Can a Handful of Sales Describe the Southampton Market? Reading Few Sales and a Jump in Price Per Square Foot

What can a median of nine sales tell an owner?

Very little, and Redfin's page shows why. It says that 9 homes sold in May this year, up from 7 last year. It also says the change is up 31.8%, though 9 against 7 is an increase of 28.6%. The two figures are not the same, and the likely reason is that the percentage compares three-month counts and the sentence compares single months. The page does not say.

With nine sales, a single house of $10 million or a single cottage of $900,000 moves the median by a large amount. The median sale price of $2,398,565 is the price of the fifth home in a list of nine. It could be anywhere in a wide range depending on which homes happened to close that month.

The days on market show the same noise. The median wait fell from 187 days to 62, a drop of 125 days. A wait of 187 days means that the homes that closed a year ago had been listed for more than six months. A wait of 62 days means that this year's closings were faster, or that the slow homes did not close at all. With nine homes, the page cannot tell which.

And the price per square foot more than doubled. If the median price fell 15.8% and the price per foot rose 110.9%, the typical home that sold would have had about 40% of the floor area of last year's typical sale, since 0.842 divided by 2.109 is 0.40. That is an illustration of arithmetic and not a fact about any house, and it is almost certainly an effect of tiny numbers. A seller who sees a doubling in the price per foot should not conclude that homes doubled in value.

Sources: Redfin and Realtor.com pages as cited. The 28.6% and 40% figures are this brief's arithmetic and illustrations. The explanation of the discrepancy is this brief's reasoning and not a statement of the page. Commercial content; not independently verified.

Why is the price per square foot $937 higher on one page?

Redfin shows about $2,060 per square foot and Realtor.com shows $1,123. The gap is $937, which is more than eight tenths of the lower figure. Redfin's change is a rise of 110.9% and Realtor.com's is a rise of 3.50%. One page has the price per foot doubling, and the other has it about level.

Part of the answer is that Redfin's figure is for sales and Realtor.com's is for listings, and the sales are only nine in a month. The other part is that a price per foot depends on which homes are counted. Large estates on large lots sell for less per foot than small homes in the best locations, and a month in which a few small, costly homes closed would produce a very high figure.

The Realtor.com figure rests on more homes, since it is a listing figure for 241 active listings, and it is the steadier of the two. Even so, it is a figure for asking prices, and homes sold for 6.41% below their asks on that page.

For an owner, a price per foot is the least reliable number on either page. It is useful for comparing two houses of the same kind next to each other. As a market indicator for a place with so few sales, it should be set aside.

Sources: Redfin and Realtor.com pages as cited. The $937 figure and the eight tenths are this brief's arithmetic. The explanation is this brief's reasoning and not a statement of either page. Commercial content; not independently verified.

Is Southampton somewhat competitive, cool or a buyer's market?

Redfin says somewhat competitive. Realtor.com says cool, because homes sold in a median of 93 days, and a buyer's market for August 2026, which it defines as a place where the supply of homes is greater than the demand. Those are different readings of one place.

Redfin's own panels disagree with each other. In one, the average home sells for about 5% below its list price and goes pending in around 71 days, with the hottest homes about 1% below in around 47 days. In another, the average sells for about 4% above list in around 52 days, with the hottest about 9% above in around 17. In a third, which the page calls not very competitive and which covers 12 months, the average sells for about 3% below in around 108 days, with multiple offers rare.

The page does not label which panel is Southampton and which are nearby places, in the text that I could read, so I do not attribute them. What the three show is a range from selling above the ask in 17 days to selling below it in 108.

On the numbers that both pages share, the picture is closer to Realtor.com's. Redfin's sale-to-list ratio is 94.4% and Realtor.com's is 94%, so the typical home sells for about 6% under its ask. That is a larger discount than in the four markets read just before this one, and it is a buyer's market by any plain meaning of the words.

Sources: Redfin and Realtor.com pages as cited. The reading of the panels is this brief's reasoning. Commercial content; not independently verified.

What does a gap of $1,052,500 between asking and selling mean?

Realtor.com shows a median listing price of $3,540,000 and a median sold price of $2,487,500. The gap is $1,052,500, or 29.7% of the asking figure. The sold median is up 47.41% over three years and the listing median is up 2.74%, so over three years the sale price has risen far more than the ask.

The wide gap between the medians does not mean that homes sell for 30% under their asks. The ratio on both pages says about 6%. The medians describe different groups of homes. The listings include the most expensive estates, which are asked at large sums and sell rarely. The sales include the more modest homes that close often.

This gap is a feature of a market with a long upper tail. A few listings at very large prices pull up the asking median, and the sales are concentrated lower. The pages do not show the distribution, and I do not claim it.

For a seller, the point is that the median asking price is a poor guide. A home at $3 million is not competing with the median ask of $3.54 million. It competes with homes of its own kind, and those are not on either page.

Sources: Realtor.com and Redfin pages as cited. The $1,052,500 and 29.7% figures are this brief's arithmetic. The explanation is this brief's reasoning and not a statement of either page. Commercial content; not independently verified.

Why do waits run from 30 to 114 days within one page?

The Realtor.com table of median days on market lists eight areas. Downtown Riverhead is at 30 days, Knollwood at 35, Mastic Park at 38, Northville at 67, North Fork at 72, Tuckahoe at 74, The Hamptons at 101 and Remsenburg - Speonk at 114. The slowest is 3.8 times the fastest.

The table includes areas such as Downtown Riverhead and Mastic Park, which suggests that the page's Southampton covers a wider area than the village itself. That matters for an owner, because the neighborhood figures are for places that may not resemble the owner's street.

The Hamptons area, the one most like what people mean by Southampton, has 231 homes for sale, down 13.19% on the year, a median listing price of $2,890,000, 597 rentals and a median wait of 101 days, up 42.25%. The wait for the Hamptons is above the 93 days for the city, and it has risen by about two fifths in a year.

The slowest area on the table, Remsenburg - Speonk, shows 114 days, up 56.96%. The fastest, Downtown Riverhead, shows 30 days, down 53.79%. An owner in the first area has a wait close to four months and an owner in the second a wait of one month. A figure for the whole page describes neither.

Sources: Realtor.com page as cited. The 3.8 figure and the two fifths are this brief's arithmetic. The inference about the page's area is this brief's reasoning from the area names. Commercial content; not independently verified.

What does a rent of $52,535 a month mean?

Realtor.com shows a median rent of $52,535 a month, up 7.21% on the year, for 801 rentals, up 7.31%. The Census shows median gross rent in the postal area of $2,148 a month. The Realtor.com figure is about 24 times the Census figure.

The two cannot be describing the same thing. The Census figure covers households that rent their homes through the year, 880 of them in the postal area, 15.1% of the occupied homes. The Realtor.com figure is for homes listed for rent, and in a resort area many of those listings are likely to be seasonal rentals priced for a summer or a part of one. The page does not say so, and I offer it as a hypothesis and not a finding.

Whatever the cause, the figure is not a guide to what a year-round tenant pays, and it is not a guide to what a house is worth. An owner who divides a seasonal rent by twelve, or a summer rent by the weeks of the summer, learns little about a yield without knowing how many weeks a home is let.

What the pages do show is that rentals are a large part of the market. There are 801 rental listings against 241 homes for sale, a ratio of 3.3 to 1, and the count of rentals is up 32.95% over three years. For an owner who does not wish to sell at a price that is below the ask, renting is an option, and one that the market supports in season.

Sources: Realtor.com and U.S. Census Bureau as cited. The 24 and 3.3 figures are this brief's arithmetic. The explanation of the rent figure is a hypothesis of this brief and not a finding of the pages. Commercial content; not independently verified.

Why does the Census count 44.9 percent of homes as vacant?

The Census profile covers the postal area that includes Southampton. It counts 15,312 people and 10,584 housing units, of which 5,831 are occupied and 4,753 vacant, a vacancy rate of 44.9%. That is about four vacant homes for every five occupied ones.

The table I used does not say why homes are vacant. The Census counts homes held for occasional or seasonal use as vacant, and in a place known for second homes that is a likely part of the answer. The table does not break it out, so I do not claim it. It does say that for many homes here, the owner is not a year-round resident.

Owners estimate the median home at $1,326,600, with a margin of error of $283,104, or 21.3%. That is $1,071,965 below Redfin's median sale price, which is 44.7% of the Redfin figure, and the margin of error does not close the gap. Owners of second homes may not be the survey's respondents in the same way as year-round residents, and the homes that sell are likely to be larger and better placed than the typical owned home. The pages do not say.

The homes are older than in most of this series. The median year built is 1988. A total of 4,084 homes, 38.6%, were built before 1980, and 972 of them, 9.2%, were built before 1940. The largest group, 2,034 homes (19.2%), dates from the 1990s, followed by 1,608 (15.2%) from the 2000s and 1,471 (13.9%) from the 1980s.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau as cited. The $1,071,965 and 44.7% figures are this brief's arithmetic. The Census table used does not give the reasons for vacancy. Census figures cover the postal area, not the village.

What does the New York series add?

The Realtor.com series for the New York-Newark-Jersey City area is for a very large region, and Southampton is a small part of it, so it shows direction only. Its median days on market was 68 in February, 52 in March, 41 in April, 42 in May and 47 in June. The wait fell by 27 days from winter to April and then crept up.

Active listings in the area (Realtor.com, active listings) rose from 29,871 in March to 37,898 in July, an increase of 27%. New listings (Realtor.com, new listings) rose from 10,414 in February to 22,704 in June, a factor of 2.2. Listings with a price reduction (Realtor.com, price reduced listings) rose from 4,524 in March to 7,150 in July, an increase of 58%.

The area median listing price (Realtor.com, median listing price) went from $775,000 in May to $742,000 in September, a fall of 4.3%. The Southampton figure of $3,540,000 is 4.8 times the area figure, which tells an owner how far the market here sits from the region around it.

Much of the rise in listings is the spring build that happens every year, and the series is not adjusted for season. The count of cuts rising faster than the count of listings is the more telling feature. None of this fixes the price of one home, and the series makes no forecast. Readers comparing markets can also read the Dix Hills brief and the Westhampton Beach brief.

Sources: Realtor.com series on FRED as cited, for the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area. The 27 days, 27%, 2.2, 58%, 4.3% and 4.8 figures are this brief's arithmetic. Series are not seasonally adjusted. Commercial content; not independently verified.

What does a private sale change?

On a home that sells near $2.4 million, each 1% of the price is $23,986. That is arithmetic and not a claim about any commission or cost. It shows how quickly a percentage turns into dollars at this level, and why the amount an owner keeps, and not the headline price, is the figure to compare.

A private sale offers five things that a public listing cannot. There is privacy, because there are no showings and no neighbors talking about you selling. The closing date can be flexible, which gives you time to find a new home. There are no commission costs. There are no closing costs. And there are no inspections or repairs for the buyer to ask for.

Privacy matters more than usual in a place like this. Homes here are often held for decades and sold quietly, and an owner may not want a listing with photographs, a price and a count of days that grows each week. With waits of 93 days on one page and 101 days in the Hamptons area, a public listing can be a long public exposure. A private sale leaves no listing history.

A flexible date matters to owners who use a home through the summer. A buyer can agree to a closing in October, after the season, or in the spring before it. In a public sale the date is part of the negotiation among offers.

None of this means that a private offer will always beat the market. A rare home in a rare week can draw a large premium, and the Redfin panel that shows a sale 9% above the ask in 17 days is evidence of it. The question for an owner is whether the chance of that outcome is worth the wait, the showings, the inspection and the public listing.

Source: this brief's arithmetic and reasoning. The wait figures are from Realtor.com and Redfin as cited. The benefits are those offered by Maison Off-Market. Commercial content; not independently verified.

Methodology and limitations

Prices, price per square foot, days on market, sale-to-list ratio, listing counts, rentals and the neighborhood tables for Southampton come from two commercial pages: a national brokerage and a national listing site. They measure different things and were not independently verified. The brokerage page is headed as of June 2026 and describes the three months to May, and it rests on nine sales in the latest month.

Age, tenure, vacancy, income, rent and owner-estimated value come from the American Community Survey 2020-2024 five-year estimates for the postal-code area that includes Southampton. Shares are calculated from published counts, and owner-estimated value carries a margin of error of more than a fifth of the estimate.

Days on market, active and new listings, median listing price and price reduced counts are Realtor.com series published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area. They describe a very large region and not the village. The brief makes no forecast and values no home.

Conclusion

The Southampton record shows a sale median that rests on nine sales, a price per foot that doubled on one page and held level on another, a rent that cannot be a year-round rent, a Census vacancy rate of 44.9% and a gap of more than a million dollars between the median ask and the median sale.

It does not fix a price for any one home. The choice between a public listing and a private sale comes down to whether an owner would rather compete in that market or take privacy, a flexible closing date, no commission, no closing costs and no inspections or repairs. To see what a direct offer would look like for your home, use the contact form below or call 401-219-4207.