Same County, Different Math: What Columbia County Home Prices Actually Buy
September 24, 2026
September 24, 2026
Drive from Old Chatham to New Lebanon and you will spend less than twenty minutes on the road. Compare what a home costs in each and the gap will make you think you crossed a state line. RealtyTrac's most recent read on the county puts Old Chatham's median listing price at roughly $1,049,500, while New Lebanon's average house price sits closer to $222,500. Same county. Same MLS system. Same rough band of small-town Hudson Valley charm on the surface. Nearly a five-to-one spread underneath.
That gap is the real story in Columbia County right now, and it does not stop at the county line. It repeats itself inside individual towns, inside the very concept of a "median price," and inside the different tools buyers use to research a market before they ever call an agent. If you are comparing Hudson to Chatham to Kinderhook and anchoring your expectations to a single number you saw on a portal, you are working with less information than you think.
Ask three different sources what a typical home costs in Columbia County right now and you will get three different answers, and none of them is wrong.
Zillow's home value index put the typical Columbia County home at $421,441, up 3.0 percent over the past year. RealtyTrac's rolling figure for the county landed at $495,000. Redfin's median sale price for homes that actually closed in December 2025 was $535,000, down 7.8 percent from the year before, even as the number of homes sold that month rose to 84 from 66 the prior December.
These numbers disagree because they are not measuring the same thing. Zillow's index is a model estimate across the entire housing stock, including homes that have not sold in years. RealtyTrac's figure is a rolling median built from active listings and recent transactions blended together. Redfin's number is a snapshot of one month's actual closings, which means a handful of high-end sales or a cluster of starter homes can swing it hard in either direction.
None of these tools is broken. They are answering different questions. The buyer's job, and the reason a local read matters more than a portal screenshot, is knowing which question you are actually asking when you compare towns.
The county-wide averages hide a housing market that behaves less like one region and more like five or six adjacent ones, each shaped by its own mix of water, sewer, school lines, and commuting distance.
| Town | The headline number | What's actually behind it |
|---|---|---|
| Old Chatham | Median listing around $1,049,500 | Rural estate character, larger lots, and a name that carries weight in the county's upper end |
| Chatham village | Village listings for historic-core homes typically run $350,000 to $650,000 | Compact Victorian and Greek Revival housing stock with municipal water and sewer, walkable to Main Street |
| New Lebanon | Average around $222,500 | The county's most accessible entry point, closer to the Massachusetts line and I-90 |
| Hudson | Median sale price around $580,000 over the three months ending June 2026 | Amtrak access, a dense arts and dining scene, and a per-square-foot premium tied to walkability |
| Kinderhook | Historic housing stock anchored by the Ichabod Crane Central School District | Rural beauty with a stronger institutional identity than its size suggests |
The pattern underneath this table is not random. It tracks almost exactly with three variables: distance from a walkable Main Street, whether a property sits on municipal water and sewer or on a private well and septic system, and how close a commute the property offers to New York City or Albany. Old Chatham and the countryside around it trade land and privacy at a premium. Hudson and Chatham village trade square footage for walkability and rail access. New Lebanon, further from both, remains the county's value play.
Chatham is the clearest example of why a single median can mislead you, because Chatham's own numbers do not agree with each other.
Redfin's city-level data for Chatham showed a median sale price of $308,832 as of June 2026, down 7.8 percent year over year. Meanwhile, the village's actual historic-core inventory, the Victorian and Greek Revival homes on Main Street and just off it, typically lists between $350,000 and $650,000, and the multi-family homes originally built for railroad workers run $350,000 to $550,000 as investment or owner-occupied rental properties.
That is not a contradiction so much as a symptom. Chatham does not sell many homes in a given month. When the pool of closings is small, one or two properties at either end of the price range can pull the reported median well below or above what a typical village listing actually costs. A buyer using a portal's monthly median to gauge whether a $450,000 asking price is fair could easily conclude the seller is overreaching, when the number they are comparing against was built from a handful of unrelated sales that happened to close together.
The friction goes beyond price. Chatham's village historic district requires design review board approval for exterior changes, including new windows, siding, or fencing, which is worth knowing before you fall for a fixer-upper and assume you can swap the windows next spring. Property taxes in Chatham run at an effective rate on the higher end for the county, which typically works out to an annual bill in the range of $5,500 to $7,500 on a median-priced home. And the school district a Chatham-addressed home falls into does not always match the mailing address. Some Chatham properties are actually zoned for Kinderhook's Ichabod Crane Central School District or for Ghent, which matters enormously if a specific school is part of the decision.
None of this shows up in a portal's median. It shows up in a title search, a survey, or a conversation with someone who works this market regularly.
Hudson tells a different version of the same story. Redfin listed Hudson's average sale price as up 100 percent year over year last month. That is not what home values are doing in Hudson. That is what a market with roughly a dozen monthly closings looks like when two or three high-value sales land in the same window and pull the average sharply upward.
The more durable Hudson number is the three-month trailing figure: a median sale price around $580,000 through June 2026, up 16.1 percent from the same period the year before, with price per square foot around $422, up 29.4 percent year over year. Homes were taking an average of 76 days to sell, compared to 51 days the year before, which tells you buyers are willing to pay more per square foot but are no longer racing each other to the closing table the way they were.
The commercial activity on the ground backs up the premium. Earlier this year, chef Hannah Wong and business partner Sarah Jane McLaughlin began turning the former Bar Bene space at 538 Warren Street into Haema, a Korean-fusion restaurant built on relationships Wong developed while serving as executive chef at The Aviary in nearby Kinderhook, as Chronogram Magazine reported. That kind of investment, an operator with a Michelin-recognized résumé choosing Warren Street for a permanent restaurant rather than another pop-up, is exactly the sort of signal that explains why Hudson commands a walkability premium that a spreadsheet alone will not capture.
Chatham's own restaurant scene has been busy too. The village's dining lineup includes Chatham Brewing on Main Street, Bimi's Canteen and Cheese Shop, and The People's Pub, with a new addition, Four Corners, slated to open in the historic three-story building that formerly housed Blue Plate. These are not incidental details. They are the reason a home two blocks from Main Street in Chatham or Hudson carries a different price than a comparable home ten minutes outside the village, even when the square footage and lot size look identical on paper.
Two practical mechanics are worth building into your timeline if you are actively comparing these towns.
New York has tightened septic system disclosure and inspection requirements for residential sales taking effect in 2025 and 2026. If you are buying or selling a property on a private well and septic system, which describes most of the county outside the village centers, confirm the current disclosure requirements with your attorney early, since it can add time to a closing that a village property on municipal water and sewer would not need.
The county-wide trend toward faster sales and higher monthly volume, even as prices cooled slightly by December 2025, suggests inventory is loosening enough to give buyers more room to negotiate than they had a year or two ago. That shift shows up differently depending on where you are looking. It shows up as buyers negotiating on price or repairs for anything short of turnkey. It shows up less in the county's tightest micro-markets, where a well-presented listing near a walkable center can still move quickly.
Why does the same town show different median prices on different websites? Each source measures something slightly different. An automated valuation model estimates value across the entire housing stock, a rolling median blends active listings with recent sales, and a monthly closed-sale median reflects only the handful of transactions that happened in that specific window. In a low-volume market, that last number can swing considerably from month to month.
Is New Lebanon actually the most affordable town in Columbia County? Based on the most recent countywide data, New Lebanon's average house price sits well below the county median, making it the most accessible entry point currently tracked, though individual listings vary and a specific property's condition and lot will move the number in either direction.
Does a Chatham mailing address guarantee Chatham schools? No. Some properties with a Chatham address are actually zoned for the Ichabod Crane Central School District or for Ghent. Confirm the specific school district assignment for any property before treating school access as settled.
If you are trying to compare towns across Columbia County and want a read that accounts for what a specific street, water system, or school line actually means for your budget, that is the conversation worth having before you write an offer. Berardi Realty works this market town by town, and a consultation with a free property valuation is a good place to start.
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