Open a portal search for "Pelham, NY" at a $1.2 million budget and you'll get two very different kinds of houses back. One might be a Cape Cod on a quarter-acre lot a short walk from the Metro-North platform, close enough to hear the afternoon train roll through. The other might be a Tudor on a half-acre with a circular driveway, a mile from the same station, closer to the water than to the shops. Same price band, same zip code, same school district. Almost nothing else the same.
That's not a fluke of inventory. It's a structural fact about the Town of Pelham that most searches never surface: it isn't one town with one market. It's two independently governed villages sharing a border, a school district, and a mailing address, and pretending otherwise is how buyers end up comparing the wrong houses to each other.
One Zip Code, Two Governments
The Town of Pelham traces back to 1788, when it covered a much larger area including what's now Pelham Bay Park and City Island. It was reduced to its current footprint in 1895, and in the years around that boundary change, two separate villages incorporated inside it: Pelham Manor in 1891, and the Village of Pelham in 1896. Both still operate as fully independent municipalities today. Each has its own mayor, its own board of trustees, its own police department, and its own budget process. Pelham Manor even runs its own fire station on Post Road, separate from the Village of Pelham's emergency services downtown.
The one thing they share is the Pelham Union Free School District, with four elementary schools split evenly between the two villages, one middle school, and one high school. That shared district is part of why the two villages get lumped together so easily. But shared schools don't mean shared taxes. Each village sets its own levy every year. Pelham Manor's most recent tentative budget, covering the fiscal year that began June 1, 2025, proposed a real estate levy increase of 2.56 percent, which the village noted was its lowest increase since fiscal year 2020-21. The Village of Pelham sets its own number, on its own timeline, answerable to its own trustees. A buyer comparing two houses at the same price in the two villages isn't just comparing square footage. They're comparing two different tax jurisdictions that happen to share a zip code.
What Zillow's Own Numbers Reveal
Most of the market reporting on Pelham treats it as a single unit, because most data sources track by zip code or town name, and 10803 covers both villages at once. That's why the town-wide median everyone quotes tends to flatten a gap that's actually widening.
Zillow is one of the few sources that tracks the two villages separately, and as of its July 31, 2026 update, the numbers don't match. The average home value for the Village of Pelham stood at $1,446,244, up 12.2 percent over the prior year. Pelham Manor's average home value was $1,623,409, up 12.3 percent over the same period. That's a gap of roughly $177,000 between two villages inside the same town, growing at nearly identical rates but from very different starting points. If you're pricing a search off a single town-wide median, you're anchoring to a number that doesn't describe either village particularly well.
| Village of Pelham | Pelham Manor | |
|---|---|---|
| Character | Walkable downtown, smaller lots | Larger lots, deeper setbacks |
| Defining streets | Fifth Avenue, Wolf's Lane | The Esplanade, Shore Road |
| Housing era | Concentrated 1920s stock | Turn-of-the-century estates, later Colonial Revival |
| Municipal services | Own police, own village hall | Own police, own fire station on Post Road |
| Average home value (Zillow, updated 7/31/2026) | $1,446,244 | $1,623,409 |
The Neighborhoods Behind the Numbers
Inside each village, the split holds again at a finer grain. In the Village of Pelham, Chester Park sits north of the downtown core, built out mostly in the 1920s on lots under two-tenths of an acre, close enough that the Metro-North station is a one-block walk. Closer to the village center and toward its northern edge, Pelham Heights and Pelhamwood carry a different feel entirely: tree-lined streets, architect-designed Colonials and Tudors, some of them built by Frank J. Forster, whose residential work is a recognizable presence in Pelham Heights.
Cross into Pelham Manor and the streets that come up most often in listings are the Esplanade and Shore Road, both known for larger, older estate-style homes on generous lots, some dating to the early 1900s. Pelham Manor also borders Shore Park, a waterfront park open to residents, and sits adjacent to the Pelham Country Club. None of this is a matter of one village being "better." It's a matter of two very different physical products being sold under one town name, and a buyer who only searches "Pelham" without knowing which neighborhood they're looking at is going to see listings that don't line up the way portal filters imply they should.
A Market That's Tightening on Both Sides
The town-wide numbers, blended as they are, still tell you something important: there isn't much on the market in either village right now. A year-end 2025 report on the Pelham market found that single-family sales rose 20 percent year over year, from 81 homes in 2024 to 99 in 2025, but that total was still 30 percent below the 145 homes sold four years earlier. Supply has been shrinking even as demand hasn't.
That same report put the median price per square foot at $615 for 2025, up from $537 in 2024, a new record, alongside a median list-to-contract time of just 15 days and a sale-to-list ratio of 105 percent, meaning the typical home sold for 5 percent over its asking price. By the last week of January 2026, the report counted only six single-family homes on the market across the entire town, ranging from $1.2 million to $3.35 million.
More recent figures suggest the pace hasn't let up. As of March 2026, one widely used tracker put Pelham's median sale price at $1.5 million, up 38.3 percent year over year, with homes selling in a median of 20 days compared to 88 days the year before. Those numbers cover the whole town, both villages together, which is exactly the point: even a snapshot with numbers this dramatic still can't tell a buyer which village they're paying that premium in, or whether the premium is moving at the same speed in both.
What This Means at the Offer Table
If you're comparing houses in Pelham, the first question worth asking isn't the price per square foot. It's which village the listing sits in, because that answers several other questions at once: which tax roll the house is on, whether the lot size you're seeing is typical or unusually generous for its price point, and how far you'd actually be from the train platform on a weekday morning. A listing agent can tell you this in a sentence, but portal search filters generally can't, since they're built around the zip code, not the village line.
It's also worth asking how a specific block fits into its village's own supply picture. With six homes on the market across the whole town at the start of this year, a single new listing in Pelham Manor or in Pelham Heights can shift the local comparables more than a buyer used to a bigger market might expect. A house that looks overpriced against the town-wide median might be priced exactly right for its village and its street once you separate the two numbers Zillow already separates.
FAQ
Do the Village of Pelham and Pelham Manor share the same schools? Yes. Both villages are part of the Pelham Union Free School District, which includes four elementary schools split between the two villages, one middle school, and one high school, Pelham Memorial High School.
Do the two villages have different property tax rates? Yes. Each village sets its own budget and levy independently. Pelham Manor's most recent tentative budget, for the fiscal year beginning June 1, 2025, proposed a real estate levy increase of 2.56 percent. The Village of Pelham sets its levy through its own separate process.
How can I tell which village a listing is actually in? The zip code, 10803, covers both villages, so it won't tell you. Street name is the more reliable signal. Addresses on the Esplanade or Shore Road are in Pelham Manor. Addresses in Chester Park, Pelham Heights, or Pelhamwood are in the Village of Pelham. When in doubt, ask the listing agent to confirm the village and its current tax rate before you get attached to a number.
If you're weighing a move into Pelham and want help sorting the two villages by what actually matters to your budget and your commute, Martha Rubio can walk you through both markets side by side. Schedule a complimentary consultation to start with the comparison that actually applies to you.
