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If you can afford it, the New Hampshire housing market can feel ultra-competitive. Little inventory on the market means everyone with the cash to take part is chasing after very little, and it shows.
The statewide median single-family sale price was up over 4 percent year-over-year in November, according to The Warren Group, publisher of The Registry Review.
The year-to-date median single-family sale price ended Nov. 30 at $510,000, the most recent data available.
But a new analysis by economists at residential brokerage Redfin found that the state’s biggest municipality, Manchester, is only the 68th most competitive place to buy a home in America.
Its 102.6 percent sale-to-list price ratio, 1.3 months of supply and median of 19 days on market looks relatively ordinary when put up against the likes of the Rochester, New York suburb of Irondequoit. That community has only 0.6 months of supply, a sale-to-list ratio of 119.3 percent and homes spend a median of 8.5 days on market, making it the most competitive housing market in the country.
Other hottest markets include Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Santa Clara, California, in Silicon Valley; Tonawanda, near Buffalo, New York, and Melrose, an inner suburb of Boston.
The analysis used weighted-average data from January to November of 2025.
These cities are relative outliers in the national housing scene, where buyers typically balk at high prices and sellers are content to stay pat, Redfin’s researchers said.
“Homebuyers are facing a very unaffordable market, leaving many in search for anything they can swing,” Asad Khan, a senior economist at Redfin, said in a statement. “Many are choosing lower-cost cities in the Rust Belt and East Coast, where their dollars go farther. But others are still competing at the high end: Competition has recently jumped in the Bay Area as tech-savvy buyers with deep pockets vie for limited supply.”
Khan and his colleagues predicted that Great Lakes cities like Rochester and Buffalo will be the hottest housing markets in 2026, while coastal Florida and Texas will be the slowest thanks in part to over-building in the latter markets in recent years. Nationwide, competition will marginally decrease in 2026, they say, but should improve slowly over time as mortgage rates hold in the low 6 percent range during peak homebuying season.
Lower mortgage rates and higher wages will ease the price pressure somewhat and bring some homebuyers off the sidelines, but many house hunters will remain priced out.
“Competition and affordability are closely connected,” Khan said. “Generally, when one falls, the other rises. As the supply of homes for sale grows and buyers’ buying power improves, we’ll begin to approach more ‘normal’ sales numbers.”
