Despite record buyer interest and a slight uptick in the number of homes listed for sale, the number of homes bought statewide slumped again in April.
New Hampshire sellers saw significant gains in their homes’ value in April, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, but the state has also seen significantly fewer home sales this spring than it did before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The median single-family sale price hit $359,000 in April, a 30 percent jump over April 2019’s median sale price and a 14 percent increase over April 2020, when the state was enduring the pandemic’s opening weeks. Statewide, 902 single-family homes were sold in April, a number comparable to the 911 sold in April 2020 and 23 percent fewer than were sold in April 2019 despite the intense buyer interest since then and rapid decrease in the amount of time a home spends on the market.
Year to date, the median single-family sale price hit $334,500 at the end of April, The Warren Group reported, a 26 percent jump over the same time in 2019 and 13 percent up from April of last year. There have been 3,156 single-family home sales statewide since Jan. 1, 8 percent fewer than were sold through April 2020 and 16 percent fewer than were sold through the same time in 2019.
The Warren Group collects data on home sales as officially recorded at registries of deeds, and not as reported to multiple listings services by real estate agents, which typically form the basis of Realtor association statistics.
Few Homes for Sale
The biggest raw drops in year-to-date sales activity have come in Hillsborough and Rockingham counties, the state’s most populous, while picturesque Grafton County saw an 18 percent increase in sales compared to 2019. As a percentage of 2019’s sales activity, Hillsborough County saw the biggest drop in activity, going from 1,002 single-family houses sold through April 2019 to a mere 690 sold through April 2021.
The state has been starved for inventory for months, sending prices skyward as buyers competed against each other for the limited number of listings available at any one time. The average percentage of list price received by sellers has been over 100 percent each month since September 2020, according to the New Hampshire Association of Realtors, indicating the presence of final offers over asking price in many sales. That figure stood at 103.3 percent in April, NHAR reported.
In another measure of market tightness, the average number of days a single-family home spent on market was down to 32 in April, a 51 percent drop from April 2019. As of April 2021, the market had only 0.8 months of supply.
“With such strong activity, by the time a property sale closes, the market may have already moved higher than that sold price suggests,” NHAR said in a statement accompanying the release of its April market report. “Such markets can create stress and frustration for prospective homebuyers, who are frequently having to submit offers on multiple properties before they are able to secure a purchase.”
A Glimmer of Hope?
These frustrated homebuyers may be able to find some comfort in one April housing statistic. The number of single-family houses that hit the market in April was 16 percent higher than the same figure for March, although April’s new listings figure was 18 percent off April 2019’s.
Nationwide, indicators suggest the big run-up in home prices that began once initial COVID-19 lockdowns were eased is starting to dissuade buyers.
Real estate data firm Black Knight reported last week that rate-locks were down 6 percent on a month-over-month basis in April. Overall rate-lock volume was down 11.3 percent, driven largely by 13 percent and 20 percent drops in cash-out and rate/term refinance demand, despite interest rates continuing to slacken as the month continued, falling from an average high of 3.18 percent for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan for the week ending April 1 to a 2.98 percent rate for the same product in the month ending April 29, according to Freddie Mac.
“April saw the lowest overall rate lock volume since May 2020, with rate/term refinance lending the lowest since January 2020 – before the 10-year Treasury yield fell below 1 percent for the first time ever, setting off a yearlong run of interest rates hitting 14 separate record lows in 2020,” lack Knight Secondary Marketing Technologies President Scott Happ said in a statement.
On an annual basis, only rate/term refinance lending is down 34 percent from last April, Black Knight said, whereas both cash-outs and purchase loans are up 27 percent and 114 percent year-over-year, respectively.
“As volume has tightened, we’ve seen average credit scores decline across all products and purposes, and conventional loans lose share to government-backed mortgages,” Happ said. “Neither are unexpected developments given that, when rates begin to rise, higher-credit borrowers tend to simply not engage. Right now, though, rates are still hovering in a historically comfortable place, with approximately 14.5 million homeowners who could still likely qualify for and benefit from a refinance. It will be interesting – and telling – to see both how rates move in the coming weeks, and whether or not we see refi volumes increase as a result.”
