Lake Winnipesaukee. File photo

Amid the ongoing boom in Lakes Region home prices, one of New Hampshire’s largest real estate brokerages has set up an outpost in the region.

Most of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate The Masiello Group’s 34 other offices offices are in Southern New Hampshire. The company’s newest office, in Meredith, will give Maisello a presence from Downeast Maine to Vermont and make that tally 35.

“We found we were doing more and more business in the Lakes Region and wanted to support our agents, and better serve our clients, by opening a full-service office in the area,” Sarah Kelley Ford, the interim sales director for the Meredith office, said in a statement. “The Meredith office will serve as a hub for a number of agents already working throughout the lakes region.”

Ford said the move was specifically intended to help the company grab a slice of the boom in second homes and relocations from metro areas like Boston and New York City.

“The new Meredith office allows us to increase the company’s home listing portfolio and better meet the needs of clients looking to relocate into more rural areas that can provide a higher quality of living,” said Ford.

According to The Warren Group, publisher of The Registry Review, home prices in the region have spiked much more aggressively than the statewide number. The following figures are year-to-date through Aug. 31:

• Coos County: Median sale price up 48 percent, to $160,000, and total sales down 6 percent compared to 2019.
• Grafton County: Median sale price up 30 percent, to $285,000, and total sales down 3 percent compared to 2019.
• Carroll County: Median sale price up 30 percent, to $325,000, and total sales down 3 percent compared to 2019.
• Belknap County: Median sale price up 31 percent, to $322,000, and total sales down 21 percent compared to 2019.

And according to data from the Atlas moving company, roughly two-thirds of the moves in New Hampshire and Maine in 2020 were people migrating into the two states from elsewhere.