In Newtown Square, the Smaller Home Often Costs the Same
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
"Office is dying," Newtown Township supervisors Chair Leonard Altieri III said in February, as the board voted 4-1 to rezone the Campus Boulevard corridor. The Delaware County Daily Times reported that most of the office buildings in the Newtown Square Corporate Campus were empty or up for lease.
That vote matters to a specific group of people. These are longtime homeowners who plan to sell the family house and buy something smaller nearby. Many of them assume the move will free up cash. In Newtown Square that usually doesn't happen, because owned townhomes here sell for about what detached houses sell for. The 55+ project now moving through the township won't add to the supply of owned homes, because every unit in it is planned as a rental.
Countywide, downsizing works the way most people expect. In September 2026, the median detached home in Delaware County sold for $475,000. The median attached or townhouse sale was $250,000. Across the county, trading a house for a townhouse can roughly cut the purchase price in half.
The Marple-Newtown market area is the closest local report covering Newtown Square. There, the two prices sit almost on top of each other.
| Market, period | Detached median sold price | Attached/townhouse median sold price |
|---|---|---|
| Delaware County, September 2026 | $475,000 | $250,000 |
| Marple-Newtown, September 2026 | $689,500 | $780,000 on 3 sales |
| Marple-Newtown, January through September 2026 | $697,500 | $707,500 |
The September townhouse figure comes from just three closings, so it moves around a lot. The year-to-date figures are steadier. Through September 2026, the median townhouse in Marple-Newtown sold for $707,500, a little above the $697,500 detached median, according to the Tri-County Suburban REALTORS market report built on Bright MLS data. These are market-area numbers, not figures for the 19073 ZIP code alone. They still describe the pool most local downsizers are shopping in.
A median doesn't price any particular house. Still, a seller who expects to move from a typical detached home into a typical townhouse and pocket the difference won't find that difference in these numbers.
The answer is scarcity, and you can see it in the closing counts. Through September 2026, the Marple-Newtown market area recorded 38 attached/townhouse closings, compared with 56 over the same months of 2025. Counting every type of attached property, the total fell from 86 to 58, a 32.6% drop. Detached closings barely moved over the same stretch, at 201 versus 207.
When so few townhouses sell, the ones that do list move fast. Attached homes that sold in September 2026 averaged 5 days on market. A year earlier they averaged 37.
New construction sits even higher. At The Towns at Newtown Walk, the four-story townhome community at Ellis Preserve, the builder was advertising one remaining home as of this writing. It's a move-in-ready McCartney plan at 334 Foxtail Lane, with 3 bedrooms, 4 baths and about 2,500 square feet, priced at $1,149,990. Builder inventory changes quickly, but the price shows where newer attached homes start in this part of Newtown Square.
Timing makes things harder. Detached homes in Marple-Newtown are still holding their value: the September 2026 median was up 12.8% from a year earlier, and sellers averaged 102.4% of original list price. But competition is building. Active detached listings rose to 52, from 39 a year earlier. The contract ratio, which measures pending sales per active listing, fell to 0.65 from 1.05 in September 2025. The report notes that a lower ratio means the market is moving in the buyer's favor.
So a downsizer may face a slower sale on the house they're leaving and a fast, thin market for the townhouse they want. Most of the planning goes into the gap between those two closings. That includes the order of the sale and purchase, how much to borrow against the current house, and whether to rent for a while.
The housing now planned for Campus Boulevard came out of a township effort to limit housing. According to the Daily Times, the township first tried to limit new housing by removing "housing for the elderly" as a permitted use in its SU1 zoning district. That district sits mostly along West Chester Pike near Mostardi's Nursery and Campus Boulevard, plus an area near Suburban Swim Club. The change required the township to notify nearby property owners. Those notices prompted three developers to file conditional-use applications so they could vest under the old rules before the change took effect. If all three are built, they would add more than 500 residential units.
The township then rezoned the Campus Boulevard district as a whole, allowing roughly 250 homes plus other possible uses such as restaurants or medical facilities. Under the new rules, homes are limited to the eastern side, near the Newtown Edgmont Little League fields and the Heights neighborhood, with wider buffers. Township solicitor Richard Sokorai told the paper the buildings were empty and that "tax rate tables are coming down."
The most advanced proposal comes from Campus Eleven Associates LP, which is owned by Henderson Group. It would replace three office buildings at 11, 15 and 17 Campus Boulevard, on more than 16 acres, with 242 age-restricted homes for residents 55 and older. The Daily Times reported that the plan includes 192 apartments and 50 townhomes, plus a clubhouse and covered parking. An April 1 Daily Times report described all 242 units, townhomes included, as 55-and-older rentals, with one- and two-bedroom apartments connected by a common amenity.
For an owner who wants to keep building equity in a smaller home, that means the project adds no for-sale units to a market area that has closed 38 townhouse sales so far this year. It serves people who want a lock-and-leave rental with a clubhouse, pool, dog park and walking trails. The engineer's waiver letter lists those amenities and puts total recreation area at 274,000 square feet.
Here's where the plan stands:
On that estimate, construction would wrap up somewhere between late 2028 and mid-2029, and every unit would still be a rental.
A downsizer in Newtown Square should plan to roughly trade equity, not release it. Owned townhomes cost about as much as detached houses, few of them come up for sale, and they go quickly. The real decisions come earlier: whether the next home needs to be owned or could be rented, how much space you truly need, and whether the detached house should go on the market before the right townhouse appears or after.
Countywide numbers point the other way. In September 2026, Delaware County had 997 active listings, up 24.9% from a year earlier, and 2.18 months of supply, according to Bright MLS. Most of that growing supply sits outside Newtown Square's small pool of townhomes.
Will the Campus Boulevard homes be for sale or for rent? The Daily Times described the full plan, 192 apartments and 50 townhomes, as rentals age-restricted to residents 55 and older. Rents haven't been published.
Are the Marple-Newtown figures the same as Newtown Square figures? Not exactly. The Tri-County Suburban REALTORS report covers the Marple-Newtown market area, which is broader than the 19073 ZIP code. It's the closest published local report for September 2026.
What about the other two applications that vested under the old zoning? The Daily Times reported that three applications together could add more than 500 units. It didn't name the other two applicants or their sites, so their timing and the type of homes they'd include aren't yet public.
If you're weighing whether to sell the family home before or after finding the right smaller one in Newtown Square, Robin M Anderson can help you work out the order, the timing and the numbers for your situation. Let's Connect.
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