Stafford's mill rate fell from 38.59 to 25.35 this year, and almost nobody who sees that number reads it right. It looks like a 34% tax cut. What it actually is, is a revaluation — and if your assessment rose more than about 50%, your bill went up. Single-family homes sold at a median of $334,000 in 2025, up 11.3%, at 105.1% of asking in a median of 14 days. That's the fastest market I cover.
Metric | 2025 | 2024 |
Median sale price, single-family | $334,000 | $300,000 |
Closed sales | 102 | 118 |
Median days on market | 14 | 21 |
Percent of list price received | 105.1% | 106.6% |
Full calendar year, single-family. Source: SmartMLS, the statewide multiple listing service.
Stafford is the most affordable of the eight Tolland County towns I cover, and the fastest of them at the same time. Median price up 11.3%, days on market down from 21 to 14, sellers still getting 105% of list. What fell here was inventory. Demand didn't go anywhere.
Stafford's FY2026-27 town mill rate is 25.35, adopted July 29, 2026. The year before it was 38.59.
A drop of 13.24 mills looks like the biggest tax cut in Connecticut. Nobody's taxes got cut.
Stafford completed a revaluation on the October 1, 2025 Grand List — its first full one since October 1, 2020. Five years of appreciation landed in assessments all at once, and the mill rate came down to offset it. Local reporting during the budget fight put the breakeven plainly: if your property's assessment rose about 50%, your tax bill is roughly unchanged at the new rate. Rise more than that and you pay more.
And residential assessments rose a lot more than commercial ones. One example residence in the town's own budget discussion rose about 73%. A large commercial property rose about 47.6%. So the burden shifted toward homeowners.
When you compare Stafford's 25.35 to a neighboring town's mill rate, you're comparing two numbers built on assessments from different years. Without each town's revaluation date, that comparison tells you nothing. And anyone marketing Stafford on the mill rate drop is selling you a number instead of a tax bill.
Assessments are 70% of fair market value. The next revaluation falls in 2030 under the state's five-year cycle. The new assessments first showed up in bills issued July 2026.
I'd want to know this before I moved here, because it tells you how the town governs itself.
The FY2026-27 budget passed on the fourth referendum, 764 to 727 on July 29, 2026 — after going down May 5 (579–1,026), June 2 (813–1,103) and June 23 (795–957).
The FY2025-26 budget also took four referenda, failing April 8, April 29 and June 3, 2025 before passing 680 to 620 on July 30, 2025.
Two years running of four-referendum budgets means services and capital spending get decided late & under pressure, and it means the town's tax rate is genuinely contested. If you're the kind of buyer who wants to understand the community you're joining, Stafford's budget votes are the most honest window into it you'll get.
This is the one that catches Stafford buyers by surprise more than anything else, and you can know it going in.
Part of Stafford — the developed village core — sits inside the Stafford Springs Service District, which levies its own tax on top of the town rate.
Service District rate | FY2025-26 | FY2026-27 |
Real estate and personal property | 3.05 | 2.06 |
Motor vehicles | none | 2.06 — newly applies |
Look at that second row. For the last several grand list years the district charged nothing on motor vehicles. For FY2026-27 the 2.06 rate hits motor vehicles too, because the town's motor vehicle rate now falls below the state cap. If you live in the district and own cars, that's a new line on your bill this year.
So a property inside the district pays 25.35 + 2.06 = 27.41 mills, not 25.35.
Curbside refuse and recycling collection for one- and two-family homes, with issued carts and a published collection calendar, plus leaf collection. If you're outside the district you haul your own waste to the transfer station, which is open to Stafford residents and businesses only.
You're getting something real for that money. But you need to know which side of the line you're on.
The boundaries split individual streets by house number. I mean that literally. The Town publishes a "Service District Streets and Limits" document, and the entries read like this:
Monson Road — up to and including #10. Park Street — up to and including #60. Silver Street — not #1 or #3. Tolland Avenue — including #115, except #101 and #111B.
Summer Street, Olympic Avenue, River Road and Prospect Heights all carry similar house-number or cross-street limits.
Don't take a neighbor's word for it, or a listing sheet, or a map. The street list is the published reference, and the Assessor's office and the property card are the authoritative answer for any specific address. Ask me before you offer — a 2.06 mill difference on a $334,000 house is real money every year you own it.
The tax collector's public mill rate table has not yet been updated past the 2024 Grand List. The FY2026-27 figures above come from the Town's own tax calculator and budget documents. Confirm with the Tax Collector before relying on them for a purchase decision.
Every town in this part of Connecticut sits inside a 20-mile radius. Stafford Springs is where that radius gets drawn from. The former J.J. Mottes Concrete Company operated here, and its aggregate — which contained pyrrhotite — went into foundations across eastern and north-central Connecticut for decades.
Pyrrhotite reacts with water and oxygen over years and cracks a poured concrete foundation from the inside out. You often can't see it for 15 to 25 years. Statewide, roughly 35,000 homes may be affected.
The eligibility window has a start and an end: homes built on or after January 1, 1983 and before December 31, 2015. Additions built in that window can qualify too, with documentation.
Testing is reimbursed. Visual inspection at 100% up to $400. Core testing at 50% up to $2,000 for two core samples. The Connecticut Foundation Solutions Indemnity Company is taking claims now and will not accept new claims after June 30, 2030.
Connecticut's Residential Property Condition Report — the form every residential seller fills out — asks about pyrrhotite directly. It asks whether the seller knows of any testing or inspection by a licensed professional on a foundation, and whether the seller has any knowledge of pyrrhotite in a foundation on the property.
Read those questions closely, because they ask what the seller knows. Somebody who has never tested can answer "no" honestly and correctly. A "no" on the disclosure form isn't a test result — it's the absence of one.
There is also a separate Residential Foundation Condition Report, but it applies narrowly: to transfers of property in an affected municipality that was acquired by a political subdivision of the state, or through foreclosure or a deed in lieu of foreclosure. It is not part of an ordinary sale, and you should not expect to see one.
I've written a full buyer's guide to this issue — how testing actually works, what it costs, what the state assistance program pays and what it doesn't, and the deadline that catches people out. Crumbling Foundations in Connecticut: What Buyers Must Do Before Closing.
I tell Stafford buyers the same thing I tell everybody in this region, I just say it harder here: if the house was poured between 1983 and 2015, test it. The reimbursement covers most of the visual inspection, the claim window closes in 2030, and the downside of not knowing is the whole value of the house.
None of that is a reason to avoid Stafford. Buyers who understand this issue and test properly buy well here, and the town's affordability next to its neighbors is real.
Stafford runs its own PK–12 district — four schools, about 1,256 students, all with Stafford Springs addresses.
School | Grades | Enrollment | Address |
West Stafford School | PK–K | 176 | 153 West Stafford Rd |
Stafford Elementary School | 1–5 | 438 | 11 Levinthal Run |
Stafford Middle School | 6–8 | 285 | 21 Levinthal Run |
Stafford High School | 9–12 | 357 | 145 Orcuttville Rd |
Stafford High School's student-teacher ratio is 9.75. Enrollment numbers come from the National Center for Education Statistics, 2024-25.
Almost every online source gets this wrong, including some that ought to know better.
2020 Population | Land Area | |
Town of Stafford (the municipality) | 11,472 | 58.0 sq mi |
Stafford Springs village (Census CDP) | 4,780 | 6.37 sq mi |
"Stafford Springs" is the mailing address for basically the whole town. All four schools, the speedway and the hospital carry Stafford Springs addresses, and most of them sit outside the village proper. Mapping tools and demographic widgets that resolve "Stafford Springs, CT" hand you the 4,780-person village and understate the actual market by nearly 60%.
Stafford Springs was an incorporated borough from 1873 until it was disincorporated in November 1991, and governance went back to the Town. The Service District I described above is what's left of that village-level structure.
The Town also contains the villages of Crystal Lake, Staffordville, West Stafford, Stafford Hollow, Village Hill, Hydeville, Orcuttsville and Ellithorpe. So when you read a statistic about "Stafford," check which geography it's describing.
55 West Street, a half-mile paved oval with roots as an agricultural park going back to 1870 and as a race track since 1959. Owned and operated by the Arute family.
The 2026 season runs 23 events, opening Saturday, April 25 and closing in early October, with weekly Friday night racing beginning in May. The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour returned to Stafford in 2026 with a 150-lap event on Friday, August 28 — its first tour date here since 2021. The track's weekly NASCAR sanctioning ended in December 2020, so the accurate way to say it is that Stafford hosts a NASCAR touring event rather than a weekly NASCAR-sanctioned track.
If you're looking at a house within earshot of West Street, go stand there on a Friday evening in June. Race nights are loud, predictable and part of who this town is. Some buyers love it. Some genuinely don't. Better to find out before you own it.
Stafford's name comes from mineral springs that pulled visitors in for two centuries, and there's an unusually good primary source for what that was like.
John Adams came to Stafford in June 1771 and wrote about it in his diary four days running. On June 4 he called the water "very clear, limpid and transparent," the rock and earth at the bottom "tinged with a reddish yellow Colour," tasting of "fair Water with an Infusion of some Preparation of steel in it." He bathed in it, and he was blunt about how that went: "I plunged in twice — but the 2d time was superfluous and did me more hurt than good, it is very cold indeed."
He came back on the 5th, 6th and 7th, drinking the water each day.
A historical marker at 6 Main Street, in front of Town Hall, put up in 1978 by the Town, the Stafford Historical Society and the Connecticut Historical Commission, records that Native peoples drank the iron and sulphur waters "to make them lively," that Adams visited in 1771, and that later "the elite of the Nation gathered here for pleasure."
The Stafford Historical Society and Mineral Springs Museum is at 6 Spring Street. Call ahead for hours.
Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford Springs is part of Trinity Health Of New England. A town of 11,472 with its own hospital is unusual, and it's genuinely valuable.
But labor and delivery is permanently closed. The unit closed temporarily in April 2020, and the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy approved permanent termination on November 14, 2024. The state attached conditions: the hospital has to assess the feasibility of a free-standing birth center in the service area, has to maintain prenatal, postpartum and wraparound services, and has to provide free transportation for patients to any hospital within a 50-mile radius for labor and delivery. The hospital was later fined $153,500 over the termination.
Stafford isn't alone in this. Windham Hospital's labor and delivery unit was approved for closure in December 2023 under comparable conditions. Rural eastern Connecticut has broadly lost obstetrics. If you're planning a family, confirm the current service line and delivery arrangements directly with Trinity Health Of New England before you buy, anywhere in this region.
The Stafford Springs Historic District was listed on the National Register on April 17, 2025 — reference #100011768. It covers the Downtown and Hyde Park area, bounded by Main Street on the north, Tolland Avenue and Hyde Park Road on the west, Highland Terrace on the south and River Road on the east. The nomination ran from a community presentation in February 2023 through State Historic Preservation Review Board review in September 2024.
Stafford Hollow Historic District covers parts of Leonard, Murphy, Old Monson, Orcuttville and Patten Roads. Of 125 substantial buildings, 103 contribute.
National Register listing is honorific and does not by itself restrict exterior alterations by a private owner — that is a local historic district, which is a different designation. Confirm with the Town's land use office whether any local district regulation applies to a specific property.
I-84 access is at CT-32, signed for Stafford Springs. That exit is being renumbered. Connecticut is converting I-84 to mileage-based exit numbers, and Exit 70 becomes Exit 85. The neighboring exits change too: CT-195 for Tolland and Mansfield goes from 68 to 81, CT-74 and US-44 in Willington from 69 to 84, CT-320 at Ruby Road from 71 to 87, and CT-190 in Union from 73 to 93. Signage will be in transition, and older GPS units and listings will keep saying Exit 70 for years. You'll see both numbers for a while.
Stafford Springs sits where Route 190 and Route 32 meet.
Public water is Connecticut Water Company, which has been replacing roughly seventy-year-old mains on Highland Terrace and Spring Street. Sewer is the Town of Stafford Water Pollution Control Authority, with about 27 miles of collection system and four pumping stations. Both follow the developed village core. The outlying villages — Crystal Lake, Staffordville, West Stafford, Stafford Hollow, Village Hill — are mostly well and septic.
Septic and well permits go through the North Central District Health Department. Everybody assumes Eastern Highlands, because Eastern Highlands serves nearly every surrounding town, and it explicitly does not serve Stafford. This trips people up constantly. The local sanitarian works out of Warren Memorial Town Hall, 1 Main Street, 860-684-5609.
The Town covers 58.8 square miles, which makes it one of the largest municipalities in the region by area.
Fourteen days on market and 105.1% of list is about as strong a seller's position as exists in this region. Three things I'd get ready before we list.
Know your new assessment and be ready to explain it. Buyers see the mill rate drop and misread it. A seller who can show the actual current tax bill, instead of a rate, takes away the single biggest source of confusion in a Stafford deal.
Know whether you're in the Service District, and have the combined rate ready. Buyers who find out about the extra 2.06 mills late feel misled, even when nobody misled them.
If the foundation was poured between 1983 and 2015, test it before you list. In this town more than any other I work, that test is a marketing asset. Reimbursement covers most of the visual inspection. Going to market with a clean result in hand is worth far more than it costs.
If you want a real number for your home, call me. I'll walk the property, pull the actual comps and tell you honestly what I think it brings.
And if part of what you're weighing is whether you need me at all — some people genuinely don't, and I'll tell you so — I wrote a straight piece on selling your house without an agent in Connecticut. It covers where doing it yourself actually works, what AI is genuinely good at now, and what an automated price still misses even somewhere that trades as often as Stafford.
Single-family homes in Stafford sold at a median of $334,000 in 2025, up 11.3% from $300,000 in 2024, across 102 sales. They sold at 105.1% of list price in a median of 14 days, the fastest market of any town covered on this site. Source: SmartMLS.
The FY2026-27 town rate is 25.35, adopted July 29, 2026 on the fourth budget referendum. Property inside the Stafford Springs Service District pays another 2.06 mills, so 27.41 combined. The drop from 38.59 the prior year came out of the October 1, 2025 revaluation rather than any tax cut — a property whose assessment rose more than about 50% pays more than it did last year.
The Town publishes a "Service District Streets and Limits" document, and the boundaries split individual streets by house number — Monson Road up to and including #10, for example, and Tolland Avenue including #115 but excluding #101 and #111B. The Assessor's office and the property card are the authoritative answer for any specific address. Ask before you write an offer.
The former J.J. Mottes Concrete Company was in Stafford Springs, and it's the center of the 20-mile radius used to define Connecticut's crumbling foundation program area. Stafford sits at the heart of the affected zone. The eligibility window is homes built on or after January 1, 1983 and before December 31, 2015. Testing is reimbursed at 100% up to $400 for visual inspection and 50% up to $2,000 for core testing, and CFSIC accepts new claims until June 30, 2030.
Yes. Stafford High School, 145 Orcuttville Road, grades 9–12, about 357 students, with a student-teacher ratio of 9.75. Stafford runs its own PK–12 district of four schools.
No. Johnson Memorial Hospital's labor and delivery unit closed permanently, with state approval granted November 14, 2024. The hospital has to maintain prenatal, postpartum and wraparound services and provide free transportation to any hospital within 50 miles for labor and delivery. Confirm current services directly with Trinity Health Of New England.
The Town of Stafford had 11,472 residents at the 2020 Census across 58.0 square miles of land. The Stafford Springs village CDP, a much smaller area inside the town, had 4,780. Because "Stafford Springs" is the mailing address for nearly the whole town, online tools frequently report the village figure and understate the town by about 60%.
Stafford borders 3 of the other towns I cover, and people looking here almost always look at a couple of them too. Same guide, same numbers, for each one:
Or see how every town in the county compares side by side in my Tolland County real estate guide.
Sources and dates. Sale price, closed sales, days on market and percent of list received: SmartMLS local market update, full-year 2025 and 2024, single-family. Mill rates, Service District rates, referendum dates and results: Town of Stafford budget documents, tax calculator and Tax Collector. Revaluation: Town of Stafford Assessor, October 1, 2025 Grand List. School enrollment: National Center for Education Statistics, 2024-25. Crumbling foundations: Connecticut Department of Housing, the state foundation testing program, and CFSIC. Speedway schedule: Stafford Motor Speedway; NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour schedule. John Adams diary, June 4–7, 1771: Massachusetts Historical Society. Historical marker text: Town of Stafford, Stafford Historical Society and Connecticut Historical Commission, 1978. Hospital: Connecticut Office of Health Strategy determination, November 14, 2024. Exit renumbering: Connecticut Department of Transportation. Historic districts: National Register of Historic Places, listed April 17, 2025. Water: Connecticut Water Company. Sewer: Stafford WPCA. Septic and wells: North Central District Health Department. Population and area: 2020 U.S. Census.
Last updated August 2026. Tax rates and market data change — ask me for current numbers.
There's plenty to do around Stafford, including shopping, dining, nightlife, parks, and more. Data provided by Walk Score and Yelp.
Explore popular things to do in the area, including Mill Pond Country Store, Stillwater Grill, and Stillwater Grill.
| Name | Category | Distance | Reviews |
Ratings by
Yelp
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dining | 0.48 miles | 0 reviews | 0/5 stars | |
| Dining | 0.59 miles | 0 reviews | 0/5 stars | |
| Dining | 1.48 miles | 0 reviews | 0/5 stars | |
| Dining | 1.98 miles | 6 reviews | 4.7/5 stars | |
| Dining | 2.84 miles | 3 reviews | 4.7/5 stars | |
| Dining | 2.89 miles | 1 review | 5/5 stars | |
| Dining · $ | 3.31 miles | 25 reviews | 4.4/5 stars | |
| Dining | 3.33 miles | 1 review | 1/5 stars | |
| Dining | 3.34 miles | 0 reviews | 0/5 stars | |
| Dining | 3.35 miles | 0 reviews | 0/5 stars | |
| Dining | 3.36 miles | 3 reviews | 4/5 stars | |
| Dining · $ | 3.37 miles | 3 reviews | 1.3/5 stars | |
| Active | 1.5 miles | 0 reviews | 0/5 stars | |
| Active | 1.77 miles | 2 reviews | 3/5 stars | |
| Active | 2.51 miles | 3 reviews | 4.7/5 stars | |
| Active | 2.98 miles | 3 reviews | 3.7/5 stars | |
| Active | 3.26 miles | 1 review | 5/5 stars | |
| Active | 3.34 miles | 1 review | 5/5 stars | |
| Beauty | 2.74 miles | 1 review | 5/5 stars | |
| Beauty | 3.3 miles | 0 reviews | 0/5 stars | |
| Beauty | 3.31 miles | 0 reviews | 0/5 stars | |
| Beauty | 3.37 miles | 14 reviews | 3.9/5 stars | |
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