The line between a weekend retreat and a full-time residence is blurring in Litchfield County, Connecticut, as a new breed of buyer emerges: the co-primary homeowner. These are individuals and families who split their time between the city and the country, but treat both properties as primary residences rather than designating one as a secondary escape.
Bill Melnick, a luxury real estate specialist with Elyse Harney Real Estate, sees this shift firsthand. “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 shapes everything from the towns they consider to the amount they are willing to spend.
Co-primary buyers are not looking for a simplified version of their city life; they want a parallel one. This means properties must have 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 noted. “Both owners may be on Zoom calls, even if they’re going to an office regularly.” As a result, guest rooms are being repurposed as swing spaces with pullout sofas and desks, finished basements are becoming office floors, and accessory structures like barns and studios are being outfitted as separate workspaces. The appeal of a detached office—a building you walk to and then leave—has proven strong among buyers who have spent years working from a dining room table.
Properties that cannot accommodate two working adults without significant construction are increasingly being passed over. The home office question has moved from a nice-to-have to a qualifying criterion.
Town selection also shifts for co-primary buyers. A twenty-minute drive to a grocery store might be a minor inconvenience for a weekend visitor, but for someone 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. Another critical factor is the distance to the Wassaic Metro-North station, just across the New York border, which offers 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 can determine which towns make the list. “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 for these buyers.
Financially, co-primary buyers are willing to spend more, and they do so deliberately. They want properties that function at the level of a primary residence, meaning a higher amenity threshold and a lower tolerance for renovation projects. “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 are buyers who have effectively made Litchfield County their primary base while keeping a city apartment, often trading up from an earlier weekend property. The second home is the one they actually live in, and the budget reflects that.
