About Live Love Work Connecticut

What this site is

Live Love Work Connecticut is a guide for people deciding where to live in Connecticut: people moving for a job, leaving New York City, relocating from another state or moving to a smaller home. It covers the questions that decide a move: how long the commute really is, what the property tax bill will be, how to research schools and what kind of housing each town has.

Live Love Work Connecticut is an information guide. It is not a Connecticut real estate brokerage, it does not represent buyers or sellers and it does not list, show, negotiate or sell property. If you ask for help, we introduce you to a licensed Connecticut real estate agent.

How the guides are researched

We start from primary sources wherever they exist. Train times are calculated from the MTA's published Metro-North schedule data. Property tax rates come from the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management's mill rate data. Tax rules come from the Department of Revenue Services and the General Assembly's Office of Legislative Research and home buying rules from the state agencies that administer them.

Some figures, such as typical home prices or rankings, come from other publications. Those are cited next to the figure with a link and they carry a To verify label until we have checked them against the original data. Anything we could not source is flagged with a yellow "to verify" label rather than estimated. We never publish invented numbers, reviews or testimonials.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure on this site has a named source next to it or a visible yellow "to verify" label. Here is how the main kinds of figures are produced, so you can judge them for yourself.

Train times. We take Metro-North's published schedule data and count direct trains to Grand Central that leave each station between 5:00 and 8:59 AM on a single reference weekday, currently Tuesday, October 13, 2026. For each station we report the fastest, median and slowest scheduled ride and the number of direct trains leaving between 6:00 and 8:59. Scheduled times are not the same as real-world times, which can be longer on bad days. The full table is on the commute times page.

Property tax. Mill rates come from the Office of Policy and Management's annual list. When we estimate a bill, we multiply the price by 70 percent, the share of market value Connecticut towns assess, then by the mill rate, then divide by 1,000. It is an estimate for comparison, not a quote for any home. The mill rate math guide walks through it.

Home prices. We use full-year median sale prices from SmartMLS town reports, separately for single-family homes and condos. A median is the middle sale, so half of homes sold for more and half for less. Where SmartMLS covers a town only partly, as in Greenwich, we say so. Zillow's typical home value appears on some pages as a second view; it is a model, not a sale price and we label it that way.

Rankings. When we quote a ranking, such as a Niche school district grade or a U.S. News place ranking, we name the edition and link to it. If we could not confirm a ranking on the current edition, it stays flagged "to verify" rather than carrying forward an older figure.

Tax rules and programs. Income tax rates, conveyance tax tiers, retirement income exemptions and relief programs come from the Department of Revenue Services, the Office of Legislative Research and the agencies that run each program. Rules change, so we date them.

What the "to verify" label means

Some things we have not yet been able to confirm from a source we trust: a parking waitlist length, a beach pass price, a school rating on the latest edition. Rather than guess, we show a yellow "to verify" label in the text where the figure would go.

When you see it, treat the point as a question to ask the town, the school district or a local agent. As we confirm figures, the label is replaced with the figure and its source.

What we do not do

We do not list homes for sale, show MLS listings or run a property search. For that, a licensed agent is the right person to help.

We do not rate towns on safety or describe who should live where. Crime data is public and we link to it from the relevant guides so you can read it yourself. Fair housing law protects everyone's right to choose where to live and our guides are written with that in mind.

We do not give legal, tax or financial advice. Our tax guides explain how the rules work in general. For your own situation, talk to an attorney or tax professional.

We do not publish reviews, testimonials or sales statistics. If a page needs a number we cannot source, the number does not appear.

How to use the site

If you are moving from New York City, start with moving from NYC to Connecticut, then the commuting guide and Connecticut vs Westchester. The best towns for NYC commuters list groups towns by ride time.

If you are moving from Canada, read moving from Toronto to Connecticut and the new to Connecticut checklist.

If you are moving to a smaller home, start with downsizing in Connecticut, the best towns for downsizing and 55+ communities.

If you are moving for a job in Connecticut, read working in Connecticut and where to live near Hartford, New Haven and Groton.

If you work from home, the best towns for remote work list is the place to begin.

Whatever brings you here, the costs and money hub and the cost of moving calculator help you build a budget and the town guides, such as Stamford, Fairfield, Milford and West Hartford, show what each town costs. For pairs of towns side by side, see Stamford vs Norwalk and Westport vs Fairfield.

The data behind a town guide

Every town guide draws on the same small set of sources, so figures line up from one town to the next. If two guides disagree, that is a mistake and we want to hear about it.

Town profiles. Population, median age, household income, housing units, the share of detached and owner-occupied homes, commute time, work-from-home share, jobs and key employers come from the 2026 town profiles published by AdvanceCT and CTData. The profiles compile Census, state labor and state education data in one document per town, which makes fair comparisons possible.

Sale prices. Medians come from SmartMLS full-year town reports for 2025, with the number of sales next to each figure. A median from 18 condo sales says less than one from 500, so we print the count.

Rail schedules. Metro-North times are computed from the MTA's published schedule feed. Shore Line East and Amtrak times come from Amtrak's published feed and Hartford Line times from the CTrail feed. All use the same reference weekday, so a minute in one guide means the same thing in another.

Local tax notices. Where a city sets different rates for different taxing districts, as Norwalk and Stamford do, the rates come from the city's own tax notice or adopted budget rather than the state's single summary figure.

How we handle taxing districts

Most Connecticut towns have one real estate mill rate. A few cities have several, because districts pay for different services such as sewers, fire protection or a downtown levy. The state's summary table lists one number for each town and for a city with districts that number may not be the rate any home pays.

For those cities we show the full range of district rates for the fiscal year, the motor vehicle rate separately and a tax illustration at the low and high ends. We do not say which neighborhood falls in which district unless the city publishes it; where it does not, the guide says so. Ask the assessor for the district and the rate on any address you are considering.

How we write

The guides describe places, not people. We write about trains, tax rates, housing types, parks and services and we leave the question of who belongs where to the reader. That follows fair housing law and it is also more useful: a median price or a train time means the same thing to everyone.

We keep paragraphs short, put the figure before the explanation and cite the source in the same sentence. When a figure is an illustration rather than a quote, such as tax on a round amount of assessed value, the text says so.

We also try to say what a town is not good for. A shoreline town with no Metro-North station is a poor choice for a daily Manhattan commute however pleasant it is and the guide will tell you that plainly.

What a guide cannot tell you

A guide works at town level. It cannot tell you the condition of a particular house, the flood history of a street, the noise from a nearby road or how a school feels on a visit. Those are questions for an inspection, a flood map lookup, a walk around the block at rush hour and a school tour.

Prices and rates also move. A 2025 median is a year-old snapshot by the time you read it and a mill rate is set for one fiscal year at a time. Use the guides to narrow your list, then check current figures before you make an offer.

Accessibility and privacy

The site is built as plain, fast pages that work without an account. Tables have headings, links say where they go and the yellow labels are text, not color alone.

We collect what you type into a form and nothing more about you unless analytics are switched on for the live site. The privacy policy sets out the details.

How we choose which towns to cover

We started with towns people most often ask about when they move to Connecticut: the commuter towns of Fairfield County, the shoreline towns around New Haven and the suburbs of Hartford. Each town guide follows the same order, from overview to commute, taxes, schools and housing, so you can compare them easily.

We add towns when we can source their figures properly. A town with too little reliable data for a full guide waits until we can do it well. The where to live page lists every town we cover.

Keeping pages current

Guides show the date they were last updated. Mill rates change every fiscal year, home price medians every calendar year and train schedules several times a year. When new data is published, we update the figures and the date.

If a rule or program changes between updates, the official source we link to is always the final word. Check it before you act on any figure.

Who writes the guides

Who runs the site

The site was created by Kirby Chan of eXp Realty. [[LICENCE_STATEMENT]] Kirby Chan also runs sister guides, including newyorkdownsizing.com and kirbychanmarkham.com.

Referral disclosure. [[REFERRAL_DISCLOSURE]]

Brokerage disclosure. [[BROKERAGE_DISCLOSURE]]

How introductions work

When you ask for help, we introduce you to one licensed Connecticut real estate agent who works in the towns you are considering. The introduction costs you nothing and you are never obligated to hire anyone. Read the disclaimer for how referrals are paid or go straight to get matched.

Corrections

If you find an error, a broken link or a figure that has changed, please tell us through the contact page. Include the page and what you think is wrong, with a source if you have one. Confirmed errors are corrected and the page date is updated.

Why the introductions are separate from the guides

The guides are written to be useful whether or not you ever ask for an introduction. They do not name or recommend particular agents.

If you do ask for help, we introduce you to one licensed Connecticut agent who works in the towns you are considering. The referral arrangement is explained in the disclosure above and in the disclaimer. You are free to work with the agent or not.

The privacy policy explains what we collect, how it is used and how long we keep it and the terms set out how the site may be used.