Seven units. No elevator building. No amenity floor. No pool deck with a waiting list. Forty Two Forest is a small townhouse condominium community in New Canaan, CT, and that is exactly the point. Buyers who end up here were not looking for a managed lifestyle complex. They were looking for a well-built, low-maintenance home in one of the most competitive real estate markets in Fairfield County, and they found one.
With only seven total units, availability at Forty Two Forest is rare. This is not a complex where a unit turns over every few months. The MLS history shows six sales since 2021, meaning the majority of owners bought in and stayed put. If you are waiting for a listing to appear before reaching out to an agent, you will likely miss it. The right move is to get on a watch list now and be ready to act when something comes to market.
Active listings at Forty Two Forest and comparable New Canaan townhouse condos are tracked on our New Canaan real estate page. For buyers specifically focused on the condo and townhouse segment, the New Canaan condos for sale page gives you a live view of what is currently active.
Nearby towns offer additional options for buyers who want to stay in the sub-$2.5M townhouse range. Darien and Wilton both have condo inventory that competes on price, though not on the same town positioning. New Canaan commands a premium for a reason, and Forty Two Forest sits near the top of that market.
The MLS record for Forty Two Forest is clean and consistent. Six confirmed sales. Closed prices ranged from $2,049,000 to $2,299,000. The median sale price across those six transactions was $2,200,000. Every unit that sold was 3,415 square feet, putting the median price per square foot at approximately $644.
That number holds up well against the broader New Canaan townhouse market. At $644 per square foot, buyers are paying for location, finish level, and the specific advantage of a 2020-built structure with modern mechanical systems. There is no deferred maintenance story here. No windows from 1987. No HVAC retrofit project waiting in the budget.
The HOA fee across most of the recorded sales was $750 per month. One unit showed $865 per month at time of sale. That variation likely reflects a period of assessment recalibration during the early years of the community. Buyers should request the current fee schedule and the most recent reserve study directly from the association before making an offer.
The property tax figures in the MLS data are inconsistent across units, with several showing $0 and one outlier that is clearly a data entry error. Use the mill rate of 18.160 applied to the assessed value of your specific unit to project actual tax liability. Do not rely on what is listed in MLS for this complex.
| Unit | Date | Price | Bed/Bath | SqFt | HOA/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 11/10/2023 | $2,050,000 | 3/4 | 3,415 | $865 |
| 1 | 07/23/2022 | $2,049,000 | 3/4 | 3,415 | $750 |
| 2 | 07/19/2022 | $2,200,000 | 3/4 | 3,415 | $750 |
| 4 | 07/18/2022 | $2,299,000 | 3/4 | 3,415 | $750 |
| 5 | 10/29/2021 | $2,260,000 | 3/4 | 3,415 | $750 |
| 3 | 09/15/2021 | $2,200,000 | 3/4 | 3,415 | $750 |
Forty Two Forest is a condominium community at 42 Forest Street in New Canaan, CT. The complex was built in 2020 and contains seven townhouse-style units. Each unit offers three to four bedrooms and four bathrooms, with consistent square footage of 3,415 across all units. The construction date matters: this is a modern build, not a renovation of an older structure. Buyers get current code compliance, contemporary insulation standards, and systems that are not approaching the end of their service life.
The townhouse format means no shared interior corridors, no elevator, and direct access at the unit level. It is a condominium in the legal and ownership sense, but it lives more like a single-family home than a traditional condo building. That distinction matters to the buyer profile this complex attracts, and it matters to resale. Buyers who want the independence of a house but not the full burden of exterior maintenance find this format makes sense.
New Canaan covers about 22 square miles and has roughly 21,000 residents. Forty Two Forest sits within that footprint at a price point that reflects the town’s standing in Fairfield County. This is not a starter condominium. It is a deliberate purchase by a buyer who has done the math and decided that New Canaan, at this size and this price, is the right trade.
Every unit at Forty Two Forest is 3,415 square feet across three to four bedrooms and four bathrooms. There is no studio tier, no one-bedroom entry point, and no penthouse premium. The floor plans are consistent, which makes comparable pricing straightforward: when a unit trades, it trades against five others with the same bones.
At 3,415 square feet, these units are large relative to most townhouse condominiums in Fairfield County. A buyer stepping down from a four-bedroom single-family home will not feel cramped here. The square footage supports a home office, a proper guest bedroom, and a primary suite that does not require creative interpretation. This is a grown-up floor plan.
The 2020 construction year means buyers should expect open kitchen layouts, hardwood flooring standards consistent with current luxury builds, and systems that reflect current energy codes. Specific finishes vary by unit and any subsequent owner upgrades, so a walkthrough matters more here than in a complex where units have been updated piecemeal over 30 years.
Forty Two Forest is a small community with standard community amenities. It is not a full-service complex with a concierge, fitness center, or rooftop terrace. What it offers is what the townhouse format itself provides: a well-maintained exterior, shared landscaping, and the operational simplicity of an HOA that is not managing a large amenity load.
The typical monthly HOA fee is $750. That figure covers common area maintenance, exterior upkeep, and the baseline operating costs of a seven-unit community. One sale in the MLS record showed $865 per month, suggesting that fees may have shifted, or that a short-term assessment was active at time of sale. Buyers must request the current fee schedule before going under contract. They should also ask for the reserve fund balance and the most recent reserve study. A seven-unit community with a healthy reserve is a stable community. A seven-unit community with an underfunded reserve is a future special assessment waiting to happen.
Rental rules, pet policies, and resale package requirements are governed by the association bylaws. Because Forty Two Forest is a small community, these rules may be more flexible than a large managed complex, or more rigid, depending on what the founding documents established in 2020. Do not assume. Request the full resale package, including the bylaws, declaration of covenants, current budget, reserve study, and any pending litigation or known assessments. In Connecticut, the seller is required to provide this disclosure package. Read it before you commit.
Pet rules and rental restrictions have material impact on resale. If the bylaws limit rentals, the pool of future buyers who need rental flexibility is narrowed. If pets above a certain weight are restricted, that eliminates a meaningful portion of the buyer population. Know the rules before you fall in love with the unit.
The buyer profile at Forty Two Forest is specific. This is not a first-time condo buyer. This is not someone trading down reluctantly. The person who buys here has made a deliberate choice: New Canaan, 3,400 square feet, a price just above $2M, no lawn to manage, no roof to replace on their own dime.
In practice, that usually means one of two types of buyer. The first is the empty-nester who has raised children in a larger New Canaan single-family home and is rightsizing without leaving town. They know the school district – New Canaan Public Schools and New Canaan High School are not factors for them anymore, but proximity to the town they built their life in still matters. The second is the couple relocating to New Canaan who does not want the maintenance exposure of a large single-family home but wants the square footage and the address.
Both buyer types are drawn to the same set of facts: 2020 construction, consistent floor plan, seven-unit community, walking or easy driving distance to everything New Canaan offers at Irwin Park and the downtown core. The appeal is legibility. You know exactly what you are buying and what it will cost to own it.
New Canaan does not have a deep condo inventory. It is a town built around single-family homes on land, and the condominium stock reflects that: a handful of smaller communities, most of them older, none of them particularly large. Forty Two Forest stands out on two dimensions: construction year and unit size.
A 2020 build in a condo market that is otherwise populated with properties from the 1980s and 1990s is a real differentiator. Buyers who have toured older New Canaan condo units and encountered dated kitchens, tired mechanical systems, and incremental renovations will immediately register the difference when they walk through a Forty Two Forest unit. The finishes are current. The systems have not been patched and re-patched over 35 years. That has value, and the sales record reflects it: the median transaction price of $2,200,000 is not an accident.
On size, 3,415 square feet puts Forty Two Forest in a tier above most New Canaan condo alternatives. Buyers who need that square footage and want a condo structure do not have many options. That supply constraint is part of what has kept prices firm here. For context on how the broader New Canaan market is pricing at the moment, the New Canaan community page tracks current inventory and recent sale trends across property types.
Buyers comparing New Canaan to neighboring towns should note that comparable properties in New Canaan consistently sell for more than equivalent product in Wilton. The towns share a border and a general character, but New Canaan has been gradually growing more compact and walkable over the decades, which supports pricing at the margin. Wilton offers a different value proposition. New Canaan commands the premium. Whether that premium is worth it depends on what the buyer actually needs from their town.
Buying in a seven-unit community requires a different due diligence approach than buying in a 200-unit building. In a large complex, the reserve fund absorbs individual quirks. In a community this small, every unit owner has an outsized share of the collective financial exposure. A single deferred maintenance item, a roof replacement, a repaving project, can translate directly into a meaningful per-unit assessment if the reserves are not adequate.
Before submitting an offer, request the full resale package. Review the reserve study with a specific question in mind: is the fund funded at the level the study recommends? If it is underfunded, factor the gap into your offer. If it is well-funded, that is a genuine asset, not just a line item.
Sellers at Forty Two Forest have a strong story to tell. The consistent sale prices across six transactions indicate that buyers are not negotiating the community down. They are paying near ask because the product is differentiated and the supply is thin. A seller with a well-maintained unit, accurate pricing relative to recent comps, and a complete disclosure package should have a competitive process. The MLS data shows four sales in a six-month window in 2022, which suggests that when this community generates interest, it generates it fast.
Pricing a unit here requires knowing those six transactions cold. The spread from $2,049,000 to $2,299,000 is $250,000 across units of identical square footage. That spread came from timing, condition, finish upgrades, and negotiation. A seller who prices without understanding that spread is leaving money on the table or pricing themselves out of the market. Both outcomes are avoidable with the right preparation.
For buyers tracking the Fairfield County market broadly, supply has been consistently tight across the region. New Canaan has not been immune to that. External pressures, rate movements included, do not show up as sudden market breaks here. They show up as fewer transactions in a given year against an already constrained baseline. When something good comes to market at Forty Two Forest, it does not sit.
For additional market context on how New Canaan is trading relative to surrounding towns, the Greenwich real estate and Norwalk real estate pages provide reference points across the Fairfield County spectrum.
John Engel is a broker at Douglas Elliman in New Canaan. He has tracked this market through multiple cycles and knows the condo inventory in town as well as anyone working in it. If you are considering a purchase or sale at Forty Two Forest, the conversation starts with the six transactions on record, the current reserve status, and the specific details of whichever unit is in play.
There are no generic presentations here. No pitch deck about why New Canaan is a great place to live. If you are looking at Forty Two Forest, you already know what New Canaan is. The question is whether this specific unit, at this specific price, with this HOA structure, is the right move for you. That is the conversation worth having.
Reach out to The Engel Team directly to discuss current availability, recent comps, or a valuation of a unit you already own at Forty Two Forest.
© 2025 DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE. ALL MATERIAL PRESENTED HEREIN IS INTENDED FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY. WHILE THIS INFORMATION IS BELIEVED TO BE CORRECT, IT IS REPRESENTED SUBJECT TO ERRORS, OMISSIONS, CHANGES OR WITHDRAWAL WITHOUT NOTICE. ALL PROPERTY INFORMATION, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO SQUARE FOOTAGE, ROOM COUNT, NUMBER OF BEDROOMS AND THE SCHOOL DISTRICT IN PROPERTY LISTINGS SHOULD BE VERIFIED BY YOUR OWN ATTORNEY, ARCHITECT OR ZONING EXPERT. EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY. 
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