Bozrah is a town of 2,429 people with a median household income of $108,516 — higher than most of its neighbors — and only 29 houses sold there all year. The 2025 median was $410,000, and homes cleared at exactly 100.0% of asking. This is a small, quiet, comparatively affluent town, and buying here requires a different approach than buying in a market with real volume.
Metric | 2025 | 2024 |
Median sale price, single-family | $410,000 | $400,000 |
Closed sales | 29 | 25 |
Median days on market | 27 | 39 |
Percent of list price received | 100.0% | 100.8% |
Full calendar year, single-family detached. Source: SmartMLS Local Market Update, December 2025.
Read these numbers with appropriate caution. Twenty-nine sales is roughly two closings a month across the entire town. At that volume a single unusual property — one estate sale, one lakefront trade, one new build — visibly moves the median. The 2.5% year-over-year price change is the smallest of any town in New London County, and I would not read much into it either direction. It is noise as much as signal.
The number I do trust is days on market falling from 39 to 27. That is a 31% improvement in speed, and speed is harder to distort with a small sample than price is. Bozrah houses are selling faster than they were.
The practical implication: in a market this thin, town-level statistics are close to useless for pricing your specific house. There may be only two or three genuine comparables for a given property, and they may be a year old. This is a town where the comparative market analysis has to be built property by property, and where an agent who knows what actually traded and why is worth more than one who can pull a report.
Bozrah's mill rate is 23.50 for FY2025-26, on the October 1, 2024 Grand List.
That is genuinely low for this region. For comparison, neighboring Salem runs 30.20, Montville 31.43, Norwich's general fund rate 34.15, and Griswold 27.87.
On a $410,000 house — the town median — assessed at Connecticut's standard 70% of market value, the assessment is $287,000. At 23.50 mills that is roughly $6,745 a year.
An honesty note on the fiscal year: I am publishing the FY2025-26 rate because that is what is confirmed in the state's data. Connecticut's Office of Policy and Management has not published FY2026-27 rates — its mill rate dataset is titled "FY 2014-2026" and stops there. Call the Bozrah Tax Collector to confirm the current figure before you rely on it in a mortgage application. I would rather label a number precisely than present a stale one as current.
Bozrah has no separate fire districts or special taxing districts — one uniform townwide rate.
Fields Memorial School serves Bozrah PK–8 with roughly 180 students. One school, the whole town, nine grade levels. That is small — an average of about 20 students per grade.
Then it gets interesting, and this is the part buyers most need explained.
Bozrah has no high school. Students choose — and who pays depends on which school they choose.
Destination | Who pays tuition |
Norwich Free Academy | The Town of Bozrah |
Lyman Memorial High School | The Town of Bozrah |
Norwich Technical High School | The State of Connecticut |
Waterford (regional programs) | The State of Connecticut |
That distinction is worth understanding. Connecticut's technical high schools are a state system, so a Bozrah student attending Norwich Tech is not costing the town tuition. A student attending Norwich Free Academy or Lyman is. This is one of the quiet reasons small towns like Bozrah can keep a mill rate at 23.50 — a meaningful share of their high schoolers are educated at state expense.
For a family, the practical points are these: you have genuine choice, which is more than most towns offer; the choice comes with an application process and transportation arrangements that vary by destination; and siblings can end up at different schools. If high school placement is a deciding factor in your purchase, call the Bozrah superintendent's office and ask about current placement rules and transportation before you commit — not after.
Norwich Free Academy is worth a word specifically. It is a school of choice whose sending communities fund tuition, and Bozrah is one of its partner communities alongside Norwich, Brooklyn, Canterbury, Franklin, Lisbon, Preston, Sprague and Voluntown. Whether partner-community status carries a guaranteed seat is something I could not verify. Ask NFA directly.
Gardner Lake covers 529 acres and straddles Bozrah, Salem and Montville.
This is the single most important thing to check on any Gardner Lake listing, and it is astonishing how often it is glossed over. Two houses on the same water, a few hundred yards apart, can sit in different towns with different mill rates, different school districts and different assessors.
The spread is real: Bozrah 23.50, Salem 30.20, Montville 31.43. On a comparable lakefront property that is a difference of thousands of dollars a year. Bozrah is the low-tax side of Gardner Lake, and that is a genuine buying consideration rather than a marketing line.
The lake has a public boat launch and beach on the southern shore at Gardner Lake State Park, so this is publicly accessible water, not private-association lakefront. No association dues and no gatekeeping — and also summer traffic you do not control. Some buyers want exactly that and some do not.
State surveys have found a healthy native plant community with two invasives present at low abundance — fanwort and variable-leaf watermilfoil — roughly stable between 2006 and 2015. If you are buying for boating rather than for the view, that is a real diligence item and a current conversation with the lake association is worth having.
Bozrah's settlement nodes are Fitchville, Leffingwell and Gilman — village names you will see on listings and mailing addresses. All three are Bozrah: same mill rate, same school, same town government. As with several towns in this county, a buyer who searches only a village name will miss most of the available inventory.
The town's character is rural and agricultural, sitting between Norwich and Colchester along the Route 2 and Route 82 corridors. The median household income of $108,516 is notably high for a town of this size in Eastern Connecticut and speaks to who lives here: established households, high owner-occupancy, and relatively little turnover — which is precisely why only 29 houses trade in a year.
One thing I looked into and will not repeat: there are claims circulating about the ownership structure of Bozrah's electric utility. I could not verify them from a primary source and I am not going to publish a claim about who owns your power company that I cannot stand behind. If it matters to your purchase, ask during diligence.
Bozrah is well outside the crumbling-concrete foundation area. The 20-mile radius defining Connecticut's crumbling foundation program is centered on the former J.J. Mottes Concrete Company in Stafford Springs, far to the northwest. That issue drives inspection strategy in Tolland and Windham County. It is not a Bozrah concern.
Septic and well permits go through the Uncas Health District, which serves Bozrah along with Franklin, Griswold, Lebanon, Lisbon, Montville, Norwich, Preston, Salem, Sprague and Voluntown. Bozrah is overwhelmingly a well-and-septic town. Pull the Uncas permit history on any house you are serious about. A septic system's installation date and its permitted bedroom count are two of the most consequential and most frequently skipped diligence items in rural Connecticut — and the permitted bedroom count in particular can limit what you are allowed to do with the house later.
Bozrah is a small-staff town. Assessor, Tax Collector and Land Records hours are limited and vary. Call before you drive, and do not assume a Friday closing can record.
Twenty-nine sales a year means your house will not be lost in a crowd — and it also means there is very little to anchor a buyer's sense of value. That is the central fact of selling here.
Three things I would prepare.
Expect the pricing conversation to be more art than arithmetic, and insist on seeing the actual comparables. If someone hands you a number derived from town-level medians in a 29-sale market, ask which specific properties it came from. In a market this thin, an automated valuation is a guess wearing a suit.
If you are on or near Gardner Lake, lead with the tax comparison. A buyer comparing your house to one in Salem or Montville is looking at a mill rate difference of 6.7 to 7.9 mills. On a $500,000 lakefront that is real money every year, in your favor. Very few Bozrah listings ever say this, and it is one of the strongest arguments the town has.
Explain the high school arrangement. A buyer with children who assumes there is a Bozrah High School and discovers otherwise mid-inspection starts doubting everything else. A seller who explains the choice — including that the state pays for the technical schools — turns a question mark into a feature.
If you want a real number for your home, I will walk the property, find the handful of comparables that genuinely apply, and tell you honestly what I think it brings.
Single-family homes sold at a median of $410,000 in 2025, up modestly from $400,000 in 2024, across just 29 sales. Homes sold at exactly 100.0% of list in a median of 27 days, down from 39 days the prior year. With so few sales, treat the median as direction rather than precision. Source: SmartMLS Local Market Update, December 2025.
23.50 mills for FY2025-26, on the October 1, 2024 Grand List — among the lowest in the area, against Salem's 30.20 and Montville's 31.43. On a $410,000 house assessed at 70% of value, that is roughly $6,745 a year. Connecticut has not published FY2026-27 rates; confirm the current figure with the Bozrah Tax Collector.
No. Fields Memorial School serves PK–8 with about 180 students, and high schoolers choose among Norwich Free Academy, Lyman Memorial, Norwich Technical High School and Waterford regional programs. Bozrah pays tuition for NFA and Lyman; the State of Connecticut pays for the technical schools. Confirm current placement and transportation rules with the district before buying.
Partly. Gardner Lake's 529 acres straddle Bozrah, Salem and Montville, and the town of record determines your mill rate, school district and assessor. Bozrah is the low-tax side at 23.50 mills against Salem's 30.20 and Montville's 31.43. The lake has a public boat launch and beach at Gardner Lake State Park, so it is public water rather than private-association lakefront.
About 2,429 residents, with a median household income of $108,516 — high for a town of this size in Eastern Connecticut. Its village names are Fitchville, Leffingwell and Gilman, all within the same town, same mill rate and same school district.
No. Bozrah is far outside the 20-mile radius around the former J.J. Mottes Concrete Company in Stafford Springs that defines Connecticut's crumbling foundation program area.
Sources and dates. Sale price, closed sales, days on market and percent of list received: SmartMLS Local Market Update, December 2025, single-family detached, full-year 2025 and 2024. Mill rate FY2025-26 and absence of special taxing districts: Connecticut Office of Policy and Management mill rate and tax levy data. Comparison mill rates: CT OPM and the respective towns. Gardner Lake acreage, town boundaries and public access: Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Invasive species survey: Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, Gardner Lake, 2015. Schools, enrollment and high school tuition arrangements: Bozrah Public Schools and Fields Memorial School. Norwich Free Academy partner communities: Norwich Free Academy. Population and median household income: U.S. Census Bureau. Health district: Uncas Health District. Crumbling foundations radius: Connecticut Department of Housing.
Last updated August 2026. Tax rates and market data change — ask me for current numbers.
