Zillow adds Wilton to its million-dollar home club
Greenwich, Westport and a few other Connecticut towns have a new member in an exclusive club — municipalities where homes priced above $1 million are the norm.
In Zillow’s latest survey of locales where the median home is valued at $1 million or more, Wilton is the newest Connecticut entry. Home values there are up 9.4 percent from a year ago to just over $1.05 million in February, as computed by the online real estate company.
Greenwich residential values are up 6.4 percent to $1.97 million, tops in Connecticut and ranking the town No. 22 among Northeast states, but not cracking the top 100 nationally. Also in the million-dollar club are Darien, New Canaan and Weston.
Home sales in Wilton jumped more than 40 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the start of 2023, according to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties, with buyers paying 4.6 percent above final asking prices.
“There’s many instances where a home is on the market for just a day or two and people offer substantially more than the asking price,” said Toni Boucher, first selectman of Wilton. “It makes it harder for people who have been here a long time and see their property taxes go up, but they also have a great investment in their homes.”
Wilton remains a tight market, with Zillow posting just 25 listings as of Wednesday, the most expensive being a chateau-style home on Nod Hill Road priced at nearly $4 million with a view of a wooded pond. By
A new house takes shape in April 2024 on Sturges Hill Road in Wilton, Property values in Wilton are up nearly 10 percent over 12 months, according to Zillow, vaulting the town into the “million-dollar” club for median home values alongside Greenwich, Darien, New Canaan, Westport and Weston.
comparison, more than 75 properties in Greenwich are priced above $4 million at mid-week, with an Indian Field Road estate priced at $49.5 million as the most expensive in Connecticut.
Statewide, nearly 1,000 properties were being offered for $1 million or more as of Wednesday. They range from a West Elm Street condominium in Greenwich totaling less than 1,000 square feet of space, to a lakefront villa on Viewpoint Lane in Ellington totaling more than 10,000 square feet, priced at $2.8 million.
Fairfield County sales transactions rose in the first quarter for houses priced above $800,000 compared to the totals of a year earlier, according to William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty. New Haven County recorded increased sales priced at $1 million or more, with Middlesex and New London counties holding even and Litchfield County seeing a drop.
“The ongoing elevated buyer demand, while diminished from its pandemic era peaks due to factors from high mortgage rates to escalating home prices,
consistently exceeds the available supply,” stated William Pitt Sotheby’s CEO Paul Breunich, in an analysis accompanying the Stamford-based firm’s firstquarter report. “The imbalance between supply and demand has led to a very competitive buying environment that leaves sellers in a strong position to realize the greatest value for their homes.”
The highest median home values in the Northeast are in the village of Sagaponack in Southampton, N.Y., where home values rose slightly in the past year to $5.71 million. Leading the nation was Jupiter Island, Fla., where values dropped 6.2 percent to just under the $10 million threshold.
More towns could join the list with any drop in interest rates to make mortgages more affordable, according to Zillow analyst Anushna Prakash. Whether that will occur any time soon is an open question, given continuing strength in the economy that could prompt the Federal Reserve to leave higher interest rates in place longer than had been expected, in an effort to keep inflation in check.