Port Jefferson's Median Home Price Is Telling You the Wrong Story

"The decision is disappointing." Ana Hozyainova, president of the Port Jefferson Civic Association, on the Village Board of Trustees' vote to rezone 450 Myrtle Avenue

That vote happened in November 2025, and it explains something buyers keep getting wrong about Port Jefferson. Trustees reclassified the long-vacant Maryhaven Center of Hope property from Professional Office to Moderate-Density Residence, clearing the way for a 77-unit condominium project. Village trustee Matthew Franco later said he hadn't even seen the resolution on that evening's agenda. Whatever you think of how it happened, what happened matters to anyone comparing Port Jefferson home prices against other North Shore villages this year: the number you're looking at on a listing search is a blend of two housing stocks that have almost nothing in common, and the blend is shifting fast.

What Actually Got Approved on Myrtle Avenue

Maryhaven, a school for children with developmental disabilities, closed in 2020 and sat empty long enough that St. Charles Hospital's president publicly flagged the building as a safety concern. Beechwood Homes, run by the father-son team of Steven and Michael Dubb, pitched a replacement: a condominium complex with a gatehouse and clubhouse, originally sized at 79 units. By the time trustees voted, the project had been trimmed to 77.

The approval came loaded with conditions, and the conditions tell you what kind of neighbor this project is meant to be. Beechwood has to restore and reuse the historic masonry pillars at the site entrance. The condominium association, not the village, will maintain a private drainage system built to handle a 100-year storm. New crosswalks and sidewalks have to match the village's existing walkability plan, and every design element needs architectural review before a construction permit gets issued. The village completed its environmental review and formally changed the zoning in November 2025, and the Zoning Board of Appeals approved the project's required variances in January 2026, according to the planning board's own meeting minutes. This isn't a proposal sitting in limbo. It's a project moving through approvals on schedule, month by month, right now.

Not everyone was pleased. Barbara Ransome, director of operations for the Greater Port Jefferson Chamber of Commerce, called ownership housing a better fit for the area than more rental units, arguing homeowners would generate steadier revenue for local businesses than transient renters. Hozyainova's Civic Association countered that the site should have gone through the village's comprehensive plan process first, not a standalone rezoning. Both sides agree on one thing: this changes what gets built, and sold, in Port Jefferson going forward.

It's Not the Only New Building Uptown

Myrtle Avenue is one piece of a redevelopment push the village has been running since 2016. A few blocks away, Conifer Realty secured $8.8 million in tax credit financing in March 2025 to build Port Jefferson Commons, a 53-unit workforce housing development sitting one block from the LIRR's Port Jefferson train station. Trustees have also discussed a follow-on Conifer project at the intersection of Main and Perry streets, informally nicknamed "Conifer II," as the next stretch of Upper Port to be redeveloped once the current wave of construction wraps up. The village's own planning board minutes from early 2026 show the office is still actively reviewing multiple multifamily applications in that same corridor, so the pipeline hasn't slowed down even as one project after another clears its approvals.

None of this is single-family housing. It's condos, workforce apartments, and mixed-use buildings clustered around the train station, a ten-minute ride from Stony Brook University and the hospital campuses that employ a large share of the people moving here. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should.

Two ZIP Codes, Two Very Different Growth Curves

Here's the part that should catch the attention of anyone shopping this market on price alone. Recent listing data puts Port Jefferson Village's median list price at $879,000 as of June 2026, working out to $360 per square foot, roughly flat and down about 1% from a year earlier, with homes spending a median of 30 days on market, a pace 26% faster than a year earlier. That's a real deceleration from the 18.5% year-over-year sale-price gain the Village was still posting as of December 2025. One block north and a few minutes' drive up the hill, the separate hamlet of Port Jefferson Station shows a median list price of $600,000 as of August 2026, at $341 per square foot, with a similar 31-day median and the same 26% year-over-year acceleration in pace, and no comparable slowdown in its trailing sale-price growth.

Sit with that second column for a second. Port Jefferson Station, the hamlet without the harbor, the ferry, the Village Center, or the historic downtown, has been compounding in value at more than double the rate of the postcard neighborhood next door. That's the wrong direction for a simple story about waterfront premiums.

Why the Overlooked Side Is Outrunning the Postcard Side

The most coherent explanation sitting in the public record is supply, not desirability. Port Jefferson Village is where the new construction is landing. Seventy-seven condos at the former Maryhaven site. Fifty-three units at Port Jefferson Commons. More coming at Main and Perry. Every one of those units gets counted in the Village's blended housing numbers alongside the fixed, slow-turning stock of shingle-style single-family homes near the harbor. New attached inventory entering a market tends to soften the pace at which the blended median can climb, even while the classic resale segment underneath it keeps tightening.

Port Jefferson Station has no comparable pipeline. Buyers who want the same LIRR line, the same commute to Stony Brook and the hospital corridor, and the same general area, but can't or won't pay Village prices for a shingle-style colonial, are landing there instead. With a resale-only supply that isn't being refreshed by new construction, that demand has nowhere to go but into price. The trailing sales data backs this up: Port Jefferson Station saw 11 homes sell in June 2025 against just 3 the year before, while days on market collapsed from 68 to 21 over the same stretch. That's a market getting squeezed from both directions at once, more buyers chasing fewer available homes.

What This Means If You're Comparing Port Jefferson to Somewhere Else

If you're using "the Port Jefferson median" as a stand-in for what a classic single-family home near the harbor costs, you're measuring the wrong thing. That number is being pulled by a growing pool of new condos and workforce units that share a mailing address with 19th-century shingle-style houses and nothing else. When you're pricing a listing, ask whether the comparable sales your agent is showing you are actual resale single-family stock or units from one of the newer buildings uptown. The two data sets shouldn't be averaged together when you're deciding what a specific house is worth.

If your budget doesn't stretch to Village prices, Port Jefferson Station deserves a serious look rather than a consolation-prize mindset. The appreciation data suggests waiting there isn't the safe, cheap alternative it might look like on a map. And if you already own a single-family home in the Village and you're wondering whether 77 new condos down the street will drag down your resale value, the honest answer is that condominiums and century-old detached homes rarely compete for the same buyer. What they will compete for is search traffic and attention on a listing site, which makes it more important than ever that your home's marketing makes clear what kind of property it actually is.

A Couple of Questions Worth Asking Before You Make an Offer

Will the Myrtle Avenue condos or Port Jefferson Commons lower home values for existing single-family houses nearby? Direct price competition is unlikely since the product types serve different buyers, but the added supply will shift what "the Port Jefferson median" reports going forward. Treat blended neighborhood statistics with caution and lean on resale-only comps for pricing decisions.

Is Port Jefferson Station actually a smart alternative to the Village, or just the cheaper option? Based on the pace and scale of recent price growth there, it looks less like a discount and more like a market that's catching up. If you're comparing the two, run the numbers on total cost including commute and lifestyle preferences rather than sticker price alone.

Zoning votes, financing packages, and unit counts change fast in this village, sometimes inside a single trustee meeting. If you want someone tracking that pipeline block by block so you're not pricing a home against the wrong comps, Conor Hertell can walk you through exactly what's happening in Port Jefferson right now. Buy or sell? Call Hertell today.