My family and I moved to Fairfield in 2019, and I have spent every year since falling a little more in love with it. I am a real estate agent here now, but before that I was exactly where you might be: looking at this stretch of the Connecticut coast from the outside, trying to figure out whether it could be home. This is the honest version of what I wish someone had handed me back then.
And I will tell you up front what actually sold us: very few towns on the Gold Coast, even the famous ones, have neighborhoods where you can walk to both the town center and the beach. Most make you choose, near the shops and the train or near the water, rarely both. We landed in Fairfield Beach, one of the rare neighborhoods that gives you both on foot, and living with that every day has been quietly wonderful.
Where Fairfield sits
Fairfield is a coastal town on Long Island Sound, about 50 miles northeast of Manhattan, anchoring the southwestern corner of Connecticut that locals call the Gold Coast. It is large for a New England town, a little over 30 square miles, and it holds a lot of different lives at once: five public beaches, a walkable downtown, rolling historic countryside to the north, and a university in the middle of it all. That range is the first thing to understand about Fairfield. It is not one place, it is several, and which one fits you depends a great deal on the neighborhood. I walk through each one in my guide to Fairfield’s neighborhoods.
The neighborhoods of Fairfield
Greenfield Hill is the rolling, historic north of town: winding roads, stone walls, dogwood trees, and some of the larger lots you will find anywhere on the shoreline. The Dogwood Festival has been a spring tradition here since 1936. Outside of Sasco Hill, it is the part of Fairfield where you find true estates rather than just homes, with gardens that have had generations to perfect themselves. If you picture Connecticut as quiet lanes and old New England architecture, this is that picture.
Southport is a harbor village on the Westport border and a designated historic district, with Federal and Greek Revival homes, a working yacht club, a tiny walkable center, the Delamar hotel, and its own Metro-North station. It is about as quintessential a New England fishing village as you will find. The price points can be prohibitive, especially in the true historic center south of Route 1, but it is one of those places where, if the chance to call it home ever came along, I would take it in a heartbeat.
Stratfield sits in the northeast near the Merritt Parkway, known for its 1920s through 1940s colonials, sidewalks you can actually walk, and a strong neighborhood association. Owen Fish Park anchors it, and along Brooklawn Parkway there is a neat old canal left from the area’s mill past, a peaceful walk where you will always run into neighbors.
The University area wraps around the Fairfield University campus, so you get the grounds, the walking trails, the athletic fields, and the arts calendar that come with living next to a university. It is really its own enclave, with block parties and local events through the year. Parts of it are walkable to the center and the train, though it is a vast neighborhood, so that is worth confirming block by block.
Fairfield Beach is the waterfront, and the neighborhood my own family chose. What makes it rare: most Gold Coast shoreline neighborhoods force a choice between the beach or the town center, and Fairfield Beach gives you both on foot, the Sound and the marina on one side, downtown and the train on the other. Cape Cod, Craftsman, and Nantucket-style homes, and a summer that becomes a way of life.
Lake Hills grew out of the town’s reservoir project, so its homes ring the reservoirs with private water access through association beaches and waterfront lots. Worth knowing: that access is deeded to the homes, and the only way into the association is to buy a home that already carries it, with no separate membership from the outside. Some beaches even keep racks for kayaks, canoes, and paddleboards.
And the Center, the downtown around the train station and Post Road, gives you the restaurants, the shops, the farmers market, and the easy in-town living that a lot of people moving from a city are looking for.
The commute to New York City
This is usually the make-or-break question, so here is the straight version. Fairfield has three Metro-North stations on the New Haven Line: Fairfield Center, Fairfield Metro, and Southport. From Fairfield Center or Fairfield Metro, an express run to Grand Central is roughly 75 to 80 minutes. From Southport it is closer to 90. Trains run about every half hour through the peak, more often at rush. Three stations in one town gives you real flexibility, which is rarer than it sounds along this line. I go deeper in my guide to the Fairfield commute.
Property taxes and the 2025 revaluation
Connecticut taxes property in mills, which are thousandths of a dollar, applied to an assessed value equal to 70 percent of a home’s appraised value. Fairfield’s mill rate was 28.39 for the July 2025 tax year. For July 2026 it drops to 19.19, and that number deserves a word of caution, because it is not a tax cut. The town completed a state-required revaluation in 2025, so assessed values rose to reflect today’s market, and the mill rate came down to offset them. Whether any individual bill goes up, down, or sideways depends on how that specific home revalued relative to the rest of town, so a headline rate can be genuinely misleading in a revaluation year. I break the whole thing down in my guide to Fairfield property taxes.
What it costs to live here
Fairfield is not an inexpensive town, and it is better to go in clear-eyed. In round numbers, the median single-family home has recently sold a little above a million dollars, with real range on both sides depending on the neighborhood and how close you are to the water and the train. The two ongoing costs worth understanding early are property taxes and, if you commute, the train, and I have written plain-English guides to both: how property taxes work in Fairfield and the Metro-North commute to New York.
What it actually feels like to live here
The honest answer is that Fairfield is a four-season coastal town that takes its summers seriously. There are the five beaches, Lake Mohegan with its falls and trails inland, the quiet marsh walks at Ash Creek, and a downtown that fills up for the Memorial Day parade, the summer concert series, the fireworks at Jennings Beach, and the tree lighting in December. It is the kind of place where the calendar gives the year a rhythm, and where you start running into the same friendly faces at the same spots. That, more than any single statistic, is why my family stayed.
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Thinking about making the move?
I built this site because my family moved here in 2019, and I wish someone had laid all of this out for us back then. If Fairfield is on your list and you have questions about the town, whether it is the neighborhoods, the commute, or just what a regular Tuesday feels like here, I am always happy to help you get to know the place. You can reach me any time at alex@fairfieldbeachrealty.com.
Alex Kniffin, REALTOR, Century 21 AllPoints Realty
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