Parcel Intel Research
Suffolk Towns Compared: Distress, Density, and Deal Volume
All ten Suffolk County towns compared on the metrics that matter to investors and journalists — distress counts, vacancy, arrears rates, and active listing volume. Sortable. Updated quarterly.
Investors and reporters compare Suffolk towns constantly — usually with a single anecdote or a single metric. This table puts the ten towns side by side on the data points that matter most: parcel count, vacant inventory, distressed inventory, active listings, and recent market velocity. The table is sortable; the default sort is distressed parcel count, descending.
Three market-velocity columns sit alongside the distress columns: median sale price (last 12 months), median days on market, and closed count. Where a town shows a dash, the count for that period has not yet reached a stable threshold; expect those gaps to fill with each refresh.
| Brookhaven | 21,852 | 21,842 | 1,811 | 8.3% | 83 | 3 | — | — | — |
| Southold | 1,432 | 1,432 | 666 | 46.5% | 1 | 0 | — | — | — |
| Riverhead | 2,205 | 2,205 | 416 | 18.9% | 7 | 0 | — | — | — |
| Babylon | 1,850 | 1,850 | 303 | 16.4% | 22 | 0 | — | — | — |
| Islip | 2,195 | 2,194 | 247 | 11.3% | 38 | 0 | — | — | — |
| Huntington | 1,361 | 1,361 | 206 | 15.1% | 6 | 0 | — | — | — |
| Smithtown | 185 | 185 | 99 | 53.5% | 5 | 0 | — | — | — |
| Southampton | 4,754 | 4,754 | 73 | 1.5% | 8 | 0 | — | — | — |
| East Hampton | 2,550 | 2,550 | 0 | 0.0% | 6 | 0 | — | — | — |
| Shelter Island | 368 | 368 | 0 | 0.0% | 0 | 0 | — | — | — |
Town profiles
Each town has its own distress pattern. The summaries below are not rankings — they are starting points for anyone hunting for deals or researching neighborhood-level trends.
Babylon
Babylon's South Shore footprint mixes dense Lindenhurst and Copiague tax-base with the more affluent Babylon Village. Distress here often surfaces in older, smaller homes near the rail corridor.
Brookhaven
The largest Suffolk town by both population and parcel count. Brookhaven covers a substantial swath of central Suffolk, from the North Shore through the Pine Barrens to the South Shore — its size makes it the natural anchor for any Suffolk-wide analysis.
East Hampton
Low parcel count by Suffolk standards, but high-value distress. East Hampton's seasonal-economy cycles produce a distinct pattern: long-held second homes with deferred maintenance, fewer high-distress signals than denser towns.
Huntington
Huntington's mix of north-shore wealth and Huntington Station urban density produces a bimodal distress distribution. Watch the station-area ZIPs separately from the village proper.
Islip
Brentwood, Bay Shore, and Central Islip dominate Islip's distress count. The town has one of the more aggressive code-enforcement operations in Suffolk; expect more board-and-secure activity than peer towns.
Riverhead
Riverhead's downtown revitalization has compressed distress in the village core, but the surrounding hamlets still carry meaningful arrears. Vacant land share is unusually high — agricultural transition is ongoing.
Shelter Island
Smallest Suffolk town by far. Distress signals are episodic rather than systemic — a small parcel base means any one filing can move the headline numbers.
Smithtown
Smithtown distress is heavily skewed toward older Hauppauge and Saint James inventory. The town's overall arrears rate is among the lowest in Suffolk; specific corridors carry most of the activity.
Southampton
Like East Hampton, Southampton's distress is high-value and seasonal. Long-held estate transitions and absentee ownership are the dominant motivated-seller patterns here.
Southold
North Fork inventory — Greenport, Mattituck, Cutchogue. Vacant land and agricultural parcels feature heavily; distress patterns differ materially from South Fork peer towns.
Coverage and scope
Each row covers a Suffolk town in its current boundaries. The distress percentage uses each town's total tracked parcels as the denominator, which can differ slightly from headline figures shown elsewhere on the site that apply additional filters. Sortable columns produce different rankings under the same data; we intentionally do not publish a single "best" or "worst" ordering. Updated quarterly. For related definitions see the Foreclosure Timeline Atlas and glossary.
For journalists and researchers
This report is part of Parcel Intel's research on Suffolk County real estate. Cite as: Parcel Intel, "Suffolk Towns Compared: Distress, Density, and Deal Volume" — www.parcelintel.io/research/suffolk-towns-compared. Last updated 2026-05-11. Questions, corrections, or data requests: support@parcelintel.io.