New Hampshire’s housing market is entering unchartered territory along with other business sectors across the state as a result of President Donald Trump’s controversial tariff moves. 

Granite State real estate leaders were already looking at a sluggish start to this year’s spring housing market, as new listings have continued to fall and home prices surge to yet new record highs amid a severe supply-and-demand imbalance. 

Then along came the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement earlier this month, sending markets into a worldwide tailspin and raising fears of higher inflation and a tariffs-fueled recession. 

Market-watchers interviewed for this story stressed that the statewide housing market’s fundamentals – low supply of homes for sale with strong demand driving prices ever higher – simply isn’t going to change as a result of new national tariffs and the market reactions to them around the world. 

But the market turmoil tied to the new tariffs could exacerbate existing local trends, such as the overall problem of housing affordability in the state. 

How Tariffs Could Hit Housing Market 

For sellers, the stock market turmoil could make them reluctant to list their homes, whether due to hits to their 401(k) accounts or concern that it might filter down into the “Main Street” economy where most Americans live.  

For buyers – some of whom are also sellers in any market – rising inflation the Federal Reserve expects from Trump’s tariffs and could put purchases further out of reach for many would-be homebuyers who are already facing record-high housing prices, said Colleen Dubois, an agent at Keller Williams-Metropolitan in Bedford.  

The median price for a single-family home in New Hampshire stood at $510,000 in February, up 7.4 percent year-over-year, according to The Warren Group, publisher of The Registry Review. 

“It’s going to fall on all of us end users – the higher prices for food, gas, housing, all of it,” said Dubois of inflationary pressures in general. “The tariffs are going to put a kind of kink in a lot of things, like the cost of lumber we get from Canada and other items.” 

Margherita Verani, CEO of Verani Realty-Berkshire Hathaway Homeservices, said she happens to think that Trump’s tariffs are probably a good policy for the nation in the long-term. 

But she acknowledged that they could “hurt a little” in the short-term if lower stock prices end up weakening the purchasing power of some would-be homebuyers.  

The National Association of Realtors’ most recent profile of buyers and sellers found that a combined 14 percent of buyers surveyed said they financed their downpayment by selling stocks, bonds or cryptocurrency, or by money withdrawn from or loaned from retirement savings accounts. 

“That’s where tariffs might impact” the real estate market, said Verani. 

Chris Masiello, chairman of the Better Homes & Garden-Masiello Group, said the real estate market doesn’t always reflect what’s happening in the rest of the economy. 

Today, the real estate sector in New Hampshire is ultimately driven by a lack of new inventory and the demographics of home buyers and sellers, he noted. 

“Those are the two dynamic drivers outside of the regular economy,” he said.  

As a result, Masiello, interviewed just prior to Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, said he’s not among those expecting much change in the state’s real-estate market conditions this spring. 

“Right now, our performance is dead even with last year’s numbers,” Masiello said of his firm’s sales activity. “This year will probably be very similar to 2024.” 

Listings Bump, But Sales Slow 

According to recent housing data, the spring market certainly has looked as if it was headed for déjà vu all over again, to borrow from the famous Yogi Bera phrase. 

The New Hampshire Association of Realtors reports that new single-family home listings in March were up year-over-year by 20.6 percent across the state year-over-year, reversing along downward spiral. 

There were other hopeful, if small, signs that the market might be loosening up a bit, such as the 12.8 percent increase in the number of days homes were on the market in February and the 18.8 percent increase in March. 

But those figures are still ghosts of the inventory and new-listings levels the state’s housing market enjoyed in 2019. 

 The Warren Group’s sales data for March was not available as of publication time. 

But Adam Dow, CEO of the Dow Group at Keller Williams in Wolfeboro, said data that’s he collected shows statewide closed sales likely declined year-over-year by 2.7 percent in March. Meanwhile, homes for sale likely fell by about 4 percent during the same time period, he noted. 

In other words: recent low inventory and high demand trends are holding roughly steady entering the spring season. 

There are areas of the state doing relatively well, such as the Lakes and Sea Coast regions, said Dow, whose firm covers both submarkets. 

But everything still comes down to availability and affordability, no matter what part of the state you’re talking about, he said. 

Higher-End Homes Slower 

One trend that seems to be intensifying: Homes with asking prices substantially over $1 million have recently not been selling as well as homes under $1 million. 

In Carroll and Belknap counties, homes with asking prices over $1 million have seen their days on the market increase by 56 percent and 20 percent, respectively, over the past year, Dow said. 

“Everything doesn’t sell the same,” said Dow “People are getting more picky. Homes are either selling right away or they’re taking longer to sell, usually because they’re priced wrong,” 

The market in New Hampshire, as well as across the nation, has been plagued of late by the so-called “lock-in effect,” or sellers who have super-low mortgage rates on their current homes balking at selling their dwellings if it means taking on higher mortgage rates. 

Verani said potential sellers are slowly beginning to realize that recent higher interest rates are here to stay – and it’s causing some of them to finally put their homes on the market: “People are saying, ‘We have to sell now. We can’t wait any longer.’” 

But it’s not a large enough shift among would-be sellers to substantially change the state’s low-inventory problem, she said. 

 Few Sources of New Inventory 

Like Dow, Verani said some geographic submarkets around the state are doing better than others, such as the Seacoast and southern regions of New Hampshire. 

But she said she’s also seeing northern housing submarkets gaining strength of late, such as in the Concord area.  

“The farther north you go, the more affordable the housing gets, so that’s where a lot of people are headed,” she said. 

What about the statewide spring market in general? What about the rest of 2025? 

Verani said so far, the state housing market this year has been a disappointment.  

“We thought it would be stronger,” she said. “The first quarter really didn’t turn out like we thought. But things will improve. That’s what we’re hoping.” 

Masiello said he simply doesn’t see any major changes in 2025 compared to last year – and it’s all because of the continued low supply of homes for sale. 

“There simply isn’t a major reservoir of new inventory that’s coming on the market,” he said. “Large new inventory simply doesn’t exist at this time.”