800,000. 466 sales, a median of 101.8%, with 62.0% closing above asking.

$800,000 to $1 million. 435 sales, a median of 103.5%, with 68.5% closing above asking.

$1 million to $1.25 million. 351 sales, a median of 107.3%, with 74.6% closing above asking. The most competitive price range in these nine towns by a clear margin.

$1.25 million to $1.5 million. 305 sales, a median of 104.6%, with 68.9% closing above asking.

$1.5 million to $2 million. 435 sales, a median of 103.8%, with 63.0% closing above asking.

$2 million to $3 million. 480 sales, a median of 102.1%, with 58.8% closing above asking.

$3 million to $5 million. 327 sales, a median of 100.7%, with 54.1% closing above asking.

$5 million and up. 130 sales, a median of 99.1%, with just 26.2% closing above asking and 53.1% closing below it.

Days on market moves in only one direction as the price goes up. In every price range below $5 million the homes that closed above asking went under contract in a median of 11 to 15 days on market. All of the wait sits on the other side of the line: the homes that closed below asking took a median of 36 days on market under $1 million, 53 days on market between $2 million and $3 million, and 56 days on market above $5 million.

So the market runs hottest between $800,000 and $1.5 million and then cools steadily the whole way up the ladder. Above $5 million it inverts entirely: the median sale closed below the asking price, and more than half of the sales in that range closed under it. This might sound counterintuitive next to the reputation those homes have, but there are only so many buyers at that price point, and the asking price on a one of a kind property is really just an opinion until somebody agrees with it.

If you are shopping between $1 million and $1.25 million, you are in the single most contested part of this market, where three out of every four homes that sold last year went for more than the seller was asking. Here is everything currently for sale in that range across the nine towns, which is the fastest way to see what that competition looks like today.

If You Are Selling, the Asking Price Is a Strategy and Not a Prediction

The most useful number here is not the ratio, it is the figure sitting next to it. Across all nine towns, the homes that sold above asking went under contract after a median of 12 days on market. The homes that sold below asking took a median of 44 days on market. That is more than three times as long, and in a few towns the gap is even wider. In Greenwich the over-asking sales took a median of 12 days on market compared to 60 days on market for the under-asking sales, and in New Canaan it was 10 days on market compared to 58.

Those two numbers are measuring the same thing from opposite directions. A home priced where the market already is collects its offers in the first two weeks while it is still the new listing buyers are seeing in their feeds, and competition among those offers is what carries it past the asking price. A home priced above the market sits through those two weeks, loses the attention that only a new listing gets, and then negotiates from a weaker position when the first serious offer finally shows up.

Which is why an asking price is better understood as a decision than as a forecast. You are not predicting what the house is worth, you are deciding how much competition you want in the first two weeks, and this data says that competition is worth more than the head start a slightly bigger number would give you. The homes that started high and came down are sitting inside that same 100% median, and on paper they look like they sold at ask, but it took a median of 44 days on market to get there and often required a price cut to do so.

If You Are Buying, Know Which Side of the Line You Stand

Read from the buyer's side, the same table says something more practical than telling you to bring your best offer. In the towns and price ranges where most sales close above asking, the asking price is closer to an entry fee than a purchase price, and it belongs in the budget that way. In the $1 million to $1.25 million range, where the over-asking sales ran a median of 11.2% above the asking price, a home listed at $1,100,000 is realistically closer to a $1,225,000 purchase.

Then there is the other end of the market, where the asking price works as a ceiling rather than a floor. Above $5 million, only 26.2% of last year's sales closed above asking, while 53.1% landed below it, with the under-asking sales closing a median of 4.3% under the final asking price. Westport, where the median sale for the entire year landed at exactly the asking price, and Darien, where the median sale closed 6.2% above it, sit at opposite ends of this table with only Norwalk between them, which is a good argument for looking hard at your own price range before you look at a town name.

Two limits worth stating plainly. This is a full year of closings and not a picture of what's for sale this week, and none of it accounts for condition, which is usually the biggest reason two houses on the same street sell at different percentages of their asking price.

If you're thinking about making a move this Fall, I'd be happy to have a quick conversation about where your asking price should land if you are selling, or what you should realistically plan to pay over it if you are buying in one of the ranges above. Either way, it is a much better conversation to have before the offer than after it!