Where does home affordability go from here?

Index of affordability in New Hampshire tied for poorest showing in 2025

The term “affordability” is quickly gaining traction as the political hot button issue in the current political climate.

It’s a term that real estate professionals have long used and have long measured in the nexus of home ownership. Today, it’s grown to be part of the lexicon that encompasses just about anything and everything having to do with the expense of day-to-day living, from groceries to gasoline, and health care to child care.

Homes in New Hampshire were less affordable in 2025.

According to New Hampshire Association of Realtors data, the affordability index for 2025 was 58, meaning the median household income in New Hampshire is only 58% of what is required to qualify for the state’s median-priced home under current interest rates.

That 58 tied New Hampshire’s lowest affordability level on record.

An index of 100 means a household has exactly enough money to afford a median priced home. By comparison, the index was as high as 200 in 2013 and last exceeded 100 in 2021.

Where is it likely to go in 2026?

“To meaningfully improve affordability, New Hampshire needs a substantial increase in housing supply of smaller, more attainable homes, not just higher-end construction, which falls outside middle-income families’ reach,” said Joshua Greenwald, the 2026 president of NHAR.

“This will require local zoning easing to allow higher density, faster permitting and fewer barriers to townhomes, condos, accessory dwelling units and moderately sized single-family homes construction,” added Greenwald, owner/broker of Greenwald Realty Group in Keene.

It is an advocacy that the NHAR and other housing stakeholders have been pressing the state Legislature to embrace, with some success in 2025 with the creation of new laws that allow, among other changes, detached accessory dwelling units in communities where they were prohibited.

“The Legislature passed some meaningful legislation last year designed to increase housing inventory, but many of those new laws haven’t even gone into effect, so it is going to take some time for those to be felt in the marketplace. What municipalities need to do is remove roadblocks and financing costs to open additional lanes of travel,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald’s emphasis in 2026 is the need for a more balanced market than what the state has seen.

There was an improved volume of home sales in 2025 along with a slightly expanded supply. But the price of a home also increased in 2025.

The median price of a single-family home in 2025 reached a record $535,000, a 3.9% increase over 2024.

That is the smallest annual increase in statewide median price in the past decade.

Over the past decade, according to NHAR, New Hampshire’s statewide median sale price increased at an average annual rate of 8.5%. The 3.9% increase in 2025 signals a notable slowdown, the NHAR said, noting that market conditions varied widely by region. Carroll, Grafton and Merrimack counties experienced price increases exceeding 6%, while Coos and Sullivan counties saw modest price declines.

“New Hampshire home prices are still rising faster than inflation, but we’re beginning to see evidence that the rate of increase is slowing,” Greenwald said. “That said, the affordability challenge remains severe. The median-priced home in Rockingham County was $670,000 last year. Even with a 10% down payment, a family would need an income of roughly $190,000 to purchase that home. That’s an unrealistic threshold for most working families.”

Here, by county, are the 2025 median prices for a single-family home:

• Belknap $519,000
• Carroll $500,400
• Cheshire $395,000
• Coos $252,000
• Grafton $460,000
• Hillsborough $550,000
• Merrimack $505,000
• Rockingham $670,000
• Strafford $515,000
• Sullivan $385,000

According to the NHAR, Coos and Sullivan counties saw slight declines in median prices in 2025 versus 2024 — less 2% and 1.3%, respectively. Grafton County jumped 7% year over year, while Carroll and Merrimack counties rose 6.3%.

Rockingham remains the most expensive county in the state. With a median price of $670,000, the NHAR notes a household would need roughly $180,000 in annual income, assuming about 10% down, to afford a home there.

It’s even more extreme in the Seacoast region within Rockingham County.

The median sale price for a single-family there in 2025 was $849,900, up 6.2% from 2024, according to new data from the Seacoast Board of Realtors. It takes its sales data from 13 sample communities: Exeter, Greenland, Hampton, Hampton Falls, New Castle, Newfields, Newington, North Hampton, Newmarket, Portsmouth, Rye, Seabrook and Stratham.

The housing affordability issue is not confined to the Granite State.

ATTOM, a national curator of land, property data and real estate analytics, says in a recent report that homes across the country were less affordable than historical averages in almost every county for the fourth quarter of 2025.

It noted a bit of a silver lining: As in New Hampshire, while homes were less affordable than years past in the overwhelming majority of markets, they were more affordable in the fourth quarter of 2025 than the third quarter in 86% (511) of the 594 counties analyzed.

“Many Americans were priced out of buying a home in 2025, and affordability remains worse than historic norms in most markets,” said Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM. “Still, modest, quarter-over-quarter affordability improvements in many markets at the end of the year offered some encouragement. Over the past five years, home price growth has nearly doubled wage growth, meaning home-buying power in 2026 will depend not only on whether prices level off or decline, but also on mortgage rates and broader economic conditions.”

Here in New Hampshire, another factor that might improve availability is lower mortgage interest.

“We also need existing homeowners to feel confident listing their home, which is more likely to happen if mortgage rates come down enough to unlock move-up inventory and incentivize a move,” said Greenwald. “If supply grows faster than demand for multiple months and financing costs ease, prices can stabilize and affordability can finally improve.”

Average mortgage rates in New Hampshire for a 30-year fixed loan are running between 6.15% to 6.29%.

Current expectation is that the Federal Reserve through 2026 will continue to gradually cut interest rates, possibly bringing rates down from their late-2025 levels (around 3.5 to 3.75%) toward the 3 to 3.25% range by year-end.

According to Greenwald, New Hampshire has seen some short-term improvement in terms of inventory. He noted that the 1,607 single-family residential homes on the market at the end of December represented a 16% increase over December 2025.

However, that much inventory only provides 1.5 months’ supply — well below the five to seven months that real estate brokers consider a balanced market.

November 2015 was the last time the state’s month supply exceeded five months.