What South Shore Homes Actually Sell For: Six Towns, Twelve Months of Sales
I pulled every residential sale that closed on the South Shore between 1 September 2025 and 1 September 2026, then pulled every house sitting for sale in the same six areas today. The two sets of numbers do not describe the same market.
In Chester, the median asking price right now is $657,450. The median Chester sale over those twelve months was $452,450.
That is a 31 percent difference between what is on the shelf and what the town actually transacts at. It is not a discount waiting for you and it is not a sign that Chester is falling. The listings you scroll through are a biased sample of the market, and the bias runs one way.
What each town is asking, and what it sold for
Six areas, matched to the same communities my town pages cover. Asking figures are the median list price of everything active on 1 September 2026. Sold figures are the median sale price of everything that closed in the twelve months before it.
St. Margarets Bay and Hubbards: asking $847,450, sold $606,300, across 134 sales
Chester and the Aspotogan: asking $657,450, sold $452,450, across 132 sales
Mahone Bay: asking $695,000, sold $482,250, across 64 sales
Lunenburg: asking $697,000, sold $557,850, across 56 sales
Bridgewater: asking $459,000, sold $371,500, across 222 sales
Liverpool: asking $414,950, sold $298,750, across 78 sales
Bridgewater and Liverpool are where most of the volume is. Bridgewater alone accounts for 222 of the 686 sales, which is more than Lunenburg, Mahone Bay and Liverpool put together.
Why is the gap between asking and selling so large?
Sellers are not taking 31 percent cuts. Across all 1,270 sales, homes closed at between 96 and 97.5 percent of their final asking price. Chester came in at 97.3 percent.
The gap is a sorting effect. A house priced where the market is does not stay listed. It leaves. What builds up on the shelf is the expensive end and the optimistic end, and both take longer to move, so at any given moment the listed inventory skews high.
Chester homes that sold took a median of 28 days. Chester homes still listed today have been listed for 80. Same town, same month, and almost all of the difference between those two numbers is price.
Of the 80 homes listed in Liverpool right now, 41 have been on the market 90 days or longer.
The listings you scroll through are not the market. They are what the market has not taken.
How long would the current inventory last?
At the pace each area sold over the last twelve months, this is how long it would take to clear what is listed today with nothing new coming on.
Bridgewater: 3.7 months
Mahone Bay: 5.4 months
St. Margarets Bay and Hubbards: 5.6 months
Chester: 6.4 months
Lunenburg: 10.3 months
Liverpool: 12.3 months
Four to six months is a market in rough balance. Bridgewater at 3.7 is tight enough that a well priced house there still moves quickly, and its 32 day median sale proves it. Lunenburg and Liverpool at ten and twelve months have more choice than buyers to take it.
What did $300,000 to $500,000 actually buy?
This is the busiest band on the coast. 266 of the 686 sales landed here. What that money bought, by median, in each area:
Chester: $438,500 for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, built 1978, on 0.69 acres, 1,308 square feet
Lunenburg: $420,000 for a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, built 1961, on 0.49 acres, 1,284 square feet
St. Margarets Bay: $415,000 for a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, built 1989, on 0.53 acres, 1,137 square feet
Liverpool: $388,000 for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, built 1954, on 0.92 acres, 1,488 square feet
Mahone Bay: $387,500 for a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, built 1975, on 0.57 acres, 1,159 square feet
Bridgewater: $380,250 for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, built 1977, on 0.28 acres, 1,239 square feet
The spread across six towns is about $58,000. At this price you are buying roughly the same house everywhere. What changes is the lot and the drive.
What did $500,000 to $750,000 actually buy?
156 sales landed in this band, and here the six towns diverge.
St. Margarets Bay: $610,000, 3 bed, 2 bath, 1984, 0.79 acres, 1,700 square feet, 15 percent of these sales were waterfront
Mahone Bay: $610,000, 3 bed, 2 bath, 1989, 0.57 acres, 1,800 square feet, 15 percent waterfront
Chester: $600,000, 3 bed, 2 bath, 1993, 1.19 acres, 1,464 square feet, 16 percent waterfront
Liverpool: $584,000, 3 to 4 bed, 2 bath, 1988, 1.71 acres, 1,898 square feet, 50 percent waterfront
Bridgewater: $580,000, 4 bed, 2 bath, 1996, 0.33 acres, 1,810 square feet, 13 percent waterfront
Lunenburg: $575,000, 3 bed, 2 bath, 1966, 0.41 acres, 1,580 square feet, 5 percent waterfront
Liverpool and Lunenburg sit within $9,000 of each other in this band. Half of Liverpool's sales were waterfront, on a median 1.71 acres. Five percent of Lunenburg's were, on 0.41. That difference is an hour of driving.
What does it cost to get on the water?
Above a million dollars, the South Shore is essentially one market: waterfront. Of the 44 sales over $1,000,000 in these six areas, the waterfront share was 100 percent in Mahone Bay, Bridgewater and Liverpool, 92 percent in St. Margarets Bay, 71 percent in Chester and 50 percent in Lunenburg.
Median sale prices over a million: Chester $1,497,500, Mahone Bay $1,440,000, St. Margarets Bay $1,350,000, Liverpool $1,250,000, Lunenburg $1,135,000, Bridgewater $1,070,000.
You do not have to spend a million to get water, though. Liverpool's $500,000 to $750,000 band was half waterfront, and 18 percent of Chester's sales under $300,000 had frontage. Cheaper water exists here. It is further from Halifax and it is usually an older or smaller building.
What this means if you are buying
Price your search off what sold, not off what is listed. If you are looking in Chester with $500,000, the active listings will make that budget feel thin, because the median listing is $657,450. Twelve months of actual Chester sales say $500,000 is above the town's median sale price of $452,450. You have more room than the shelf suggests.
A listing that has been sitting 90 days is not automatically overpriced, but it is worth asking what the seller has already turned down. Board wide, the typical home that sold had already come down about 3.5 percent from its original asking price before it found a buyer. The median original ask was $499,000 and the median final ask was $481,450. It is also worth knowing what a coastal home costs to run once you own it.
What this means if you are selling
Your first price sets your timeline. Homes that sold in these six areas took a median of 28 to 50 days depending on the town. Homes still sitting have been listed 55 to 91 days. That is not a slow market, it is two different groups of houses, and price is what separates them.
If you are in Bridgewater, 3.7 months of inventory and a 32 day median sale means a correctly priced house does not sit. If you are in Liverpool or Lunenburg, with ten to twelve months of supply, you are competing against far more choice and the first thirty days matter more than anywhere else on this coast.
Common questions
Is the South Shore market falling?
No. Homes are selling at 96 to 97.5 percent of their final asking price, which is a normal, functioning market. The difference between listed prices and sold prices is a composition effect, not a decline: correctly priced homes sell and leave the inventory, so what remains is weighted toward the expensive and the overpriced.
Which South Shore town is cheapest?
Liverpool, on both measures. Its median sale over the last twelve months was $298,750 and its median asking price today is $414,950. Bridgewater is next at a $371,500 median sale. Liverpool also has the most inventory relative to its sales pace, at 12.3 months.
How long do homes take to sell on the South Shore?
Among homes that actually sold in the past twelve months, the median was 28 days in Chester, 32 in Bridgewater, 34 in St. Margarets Bay, 41 in Liverpool, and 50 in both Lunenburg and Mahone Bay.
How much is waterfront on Nova Scotia's South Shore?
Over $1,000,000 the market is almost entirely waterfront, with median sales from $1,070,000 in Bridgewater up to $1,497,500 in Chester. Below that, waterfront is most available in Liverpool, where half of all sales between $500,000 and $750,000 had frontage.
Where do the numbers in this post come from?
The Nova Scotia Association of REALTORS MLS system, pulled on 1 September 2026. It covers 1,270 residential sales that closed between 1 September 2025 and 1 September 2026 and 675 homes listed as of that date, across Lunenburg County, Queens County and the Timberlea, Prospect and St. Margaret's Bay district. 686 of those sales and 358 of those listings fall inside the six community groupings used above.
Do these figures include cottages and mobile homes?
Yes. Every residential property type in those districts is included, which is why Bridgewater's under $300,000 band is as large as it is. Vacant land and commercial property are not included.
Have a question about your specific situation?
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Written by Doug Mills, REALTOR® with Royal LePage Atlantic. I help buyers and sellers along Nova Scotia's South Shore, from Peggy's Cove to Liverpool.
