The median sales price for a single-family home in New Hampshire hit a record $566,250 in June, further proof that a housing crisis has gripped the Granite State, the local realtors group said Monday.
In its latest market report, the New Hampshire Association of Realtors said single-family residential home prices rose 4.9% from the state's previous high of $540,000 in May. It also marks the 65th straight month of year-over-year increases, the association said.
The rising prices will be tough on two types of homebuyers, said Susan Cole, the group's president.
“The idea of owning a home is becoming more challenging for too many New Hampshire residents, especially young families and first-time home buyers,” Cole said in a statement. “Demand for housing in our state is still very high, and these numbers suggest that trend is not going away soon.”
Home prices are rising mostly because the number of listings across the state remains low, the realtors group said. Inventory has climbed steadily in recent years, but there are still too few properties for the demand the state is seeing, Cole said.
New Hampshire had 2,431 single-family homes on the market at the end of June, according to the group's tally. In October 2016, when the state's housing market was more balanced, there were 7,112, the association said.
“Yes, there are more houses on the market than there were a few years ago, but it’s very important to keep that in context,” Cole said in the statement. “You don’t get the full picture unless you look back 10 or 15 years and compare this to a healthy market.”
A healthy market has at least a 5 months' supply of homes, the association said. New Hampshire had less than half that in June.
Closed sales grow 8.5% despite lack of listings
Homes for sale in the state — single-family, townhouse-condos, and manufactured properties — grew 24.3% year over year in June to 3,423, and new listings rose roughly 21% to 2,702 during the same period.
Cole said recent news headlines may describe the national housing market as having more robust inventory, but New Hampshire has not caught up to that trend.
The number of closed residential real estate sales grew 8.5% year over year to 1,834 in June, according to the realtors' report.
At a more local level, the median price for a single-family home fell roughly 14% in Coos County, the state's northernmost, and nearly 8.5% in Sullivan County. Prices jumped the most in Belknap (16.4%), Cheshire (17%) and Grafton counties (25%).
Cole, who is also a real estate agent in Grafton County, told Homes.com that prices in the area are climbing because there are so few options on the market. The 25% jump is pricing some buyers out of Grafton's larger towns and forcing them to move into more rural parts of the county, she added.
"People are having to commute further in order to work in Hanover and live in an area they can better afford," she said in the interview. "It all boils down to the lack of inventory we've struggled with. The last few months, we're starting to see a little more inventory coming on, but we're still bobbing along the bottom."