Why New Hope's Median Home Price Depends on Which New Hope You Mean

Search "New Hope PA home prices" and you'll find four numbers that don't seem to describe the same town. Zillow's estimate puts the typical home value at $811,176 as of this summer. Redfin's own data shows a median sold price of $1.2 million for March 2026. Movoto's figures put the median sold price at $1.7 million for April 2026. None of these sites made an error. They're each measuring something different, and the gap between them is the most useful piece of information a buyer can have before setting a budget for this market.

Four Numbers, One Search Bar

A million-dollar spread between the low and high figures is not a rounding issue. It comes from two mechanical facts about how this data gets collected, and once you see them, every "New Hope median" you encounter afterward reads differently.

The Borough Doesn't Sell Enough Homes to Have a Stable Median

New Hope Borough covers about 1.3 square miles. The 2020 Census counted 2,612 residents living in roughly 1,481 housing units. That is a small enough housing stock that a handful of closings can swing the entire monthly statistic.

Redfin's own tracking shows exactly that in action. In March 2026, the borough recorded 6 home sales, down from 7 the year before, with a median sold price of $1.2 million, a jump of 165.2 percent year over year. Average days on market ticked up to 29, compared to 24 the year before.

A 165 percent jump sounds like a market on fire. It's more likely a reflection of which six houses happened to close. Swap one $600,000 rowhome for one $2 million river-view property and the median moves more than any actual shift in buyer demand could explain. With a sample that small, the median isn't tracking the market. It's tracking whoever sold that month.

One Mailing Address, Four Municipalities

The second mechanism is geographic, not statistical. New Hope Borough sits inside ZIP code 18938, but that ZIP code does not stop at the Borough line. It also covers portions of Solebury Township, Buckingham Township, and Upper Makefield Township, all of which surround the Borough and carry the same New Hope mailing address on much larger, more expensive parcels.

Solebury Township surrounds the Borough on its landward sides. A stone farmhouse on several acres in Solebury carries a "New Hope, PA" mailing address, even though it sits well outside the walkable downtown most people picture when they hear the name.

This is why Movoto's April 2026 figures show 80 homes sold with a $1.7 million median. Eighty closings in a single month is not possible inside a town with roughly 1,481 total housing units and typical annual turnover in the single digits per month. The number only makes sense once you realize it's counting sales across the whole ZIP code area, township estates included, not sales inside the Borough itself.

So when Redfin reports 6 sales and Movoto reports 80 for roughly the same period, the difference between those two counts is the difference between the Borough and everything postally attached to it.

What the Census Numbers Actually Show Inside the Borough

Strip out the ZIP code confusion and look only at housing type within the Borough, and a real, useful pattern shows up. The Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey estimate, aggregated by city-data.com, breaks New Hope Borough's housing stock into three distinct price bands by structure type:

• Homes in buildings with five or more units (condos and small multifamily): mean price $471,151
• Townhouses and other attached units: mean price $719,246
• Detached single-family houses: mean price over $1,000,000

That's a spread of more than half a million dollars sitting entirely inside the Borough's own boundary, driven by housing type rather than location. A buyer comparing "New Hope's median" against a personal budget is really comparing three different products that happen to share a mailing address: a condo, a twin or rowhome, and a detached house. Whichever single number a portal displays that week depends heavily on which of those three categories happened to trade.

Detached properties along the river or the Delaware Canal carry one more cost line that doesn't show up in any list price. Because New Hope Borough participates in the National Flood Insurance Program, lenders are required to confirm whether a structure sits in a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area and to require flood insurance as a condition of federally backed financing when it does. That's a real, ongoing carrying cost tied to a specific slice of the detached-home tier, and it's part of why two houses with similar list prices in the Borough can carry very different true monthly costs.

Where New Hope Sits Against the County

It helps to put the Borough's premium in context. Bucks County's overall housing market posted a median sale price of $510,000 in March 2026, up 9.2 percent from $467,000 the year before, with 424 homes sold countywide that month, a 14.6 percent increase over March 2025. Bucks County Association of Realtors president Christy Manetta described the countywide market as active heading into spring 2026, and coverage of that same report specifically called out low inventory in high-demand areas including New Hope and Doylestown.

Against that county-wide backdrop, even the lowest of New Hope's four competing numbers, Zillow's $811,176 typical value, sits well above the county median. Every version of "New Hope's price" describes a premium market. The four figures just disagree on how large that premium is, because they're built from different denominators.

How to Actually Shop New Hope's Number

Before anchoring a budget to any single figure you find online, it helps to ask two questions rather than one.

First: is this number describing the Borough itself, or the wider ZIP code that includes Solebury, Buckingham, and Upper Makefield township parcels? A number built from 80 monthly sales is almost certainly the wider area. A number built from single digits is the Borough alone, and worth treating as directional rather than precise.

Second: which housing type is this number weighted toward? A month with more condo and rowhome activity will pull the median down. A month with even one detached riverfront sale will pull it sharply up. Given the Borough's total annual sales volume, either can happen without reflecting any real change in what things cost.

The more reliable approach is to skip the headline median entirely and look at recent closed sales filtered by property type and by whether the address falls inside the Borough boundary or in the surrounding township. That's a search a portal's default view won't run for you, but it's the comparison that actually answers the question a buyer is asking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is New Hope Borough the same thing as the New Hope ZIP code? No. The Borough is a roughly 1.3-square-mile municipality with its own council and boundary. The 18938 ZIP code is larger and includes parts of Solebury, Buckingham, and Upper Makefield townships, all of which share the New Hope mailing address without sharing the Borough's boundary, tax rate, or municipal services.

If Zillow's estimate is the lowest number, does that mean the Borough is more affordable than the headlines suggest? Not necessarily. Zillow's figure is a smoothed valuation model averaged across the entire Borough housing stock, including condos and older housing built well before the current market. It's a different measurement than a sold-price median, and neither one is a substitute for looking at comparable recent closings in the specific housing type you're considering.

Why did average days on market move from 24 to 29 in the Borough? That's another small-sample effect. With only a handful of closings each month, a shift of a few days in the average is well within normal noise for a market this size, rather than a signal of slowing demand.

If you're trying to figure out what a specific New Hope address, Borough or township, actually means for your budget, that's the kind of research worth doing before you fall in love with a listing photo. Steven Dome works this market block by block, not just by ZIP code, and can walk you through what a given number is actually telling you. Let's Connect.