New 2026 Home Price Record Reflects Ongoing Supply Shortage

By Andrew Cline, NH Journal

This article first appeared at JBartlett.org.

The median sales price for a single-family home in New Hampshire hit a new record in July: $580,000.

At the same time, the number of available homes on the market hit a post-COVID high.

If we have more homes on the market than at any time in the past five years, then how are home prices still surging to new records?

The answer is simple. There still aren’t nearly enough homes on the market.

In July, the New Hampshire Association of Realtors recorded 2,992 homes for sale in the state. The last time the state posted a higher monthly number was June 2021.

But in July 2016, the state had 10,750 homes on the market.

There were 14,056 homes for sale in July 2015, 13,673 in July 2014, and 15,786 in July 2013.

Even then, the state was known to be in a housing shortage. The New Hampshire Association of Realtors in the summer of 2014 noted that the “low supply” of homes was contributing to rising prices.

In short, even with four to five times as many homes on the market as in July 2026, demand was outstripping supply, causing prices to rise.

Today, the gap between supply and demand is tremendous, and that gap is sending prices to new records.

News stories documenting the approval of new home developments in communities around Southern New Hampshire give the impression that construction is booming and, therefore, that supply must be increasing rapidly.

But the historical trends show that we are not in what anyone would call a building boom.

The total number of residential building permits issued in 2025 was 5,030, the highest level since 2006, when 5,677 permits were issued. These include both single-family and multifamily permits.

But more residential building permits were issued in each year of the decade from 1997-2006 than in any year since 2007.

In the entire 1970s and ’80s, the number of annual residential building permits issued fell below 5,000 only three times. And all three of those years — 1975, 1981 and 1982 — were recession years.

From 2007-2024, if one were to judge the New Hampshire economy solely by the number of residential building permits issued, one might conclude that the state had been in a recession the entire time.

In fact, the economy was in recession for only seven quarters during that time: 2008, the first half of 2009, and Q1 of 2020. (The 2008 recession officially began in the last month of 2007, just catching the end of that quarter.)

The chart below, showing building permits issued by month, illustrates just how few residences are being built in New Hampshire.

In the last two years, legislators and the governor have approved a huge slate of bills to reform the state’s housing market so more housing can be built. But those changes take time to have an effect on the market.

And even with these changes, New Hampshire’s housing market remains very heavily regulated, constraining the supply of new homes and apartments, particularly on the less expensive end of the market.

Even with all of the recent improvements, the state has a lot of work left to do.

Andrew Cline is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.