By BENJAMIN KEPPLE
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
Manchester – New Hampshire's housing market is experiencing a soft landing, according to those with an eye on the real estate field.
Residential homes in New Hampshire are staying on the market longer as sales volume has dipped, according to data from the New Hampshire Association of Realtors. But prices are holding pretty steady.
A total of 2,372 homes were sold in the first quarter of 2007, a drop of 6.1 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, and the average price for those sales dropped 2.5 percent year-over-year, to $292,224. The homes sold had been on the market for an average of 137 days, compared to 104 for those sold in the year-ago quarter.
It's the second year in a row in which the first-quarter sales volume has fallen in New Hampshire, although prices have held steady over the past two years. In the first quarter of 2006, sales fell 8.1 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, but prices actually rose 1.4 percent. Between the first quarter of 2005 and this year, prices rose 0.8 percent.
"These figures represent a soft landing for the New Hampshire real-estate market. In and of themselves, they represent a market where the inventory has risen and power has shifted from sellers to buyers," said Russ Thibeault, president of Applied Economic Research in Laconia.
"This doesn't point to the type of disasterous outcome we experienced in the early 90s," added Thibeault. "It's nonetheless painful for sellers."
Thibeault said the softening seen in New Hampshire's real-estate market reflects national trends. However, he said other parts of the country are faring worse than the Granite State. Those include markets that were frothy due to speculative fervor, such as south Florida, and markets where the economy has been particularly weak, such as around metropolitan Detroit.
"We're doing OK in New Hampshire," Thibeault said.
Stable market
That's a sentiment those in the real-estate industry share.
"There really isn't a huge change in the market. The average price is pretty stable," said Bonnie Guevin, president of the New Hampshire Association of Realtors.
Gail Athas, president of the Greater Manchester-Nashua Board of Realtors, said her group was pretty confident the year would go well for them. She's seen a recent uptick in sales locally, and over the past 90 days, it's taken about three months for homes in each city to close.
Athas predicted the market would start to turn up as buyers and sellers reassess their expectations. Some sellers, she said, have been pricing their homes unrealistically high, while some buyers are operating under the assumption they'll get incredible deals from desperate sellers.
Athas also noted the economy remained strong and interest rates remained relatively low.
"It's not the doom and gloom you read in these (wire service) articles," Athas said.
Some areas in New Hampshire fared better than others this first quarter. Strafford County, for instance, saw a 3.9 percent jump in residential home sales and a 1.9 increase in prices during the first quarter of 2007, compared to the year-ago quarter. But this quarter, it was the only county to enjoy increases in both categories .
Grafton County had a drop of 10.8 percent in residential home sales, while the average price for residential homes fell 7.5 percent. In Cheshire County, sales fell 13.6 percent while the average price fell 4.9 percent. Sales in Carroll County fell 21.5 percent while the average price fell 4.1 percent.
Residential home sales were up 4.9 percent in Rockingham County compared to the first quarter of last year, but the average sale price fell about 5.7 percent. In Hillsborough County, sales fell 10.1 percent and the average sale price fell 2.1 percent.
As for condominium sales, those have also fallen, but prices have held steady. In the first quarter of this year, 880 condos were sold in New Hampshire, compared to 1,007 in the year-ago quarter.
That's a drop of 12.6 percent, and the average condo had spent 123 days on the market, compared to 85 in the year-ago quarter. But average prices rose 3.49 percent, to $209,018.
"That shows that's probably the affordable-housing market," said Guevin. Depending on where one lives, the condo market was a bit brighter.
In Hillsborough County, for instance, sales volume was up 8.7 percent while the average price fell just 0.2 percent.
And while total sales volume fell nearly everywhere, the average sale price generally rose several percentage points. One big outlier was Sullivan County, with a 50 percent jump in condo sales and a 56 percent jump in average sales price.
