By Christian Wade | The Center Square
Housing costs in New Hampshire continue to rise, with a new report showing the median price for a home in the state jumped to $440,000 last month.
The latest monthly report from the New Hampshire Association of Realtors found the median price for a home in the state increased by 20.5% from the same period last year when it was $365,000. That’s a more than 41% increase from March 2020, the report shows, when the median price was $311,545 for a single family home.
As prices continue to skyrocket, the number of closed home sales has dwindled, falling by 23% since last year. Only 811 single-family residential home sales were closed in March 2022, the report noted. That’s compared to 1,055 single family home sales in the same month a year ago.
New listings for a single family homes last month decreased by more than 14%, according to the report, highlighting the ongoing shortage of market-priced properties.
The report noted properties that come onto the market are getting snapped up quicker. The average days on the market for single-family homes dropped by 17.5% last month, while the number of days on the market for townhouse/condo properties dropped by a similar amount.
Nationally, home sales dropped recently to a six-month low, falling 7.2% last month as buyers struggle to find a home amid rising prices and a lack of inventory.
The report’s authors noted that Granite State consumers are “feeling the bite of inflation and surging mortgage interest rates,” which increased to 4.6% in March.
“Monthly payments have increased significantly compared to this time last year, and as housing affordability declines, an increasing number of would-be homebuyers are turning to the rental market, only to face similar challenges as rental prices skyrocket and vacancy rates remain at near-record low,” the group said.
New Hampshire’s housing shortage has been compounded by local building restrictions that are preventing new construction projects from moving forward, according to a new study.
The report, released on Monday by the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, said New Hampshire is one of the most restrictive states in the country for residential development which has contributed to a shortage of housing that has major implications for the state’s economy.
In 2020, the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority estimated that the state needs to build at least 20,000 more housing units to meet current demand.
The New Hampshire Council on Housing Stability, a panel created by Gov. Chris Sununu, is pushing for the construction of 13,500 new residential units within three years.
Anyone over about 40 years old has seen this show before- I’ve seen it twice now.
This is a bubble -that will burst- and then we’ll have a whole lot of people that bought homes in this bubble at these falsely inflated prices that will be underwater when the burst happens- then we have another mortgage crisis as it all crashes again.
This is what the term “Rinse and Repeat” is all about.
The pendulum swinging wildly back and forth is a real money maker for the elites that get rich off the carnage they cause the peasants.
The answer is not to build more housing.
The “Demand” is not real- it’s reactionary.
Many of these city dwellers moving out to the sticks won’t even stay. We, from the sticks, know this.
I recall watching these same conditions back in the early 90s. We had population bursts in certain areas in NH as the Massholes invaded border towns. I watched many pack up and leave before the new school they had to have was even completed. These people have very short attention spans and little patience for life out in rural areas- they learn.
I’ve watched two large schools be built here because of this that then sat largely empty when completed- because the invaders that wanted it, Left. The locals foot the bill- of course.
And they wonder why we can’t stand them.
The answer is to stop making our lives suck so bad that it drives people to flee their homes and relocate.
The way for us to get ahead in life is to put down roots, invest in our homes, our communities, our schools.. our lives. Get the house paid off and just owe the taxes on it- as we age in place.
Then our cost of living is much more reasonable as we age.. we can then afford to send kids to college with no loans and perhaps even afford to stay in our homes until the end- God Willing.
We can give the kids the house- this gets them much further ahead in life and then we grow the wealth of our family over the course of generations.
BUT now, we have a government that wants to grow poverty -and government to then “solve” that.
So what worked perfectly fine has been all but destroyed.
Many of us have watched it happen.
There were many single women that raised kids alone before the days of Child Support and it was entirely possible because of how things were back then.
My single mother, read that again, MY Single Mother, achieved not only home ownership, but a paid off home, and she did that waiting tables at a local restaurant. Yeah, you read that right.
That is how things were not that long ago- now look at things. And they say we’ve had “progress” ??
NOW a family with two working parents- often with two good jobs even- they still can barely make it.
And we wonder why we have a mental health crisis and a nation of addicts.
It’s the fallout of the destruction of the American Dream..
You get old enough and it’s all really easy to see.