The line between a weekend getaway and a primary residence is blurring in Litchfield County, as a growing number of buyers seek homes that can serve as co-primary residences, according to a local real estate expert. This shift is reshaping the local housing market, with implications for property searches, town selection, and budgets.
Bill Melnick, a luxury real estate specialist with Elyse Harney Real Estate, observes this trend regularly. “When you start the search, buyers lay out their requirements and how they’re going to use the house,” he said. “You can tell pretty quickly who is buying a weekend place and who is buying a co-primary.” This distinction influences everything from which towns are considered to how much buyers are willing to spend.
The co-primary buyer is not looking for a simpler version of their city life, but a parallel one. This means full kitchens, finished bathrooms, reliable internet, and often two dedicated home office spaces. “Often you need two home offices if they’re a couple,” Melnick said. “Both owners may be on Zoom calls, even if they’re going to an office regularly.”
Buyers are creatively adapting properties to meet these needs. Guest rooms are being configured as swing spaces, with pullout sofas and desks, serving dual purposes without sacrificing function. Finished basements have become dedicated office floors, while accessory structures like barns, studios, and guest cottages are being outfitted as separate workspaces. The appeal of a detached office—a building you walk to and then leave at the end of the day—is real among buyers who have worked from dining room tables for years. Properties that cannot accommodate two working adults without significant construction are increasingly passed over, making the home office question a qualifying criterion rather than a nice-to-have.
Town selection changes dramatically for co-primary buyers. For weekend users, a twenty-minute drive to a grocery store is a minor inconvenience, but for those spending half the week in the county, it becomes a logistics problem. Co-primary buyers consistently prioritize proximity to everyday services like food stores, pharmacies, and restaurants. Proximity to the Wassaic Metro-North station is another significant variable. The station, just across the Connecticut border in New York State, is the last stop on the Harlem line, offering a roughly two-hour ride to Grand Central. For households where one partner commutes to the city several days a week, the drive to that station is a meaningful factor in town selection. “The closer to the train, the better,” Melnick said. “Theoretically you can be dropped at the station for a six or six-thirty train and be at your desk by eight-thirty or nine.” Towns within a comfortable drive of Wassaic carry a quiet premium that may not show up in comparable sales data but is consistent in buyer conversations.
Co-primary buyers also spend more, deliberately. The property must function at the level of a primary residence, raising the amenity threshold and lowering tolerance for renovation projects. These buyers want a move-in-ready home they can work from and enroll children in school without a construction project in the background. “They want to feel like they’re not sacrificing,” Melnick said. “Often it’s even more than what they have in the city, because you have the space.” At the top of this segment, buyers who have effectively made Litchfield County their primary base while maintaining a city apartment often trade up from an earlier county property. The first house was a weekend place; the second is the one they actually live in, and the budget reflects that.
This trend underscores a broader shift in how people view second homes—not as retreats but as integral parts of their lives. As remote work continues to evolve, the co-primary home is likely to remain a fixture in Litchfield County and beyond.
