Which of these numbers is the real median home price in Manchester-by-the-Sea this year: $1.3 million, $1.79 million, or $2.55 million?
All three come from housing data published in 2026. All three describe the same coastal town on Cape Ann. None of them is wrong.
Zillow's home value index put the average home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, listed on the site simply as Manchester, MA, at $1,370,567 as of July 31, 2026, up 4.9 percent over the prior year. Redfin, looking at the three months ending July 2026, reported a median sale price of $1.3 million, up 1.7 percent, on 20 homes sold that month. In that same window, Redfin's separate "average house price" figure for the town came in at $1.79 million, a 30.8 percent jump. Homes.com, tracking the trailing twelve months of closings, listed a median sale price of $1,300,000 and put the average asking price of the 22 homes currently on the market at $2,546,429.
Four sources, four numbers, one town, one year. The spread runs from $1.3 million to $2.55 million, a gap larger than what most homes across the rest of Essex County sell for outright.
This isn't a data error. It's what happens when a small number of transactions gets divided several different ways.
Median, average, listed, sold: four different questions
A median price is the middle closing when every sale in the window gets lined up in order. An average price is the total divided by the count, which means one high-end estate closing can pull the number up even if every other sale that quarter landed under $1 million. A listed price describes what sellers are asking, not what buyers actually paid. A trailing twelve month figure smooths out a slow month. A trailing three month figure doesn't.
Manchester-by-the-Sea sells somewhere between 20 and 57 homes a year depending on how the window is drawn. Newburyport, by comparison, closed 73 homes in August 2026 alone. When a market that small records even one waterfront estate sale or one distressed sale, the median jumps in a way it simply can't in a market moving three or four times as many homes.
| Source | Metric | Time window | Figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zillow | Average home value | As of July 31, 2026 | $1,370,567 |
| Redfin | Median sale price | 3 months ending July 2026 | $1,300,000 |
| Redfin | Average house price | Reported for the prior month | $1,790,000 |
| Homes.com | Median sale price | Trailing 12 months | $1,300,000 |
| Homes.com | Average list price | Active listings, 2026 | $2,546,429 |
Newburyport shows the same gap, just smaller
Newburyport's own numbers tell a similar story on a bigger scale. In June 2026, homes listed to buy in Newburyport carried a median asking price of $1.39 million, working out to $630 a square foot. Two months later, in August 2026, the homes that actually closed sold for a median of $1,225,000, across 73 transactions, up from 50 sales the year before.
That's a $165,000 gap between what sellers were asking in June and what buyers actually paid in August, inside the same site, using the same methodology. The gap exists in every market. It's proportionally smaller in Newburyport because 73 closings dilute the effect of any single outlier sale in a way that 20 closings in Manchester-by-the-Sea cannot.
The county number hides both stories
Zoom out further and the picture flattens even more. Zillow's Essex County index, updated August 31, 2026, put the average home value across the entire county at $722,540, up 2.1 percent over the year, with homes going to pending in around 11 days. That single figure blends waterfront Manchester-by-the-Sea, downtown Newburyport, and every other Essex County town from Lynn to Rockport into one blended number.
A buyer using that county figure to budget for a Manchester-by-the-Sea purchase would be underestimating by anywhere from roughly $650,000 to well over a million dollars, depending on which of that town's own numbers they compared it to. A buyer using the same county figure to budget for a lower-volume inland town could just as easily overestimate what the purchase actually requires.
Salisbury: the same distortion, working through supply instead of price
Not every Essex County town shows this swing through price. In Salisbury, the distortion runs through inventory. Listing volume in town has fallen by more than half since 2018, even as average price per square foot has climbed by roughly 90 percent over the same stretch. Read as a single snapshot, Salisbury still shows up as one of the more affordable coastal communities in the county. Read as a trend, it's a town where the pool of homes available to compare a listing against keeps shrinking every year, which means any single closing carries more weight than it would in a market with steadier turnover.
What this means when you're the one pricing a house
None of this makes the online estimate useless. It means a single number, whether it's a median, an average, or an automated home value estimate, is only as reliable as the sample behind it.
Before setting expectations on a home in a town with limited annual sales volume, ask for the actual list of closed comparables from the past six to twelve months. How many sales, what type of home, what condition, how each one compares to the specific property in question. In a town moving 50 or more homes a year, that list looks meaningfully different from a countywide average or a single site's headline median. In a town moving 20 to 30, that list might be the difference between pricing correctly and leaving real money on the table in either direction.
The same caution applies on the buying side. A pre-approval number and a target price built off a portal's median for a low-volume town can be off by six figures before an offer ever gets written. Pulling the actual closed comps first, before falling in love with a number pulled from a single site, saves that conversation for later in the process instead of at the negotiating table.
FAQ
How many closings does it take before a town's median price means something? There's no fixed threshold, but the fewer sales in the sample, the more a single high or low outlier can move the number. A town closing 50 or more homes a year will generally show a steadier median than one closing under 30, where a single estate sale can shift the figure by six figures in either direction.
Should sellers ignore online home value estimates? No, but treat them as a starting point rather than a number to defend. The estimate comes from a formula applied at scale. The actual comparable sales in the specific town, in the recent months, for the specific type of home, will tell you more about where a listing should land.
If you're trying to price a listing or size up an offer in an Essex County town where the headline number online doesn't match what you're seeing on the ground, that's a conversation worth having before you commit to a figure. Doug Danzey Group works these towns comp by comp, not portal by portal. Schedule a call.
