A record shortage of homes for sale sent prices climbing by double-digit percentages last month.
Single-family home sales dipped again last month, falling to their lowest level since 2015, as the statewide median sale price shot up another 17 percent according to The Warren Group, publisher of The Registry Review.
That year-over-year gain put the statewide median sale price at $375,000 for the month of January.
There were 747 single-family homes sold last year, The Warren Group reported. That’s down 2 percent from the 760 sold in January 2021 and the lowest sales in any January since 725 were sold in the first month of 2015.
That year, the median sale price was just $197,500.
On the condominium market, the state saw 8 percent fewer sales, for a total of 244 last month. That’s the lowest number of sales in any January since 2014, when 234 were sold.
The median condo sale price was $272,967, a 16 percent increase since January 2021.
The New Hampshire Association of Realtors reported that there were only 931 single-family homes and 269 condominiums for sale last month. That’s the lowest number of listings of either property type since at least 2005, the earliest data available. The single-family listings tally was 35.4 percent lower than January 2021, while the condominium tally was 36.3 percent down over the same period.
NHAR President Adam Gaudet said in a statement that the inventory shortage was the primary driver of price increases.
“Demand isn’t slowing down,” said Gaudet, broker-owner of 603 Birch Realty in Concord. “If New Hampshire is going to tackle the affordability and availability crisis in a meaningful way, it means increasing that inventory.”
Numbers of new condominium listings were only down 8.6 percent year-over-year, to 320. But NHAR reported 25.3 percent fewer single-family listings in January, for a total of only 706. That figure is only slightly elevated from December’s 692 when the state often saw a substantial jump in numbers of listings between December and January in pre-pandemic years.
This January’s total is also 33.8 percent down from January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and one of the lowest numbers of new listings in any January since 2005.
In total, the shortage of properties for sale pushed the number of months’ supply of inventory down to 0.6 for both condos and single-families, lower than what was seen in January 2021 and the lowest of any month during the frenzied pandemic real estate market.
Gaudet said in his statement that the association saw the inventory shortage everywhere in the state, and said it is directly threatening the state’s economy.
“This isn’t a local issue but a statewide one. Lack of housing is constraining job growth and making New Hampshire unaffordable for too many workers,” he said. “Our economy depends on a healthy housing inventory.”
