$500,000 homes now the norm in N.H.
Scroll through a list of recently sold single-family homes in New Hampshire and you’ll find half of them went for $500,000 or more.
That was the statewide median sales price in March, a new record, according to the New Hampshire Association of Realtors.
The group’s president, Joanie McIntire, said a lack of inventory is the primary factor driving prices higher.
“The problem remains the shortage of available housing that is continuing to make homeownership more difficult than ever for those workers needed to help an economy thrive,” McIntire said.
Even if the number of single-family residential units on the market in New Hampshire were to triple — from 1,228 at the end of March — that would still fall short of the five to seven months of housing supply needed to attain what is considered a “balanced market,” according to numbers provided by the association.
To illustrate just how much harder it has gotten to unlock the benefits of homeownership, I went looking through the list of houses that sold in March and found a 1,300square-foot ranch in Epping, with three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a quarter-acre of land. The listing called it a great “starter home.”
The house, which had sold for $251,000 in October 2019, fetched $365,000 in March, an increase of 45 percent in 4½ years. (And don’t forget the higher cost of debt: The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage — currently above 7 percent — is running roughly 3 percentage points higher these days, which could add hundreds of dollars to the monthly payment.)
The real kicker, though, is how rare of a find that $365,000 home in Epping has become — especially in Rockingham County, where 133 homes sold in March for a median price of $665,000, according to the New Hampshire Association of Realtors.
McIntire said Granite Staters should be looking to policy solutions like House Bill 1291 — a bipartisan proposal that would allow more accessory dwelling units — to help address the housing crunch.
“The best way to climb out of our current housing shortage is to embrace less restrictive zoning,” she said, “and to empower private property owners by removing unnecessary red tape.”