Week 128: The May Divergence. John Engel’s Real Estate Column for the New Canaan Sentinel

We looked at the May market reports for 12 towns. Low inventory is not the same as a hot market. A town can have two months of supply and still have sellers cutting prices, homes sitting, and buyers walking. May showed exactly that split across Fairfield County. 

The Hotness Index scores each market on four components against absolute baselines — not against each other. A score above 5 is a seller’s market. Below 5 is a buyer’s market. Scarcity is a function of months of inventory and the baseline is 6 months. Price is price appreciation over a baseline of 3%. Over Ask measures how aggressively buyers are bidding, using 90% of list price as the baseline for a balanced market and 110% as the ceiling for maximum competition. Velocity is sales volume compared with one year ago. 

 

8.2 Weston: Hot across the board

Inventory fell 33.3% to 34 homes. Months supply dropped to 3.2, down 30.4% year over year. Price per square foot rose 17.7% to $465. Buyers paid 107.7% of list. Closed sales jumped 66.7% year over year to 10. Every component pointed the same direction. Weston is a small market, but this is not a thin-data fluke — supply is genuinely tight, prices are genuinely rising, and transactions are accelerating.

 

7.5 Rowayton: Extreme scarcity, extreme competition

Ten homes for sale, down 37.5% year over year. Five closed sales at 122% of list price — the highest sale-to-list ratio in this study. Median price hit $2.6 million, up 43.6%. Price per square foot: $1,070. Days on market: seven. Five transactions is a thin read and the score carries low confidence. But 22% over asking in seven days is not noise.

 

7.3 Ridgefield: Price leading, velocity following

Median sale price up 44.9% year over year to $1.3 million. Price per square foot up 9.6% to $411. Buyers paid 104.5% of list. Days on market: 14. Closed sales fell 4.3% to 22 and pending sales fell 12.5% to 28, which is why Velocity drags the score. But when price per foot is up nearly 10% and buyers are still paying over ask, the underlying demand is real.

 

7.0 Westport: Appreciation leader

Price per square foot rose 20.1% year over year to $723 — the strongest gain among the larger towns. Median price up 9.3% to $2.35 million. Pending sales hit 47, the highest of any town in this study. Buyers paid 101.6% of list. Inventory rose to 96 homes and months supply sits at 3.2, which is why Scarcity scores lower here than in Darien. More supply, but buyers are absorbing it at rising prices.

 

6.8 Norwalk: Volume market with real momentum

Median price up 27.4% year over year to $767,500. Price per square foot up 6% to $421. Buyers paid 103.8% of list, up 2.7 points. Months supply tightened to 2.2, down 15.4%. Closed sales fell 27.9% to 62, which is the Velocity drag. But Norwalk is absorbing demand at a price point well below its Gold Coast neighbors, and three years of steady appreciation is showing up in the data.

 

6.7 Darien: Tightest supply, price reads mixed

Months supply: 1.8, the tightest of any town in this study. Buyers paid 110.8% of list — second only to Rowayton. Days on market: eight. Pending sales rose from 29 in April to 39 in May. Closings doubled month over month from 13 to 27. The score would be higher but price per square foot rose only 0.5% and median fell 3.8%, almost certainly reflecting a mix shift toward smaller homes rather than softening demand. The market behavior says hot. The price metrics say watch it.

 

6.7 Stamford: Steady, broad, appreciating

Median price up 12.1% to $785,000. Price per square foot up 10.4% to $404. Sale-to-list at 103.1%. Pending sales of 117 were nearly flat year over year. Closed sales fell 7.3% to 101 and months supply ticked up to 2.5, which keeps Velocity from scoring higher. Stamford has more inventory than anywhere else in the study at 231 homes, which creates real choice without undermining price momentum.

 

6.1 Fairfield: Strong price, softer pace

Median price up 23% year over year to $1.135 million. Price per square foot at $444, though down 1.6% year over year. Buyers paid 101.3% of list. Closed sales fell 19% to 47, pending sales fell 4.1% to 71, and inventory rose to 157 homes. Months supply is 2.9. The appreciation story is real. The transaction pace is not confirming it at the same level.

 

5.8 Easton: Prices hold, volume too thin to trust

Median price up 8.9% to $1.1 million. Buyers paid 102.5% of list. But six pending sales, seven closings, months supply at 3.9, and closed sales down 36.4% year over year. At this volume, a single transaction moves every metric. Score is directionally soft and low confidence.

 

5.6 Wilton: Pending surge, pricing power gone

Pending sales rose 44% year over year to 36 — the strongest velocity gain in the study. Inventory fell 28.6% to 45 homes. Months supply improved to 2.3. But price per square foot fell 4.6% to $396. Sale-to-list dropped from 109.5% in April to 100.5% in May. Closed sales fell 35% year over year to 13. Buyers are writing contracts, but not at the prices sellers got a year ago.

 

5.6 New Canaan: Seller’s market, softer month

Median price up 5.2% year over year to $2.675 million. Price per square foot up 4.1% to $586. Months supply at 2.4. All three say seller’s market. But closed sales fell 41.7% year over year from 32 in April to 14 in May. Pending sales dropped from 36 to 29. Days on market jumped from 13 to 30. Sale-to-list slipped from 102.9% to 99.3%. The score sits above 5 because the structure of the market is still tight and prices are still rising. May was a soft month, not a broken market.

 

5.0 Redding: Balanced, with selective demand

Months supply at 4.9 — approaching balanced territory. Median price fell 17.8% to $740,000. Price per square foot down 7% to $281. Pending sales down 7.7% to 12. Seven closings, flat year over year. The one number that stands out: sale-to-list of 105.4%, up 9.6 points. Homes that are priced correctly are still moving fast. The ones that are not are sitting.

 

Low inventory is not automatic leverage. Darien has 1.8 months of supply and buyers paying 110% of list. New Canaan has 2.4 months of supply and buyers paying 99%. Both are seller’s markets by any historical standard. But they are not the same market, and sellers who treat them as equivalent will find that out in the first two weeks.

Compare two houses, same price, one in Darien and the other in New Canaan. Same size (6,500 ft) and age of house (2002), each about 5 minutes from the train station, one on 5 acres can’t see its neighbors, the other on 2.7 acres can see all three. The Darien house sells first and closer to ask. Here is why the data supports that:

Darien buyers paid 110.8% of list in May. New Canaan buyers paid 99.3%. On a $4 million ask, that is an $88,000 swing in opposite directions — roughly a $450,000 gap in realized price between the two outcomes.

Darien had 8 days on market. New Canaan had 30.

But the more interesting conclusion is about what the market is pricing. The Darien house on 2.7 acres with neighbors visible is selling faster and for more money than the New Canaan house on 5 acres with total privacy. That means commute and location are currently worth more than land and privacy at the $4 million price point. Buyers at this level in May were paying for the train, not the acreage.

The second conclusion is about risk. If you are the seller of the New Canaan house, the Hotness Index score of 5.6 tells you the market will not bail out a mispriced listing. Darien at 6.7 is more forgiving. A motivated buyer in Darien is more likely to stretch. In New Canaan in May, they were not stretching; they were negotiating.

The third conclusion is the one that matters: Identical houses are not identical listings. The zip code is doing more work than the square footage right now.

John Engel is a broker on The Engel Team at Douglas Elliman in New Canaan. The data point that surprised him most this month was how much New Canaan and Wilton lagged the broader county despite tight supply. His read on why: substitution. When prices in one town get out of reach, buyers move to the next one, and the index measures exactly how far that substitution is traveling. He expects scores to soften by September as scarcity continues to depress velocity — fewer homes means fewer transactions, not more. On the buyer side, he is watching an influx from New York, Florida, Texas, and California — markets where Fairfield County prices look reasonable, not expensive. For New Canaan to score above 7, the answer is more inventory. More listings create more transactions, and velocity is what is holding the score down right now.

Data sourced from MLS statistics for May 2026. The Hotness Index uses absolute scoring thresholds, not relative rankings. Rowayton and Easton reflect small transaction volumes and carry lower confidence.