Air Conditioning or Not: The $830,000 Question in Westport

I want to tell you about two Westport houses. Not real ones, just the two shapes the sold data is drawing right now, over and over.

House one has air conditioning. House two doesn't. That's it. That's the whole difference I'm putting in front of you today, because the numbers behind it stopped me when I pulled them.

Homes with air conditioning in Westport sold for a median of $2,620,000. Homes without it sold for a median of $1,790,000. That's not a typo, and it's not a coincidence either. The sample behind it is solid: 87 sales with air conditioning, 28 without, and the gap held up under real statistical testing (p=0.003). This isn't noise.

Let me put these two houses side by side, on the things a buyer actually weighs.

Price: air conditioning wins, and it isn't close. $2,620,000 versus $1,790,000.

Sample size: strong on both sides. 87 sales gave us the air-conditioned figure, 28 gave us the other. Neither number is a guess.

Speed to sell: I checked, and it isn't there. The days-on-market comparison between the two groups didn't hold up statistically, so I won't pretend I can tell you air conditioning gets a house sold faster. I can only tell you what it sells for.

So here's where I land, and it depends entirely on who you are.

If you're selling a home without air conditioning, this is worth knowing before you price it, not after an offer comes in lower than you hoped. I'm not saying add central air and expect to pocket the difference dollar for dollar. The data doesn't support that kind of math, and I won't invent it. What I am saying is that buyers in this market are clearly sorting themselves by this one feature, and pricing conversations should start with that in mind.

If you're a buyer who doesn't care about air conditioning, or you're planning to add it yourself, the homes without it may be where your negotiating room actually is.

Zoom out for a second, because the air conditioning story isn't happening in isolation. Across Westport as a whole, the median sold price this period was $2,450,000, up from $2,099,000 the same period a year earlier. Days on market came down too, at a median of 71 days this period compared with 82 days a year earlier. The whole market moved, and the air conditioning gap sits right inside that bigger shift.

One more comparison, while I have your attention: pools showed an even wider split, $3,450,000 with one versus $1,875,000 without, also statistically solid. I'm not making that the headline today, but it tells me buyers here are paying up for comfort features generally, not just one of them.

What I'm watching next: whether that air conditioning gap holds steady as more sales come in, or whether it was this particular batch of 115 homes doing something unusual. Sale-to-list came in at 100.9% territory-wide this period, and I'll be watching if that number and this gap start moving together.

If you're weighing a listing in the next few months and want to talk through where your home sits on this, I'm an easy call away.

Merry