The New Hampshire Association of Realtors has just released the NH Real Estate market data for 2014.
For Immediate Release: January 29, 2015 Contact: Dave Cummings NHAR Director of Communications
New Hampshire Real Estate Market Sees Stabilization in 2014.
After a breakthrough 2013, in which the most New Hampshire homes were sold (14,267) since 2005, the market barely missed that mark (14,208) in 2014 – just a .4 percent drop. But the median price of those sales increased to $227,500 for the 2014, a more than 3 percent increase from the previous year and the third consecutive year of price gains.
Sales volume, meaning the total dollars exchanged in those residential transactions, was a robust 5 percent higher in 2014 than the prior year.
"If 2012 was the year of cautions optimism and 2013 was the year that optimism came to fruition, I think it’s safe to call 2014 the year of stabilization," said NHAR President Maxine Goodhue, an 18-year veteran of the real estate industry. "We’re working within the parameters of a recovered real estate market."
December-only numbers showed an 11 percent increase in New Hampshire residential sales, a 3 percent increase in median sales price and a robust 17 percent in sales volume.
Median price is still significantly below the 2005 peak of $270,000, but what that has meant for the last several years is the ability for buyers who might otherwise be priced out of the market to purchase homes.
"We don’t want everything to immediately return to those levels of 10 or 12 years ago," Goodhue said. "What got us there in the first place was unsustainable growth, and we saw what happened as a result of that growth. We’re slowly, consistently moving back in the right direction, so I’ll take that as a good sign."
Average days on the market dropped 5 percent in 2014 (10 percent in December), to an average of 95 days, while pending sales – a forward-looking indicator based on accepted offers – was ahead by just 0.1 percent for the year but 14 percent in December only.
And months’ supply, which measures the number of months it would take to sell off the current inventory of homes at the average pace of sales of the last 12 months, decreased by 12 percent in December, from 8.2 (in 2013) to 7.2 months (in 2014). Typically, months’ supply between 6 and 8 percent is considered a balanced market, with higher supply pointing to a buyers’ market and less supply to a sellers’ market.
Another sign of the times was in new listings, which was better than 8 percent ahead of the previous year in December.
"It’s certainly a different climate than a few years ago," Goodhue said. "It’s a very active market."
Condominium sales in New Hampshire, meanwhile, trended similarly in 2014, with closed sales slightly ahead (0.3 percent) of the previous year and median price ($168,000) more than 4 percent ahead and sales volume at a 5 percent increase. December-only numbers included a 7 percent increase in sales, a 3 percent drop in median price and an 11 percent increase in sales volume.
Locally, 8 of 10 New Hampshire counties saw residential unit sales increases in 2014, with only Merrimack