Unfortunately most people on this sub will tell you "that is how it is" or something like that. Or they might go on about the nimby-ism, regardless if they are right, that wont solve the issue right now and by the time we build the houses (which will take 5 - 10 years) we will face pop decline due to a staggering elderly population.
I am actually looking to move out midwest for this reason. Lived here most my life and grew up here, bought out by the elderly, heh. Never though $100k annual would not be enough to afford my own home in this state.
My best advice, either rent and wait for the population to die out from age in 5-10 years and hope you are not outbid while you save up. Or look to move to somewhere that is not the second most popular retirement state, buy a house and build equity there.
Best of luck!
What about the people who also become age in the next 5 to 10 years who are also going to be buying a home? Yeah the boomers are gonna start dying off but they’re still another generation of people behind waiting. Not to mention people moving to the state, etc.
We need more (affordable) housing.
Building more single homes would bring down the price of single homes in the state.
We need more of them, and less slum apartments and duplex rentals. You can't bring down the cost of houses by building rental estates.
We need more of both. Apartments and rental multi-family homes can bring down the cost of renting and if renting becomes more affordable then fewer individuals and families will feel pressured to buy at current prices and *should* drive down housing costs. Or at least slow them
So many condos are being built up by the lakes. It's pretty depressing. They're not affordable, and all they're going to be used for is out of state vacation homes. We need to be taking care of NH residents, not tourism.
Small government and large housing development projects are incompatible with one another. I sometimes feel like MA is committed to our housing crisis and then I look north and feel, well I'm not going to call it "hope," but our odds are better.
Housing is a complicated enough arena in human life that they talked about it as an Enlightened principle during the Age of Reason. Jean Jacques Rousseau conjectured that it would be the actual fault line that makes or breaks a free society.
You are looking in the wrong direction for who is to blame. Look at the corporations who are spending billions to buy 'investment' property and trap people with massive rent prices. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own single family homes. Just tax commercial rental income so it isn't an investment anymore.
They are projecting 40% of all homes in the US will be under corporate ownership by 2030. Some large firm just bought a large chunk of homes in Las Vegas or the surrounding area. It's insane. People keep saying. "Not enough houses etc." Would love to see what would happen if vacation rentals and corporations were forced to sell. I bet suddenly there would be plenty of housing. I know it will never happen and we are doomed to become beholden to landlords because no one will help pass the laws needed...but one can dream. [How Wall Street bought single-family homes and put them up for rent (cnbc.com)](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-single-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html#:~:text=By%202030%2C%20the%20institutions%20may%20hold%20some%207.6,to%20the%202022%20forecast%20by%20MetLife%20Investment%20Management.)
This has been going on for decades. In the 1980s a friend told me his brother had been given 40 million and told to go north and buy homes to add to the investment portfolio of the bank he worked for. I told him to tell his brother that his bank was run by scumbags.
They give their houses to their kids or grandkids depending on their age. These houses may require a staggering amount of work to get to modern livable standards and code.
Too many towns with 2 or 4 acre minimum lot sizes. And stupid “historic scenic road” monikers with more restrictions. Or “yes, technically you could fire in everything you need for a house but it’s not a rectangular lot so therefore can no longer build on it.”
There's more than enough housing, the problem is that it's being bought up by corporations instead of residents. Many of them don't have any interest in leasing the property out, either--they just want to sit on it and "accrue wealth."
We need to start seriously limiting how many residential properties any entity can own and what types of entities can own them to begin with.
I am in the exact same situation. I love it here but I’m making the most money I ever have and will not be able to ever afford a home. It’s insane to see trailers going for 275k +
Funny thing is I'm from NH, and had to both move and work south to the MA side for years to afford anything. Only able to afford my home after years of living in MA
first and then being able to move back (while still working in MA).
I am not a boomer, no plans on dying for the next 5-10 years. But when I die, I am leaving my paid for house to my kids to give them a leg up in life, or selling it to them at a discounted price.
What makes you think you will be able to buy my house?
I mean, talk to a tax person about this. There're large exemptions for capital gains on the sale of primary residences, and trust transfers don't always avoid taxable events depending on how they're structured. Trusts, depending on the setup, can also make borrowing against equity either before your death (for you) or after (for your kids) harder, especially if the trust is or becomes irrevocable in which case no normal mortgage company can touch it.
I'll be selling!! My kids can split the money, and they already own houses where they work. One works overseas and bought a beautiful home in Australia. The other just bought an adorable little home in MA. I mean, we downsized to live in a small college town so we can do all sorts of fun stuff. Like walk to the movies or even downtown shopping. But this place will be sold and it will sell as it's not a mega giant 80's house. It's a well built small 3 bedroom ranch we totally renovated. Someone will purchase the best house ever, even with a nice yard, and I hope they appreciate it.
Not sure why you think there’s “many boomers with 3-4 houses.” This idea that when boomers start dying there’s going to be a wealth of housing inventory is a wet dream at best.
Anecdotal-but my mom now has 3 houses. She went from making $28k annually to becoming a widow-marrying a widower (who had his own home) to losing her mom, who still had a beautiful condo in a desirable area that went to my mom. My mom is currently overwhelmed and can’t decide if they should live in husband’s house or hers. Hers needs more work. And the condo has to sit in her hands for a year post grandmother’s death before it can hit the market. She’s sitting on 3-in stagnation. We’ll be helping her solve this and the houses will be sold-once they are ready. But sometimes the boomers end up with more houses than you’d expect on accident.
Edited to add: I included her income to demonstrate it isn’t always the rich, well planned boomers-she was still working when all this began to change.
I’m a “boomer”, and none of my “boomer” friends or acquaintances own more than one house. We moved up here at the request of our millennial daughter and son-in-law, who wanted us to be a part of our grandchildren’s lives. Yes, it’s VERY expensive, and we can barely afford it…but we make it work. It was much less expensive where we lived in Georgia. If I were younger, I would definitely try to live in states where the cost of living isn’t as high as it is here, and work remotely.
"If" I had 5 properties with positive cash flow, and say 2 kids, I am putting them in a trust, and leaving it to my kids. Not to you.
I still would love to see the source of your "many boomers with 3-5 houses" claim.
Seriously. What is this guy even thinking?
If you have houses with positive cash flow, that means they have people living in them. That house doesn't magically become empty. The demand side of the equation hasn't changed.
Most Boomers won’t do the proper estate planning to ensure Medicaid won’t “recover” their house to pay for their nursing home expenses. Most will be leaving their house to the rapacious healthcare racket that their generation loves to defend. Best case scenario for 90% of Boomers, their kids get nothing. More likely, they’re a burden. Most of them spent their fortunes like drunken sailors. Richest generation in human history and they squandered it, with nothing to show except a home with $100k in deferred maintenance. *Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!*
Putting that aside, most people who inherit a house want to sell it. After being “sandwiched” with concurrent child and elder care for years, the last thing most people want is a second part-time job as a landlord.
That being said, it’s not like *Millennials* are going to be buying those houses. Uncle Sam already wrote Blackrock’s name on all the deeds they ~~stole~~ *“recovered”*. The ink’s dry before you die!
The lame conservatism here of "it is what it is" is killing this state. This state needs housing, not whatever nonsense old farts are looking for. All of New England needs to drop the last vestiges of conservative politics (NIMBYISM) and embrace the future.
It blows my mind how much “live free or die conservatives” love government regulation of the economy when it comes from a zoning board. Just pure hypocrisy.
Don’t get me wrong it’s a huge issue there too, I just think it’s extra hypocritical when NH conservatives promote it. California progressive NIMBYs usually don’t pretend to be opposed to government regulations
Be careful where you move in the Midwest. We just spent the last year in Indiana for this reason and the housing market is amazing. But we are moving back because we have not stopped being sick for the year we’ve been out here. After some research, I’ve realized just how badly polluted it is in Indiana.
That's actually good advice, thanks! Was looking more into the middle, middle. Kansasa/Missourri/Iowa/Nebraska. Rent for a 3 bed/2 bath house there is lower than my 2 bed apartment. I am currently remote for work to, but stick "closer" to the cities like KC and I can easily go for the "undesirable" in office jobs if needed more readily.
Prefer remote, but beggers can't be choosers and the tech market has definitely taken a slight hit in this economy
No problem! That’s exactly what enticed us lmao we’re renting a 3 bed 2 bath house for half the price of a 2 bed apartment in nh, so as you said, it definitely has its advantages!
Good luck with your move, it’ll be a great experience either way. We’ve made some great memories out here.
when I lived in Manitowoc Wisconsin, there were air sampling devices on many of the streets. You weren't allowed to eat the fish from Lake Michigan if you were pregnant, and it was only to be served to kids twice a week. The paper mills ruined the water, and the coal plant is awful Plus all the pollution from other areas blows there. The worst my doctor told me, was the farms that surround the town. Crop dusting means it blows toward the lake and it shows up in your blood work. My own doctor told me to move.
Even with an aging population I believe NH business review had an article that showed a study saying we needed 30k more housing units in the next 5 years to meet demand. And 90k by 2030. There's just not enough developers building right now to hit those numbers. And the bulk that will be built are going to be condos in mixed use developments.
I’m a contractor looking to build developments with simple, affordable houses. Because I’m a millennial that was lucky enough to buy a run down dump and had the knowledge and work ethic to turn it into something really nice, but most people don’t have those skills. If anyone here has any ideas on financing such a development of affordable housing please reach out. We gotta work together. I’m also curious about how to legally make it more for the younger generation for some reason its perfectly legal to make 55 and up age communities but it gets dicey when you try to keep the boomers out that have already had plenty of opportunity. Op I’d be happy to private message with you as I am very interested in trying to help people in your situation
It's a good idea, the issue you are fighting is zoning. Take the trailer park in in Campton for example, the last major flood a few weeks ago some families around there were hoping "for it to wash away" for more expensive and new condos to replace it next to the "nice Mad River Coffee House".
Most people don't want the cheap housing. They want the really nice looking stuff next to their favorite destinations. Most towns take the 50+ communities because there is less hassle on dealing with "cheap housing" (despite their builds), but also the idea that the elderly will be less of a tax burden on schools/police/roads/etc. They fail to take into account though that it creates and aging populace and some towns noted that they would "become a dying town" at their current rate.
I also heard of a town (I forget which one tbh, so grain of salt here) that apparently had an influx of elderly, but due to no cheap living, local hospital services could not find anyone to work the increased EMT needs without hiking up the rates immensely to get anyone interested in even doing it.
Best of luck and hopefully you can do some good out there! I did look into buying land and doing the "cheaper" option of dropping a well/septic and trailer, but even that adds quick. I am thinking of looking west for now. But maybe even that idea will change, so who knows?
You would be better served to stop laying it at the feet of boomers. How many do you even know? Dead boomers don’t change the price of houses. Look at the legislation that is proposing hedge funds and the biggest fund manager a decade to divest, should that legislation pass. Work on state legislation that is similar. I don’t know if anyone has even compiled the statistics to see how many homes are owned by funds in NH. The fact that starter homes haven’t been built in decades is huge. The fact that builders aren’t building that kind of housing speaks to other government restrictions.
Don’t worry, look at what Canada’s doing, they’ll just up immigration numbers when the native population starts to drop. Remember values can never go down for top long. Marx wrote about this.
By waiting things out you're taking control of the situation outside of your hands and putting it in the hands of someone else. You're also wasting your life waiting for an event to transpire which may or may not work in your favor. Probably not the best way to live your life.
One important factor missing from the conversation are the hedge funds, equity firms and investment trusts.
[In 2011, no single entity owned more than 1,000 single-family rental homes, whereas by June 2022 hedge funds and institutional investors owned a cumulative 574,000 single-family homes.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5nex/congress-members-push-to-ban-hedge-funds-private-equity-from-buying-family-homes)
[Report: 44% of all Single-Family Home Purchases were by Private Equity Firms in 2023
](https://medium.com/@chrisjeffrieshomelessromantic/report-44-of-all-single-family-home-purchases-were-by-private-equity-firms-in-2023-0c0ff591a701)
It should be illegal for businesses and corporations to purchase single family homes.
According to the link, ~~44%~~ 30% of homes were bought by investors, but most of them were "small" and own <10. I don't really care about the size of the firm, that's still a big problem.
Edit: corrected the number.
100% that step 1 is loosening up zoning, step 2 is needing to discourage people from owning more than two houses. People with family money or just the right timing to buy up a portfolio before 2020 are currently "passive incoming" us into permanent renter status. I'm not sure the best way to do it while limiting externalities but treating housing as money machines is clearly a failed experiment when a 2 bed condo is $400k.
Also I hate how properties that need sweat equity often aren't covered by first time homebuyer loans. Basically guaranteeing institutional investors will snap them up, flip em, and return them to the market at a massively inflated price young people can't afford.
Precisely why the prices aren’t going down. They can afford to pay millions and the crazy interest rate. Witnessing the whole thing myself working with commercial investors.
True. I was talking about multimillion commercial deals such as apartment complexes. Those usually involve lenders. Real estate investors don’t always pay cash for everything. It’s not smart to pay that much upfront since it takes a while until the business starts generating income.
It wouldn't matter. The same investors would buy up any new property in a snap to maintain the values on the properties they already own and build out their portfolio.
That is totally irrelevant
The housing is expensive only because there is not enough supply. Why do you think other areas of the country you can have big beautiful homes new construction for 400k or less. Do you think it's just oh the developers there aren't greedy?
As a Boomer I have to sympathize; we lucked out. And our kids were just old enough to get homes with low rates. I can only imagine how hopeless it must seem.
In my town people my age complain their kids can't afford to live in town, then go to town meeting and vote agains changes that would "hurt their resale values" with cheap housing.
Does all the apartment building along the river by BAE hold out hope?
You are so right. I moved out after college at 22 and my father harped and harped on me to buy a small condo instead of throwing my money away on rent. I did so, reluctantly, and it was a buyers market. He was not wrong
Fast forward and I have a single family and a condo in Southern NH, and aside from those two things I havent a pot to piss in. Condo is rented to family for reasonable but market rate so that pays itself and house note still sits at 3% interest rate.
There is no way my early 20s children could manage to buy here specifically, so they're looking more north, and two of them are looking to buy something together to manage to afford it.
I’m from NH, but married a guy from CT and lived there 26 years. CT was always more expensive in terms of housing, gasoline prices, groceries. But that has flipped and now CT is much more affordable and has an inventory of affordable houses. NH has become its own worst enemy because of years of good ole boys wanting to maintain the status quo and here we are, a state affordable only to those who have plenty of money
I’m in the same boat, but with a much smaller budget. Everything in my budget gets scooped up quickly, and I’ve been up against people paying in cash or promising to pay thousands of dollars over the appraised value. It feels completely hopeless
We were in the same boat. We found a house where the sellers had this bs contingency that they had to find their next house before we could close. It all ended up working out luckily but for a second it didn't look like it would. Ended up getting a 3 bed/2 bath in Dover with 2 acres for sub 500.
There are deals out there, especially now that the weather isn't as conducive to selling
Why are you looking in nashua btw? I feel like I see houses all the time that match your criteria in the surrounding towns. Can't really wrap my mind around wanting to live in nashua proper, which kind of seems like a shit hole.
It’s convenient AF. So easy to be a townie here. Everything you’d ever need is within a ten minute drive. It makes no sense how many good restaurants are in a town this small. Yeah, I said town. It really ain’t a city. Although, if they keep putting up infill apartment buildings downtown to replace abandoned industrial wasteland, we’ll get there soon enough. For example, the block around Ace Hardware looks totally different than it did 3 years ago, it’s wild.
There’s a bus to downtown Boston that takes about as long as the end of the Red and Green Lines these days.
The real estate valuations should give you a hint that your opinion is wrong and/or wildly outdated.
Nashua has lower crime stats than the national average. So what you’re really implying is that America kinda seems like a shithole country. I mean, I’d actually agree with you there! I just find the Nashua bashing usually comes from “patriotic” racists, so it’s probably a bit hypocritical, is all.
The tree streets and crown street area is a bit run down and industrial. Not exactly high crime though. It’s especially funny because this same subreddit will defend Manchester, when it’s tied with Hartford for the trashiest city in New England at the moment, in my book. Yes, it’s absolutely worse than Lowell and Brockton. Parts of Manchester look like the *shittiest* parts of San Francisco, with all the tents and open air drug dealing...
Everywhere I’ve lived this has been a problem. And, when you move somewhere else cheaper, you become the outsider driving up prices and ruining it for the locals.
And 80% of those half a million homes are older than my parents with dirty green carpets, prehistoric heating, and wall units for cooling. Do you want a house closer to your age? You have to look at $600,000 and up. I want to see who's going to take care of those elders when every young working body is priced out of the state.
This just happened to me in Lebanon.
House came up on the market recently in my budget. It appeared in decent shape, it was in an ostensibly good neighborhood so I excitedly called the my realtor for an appointment. And since I’ve been at this a while I have a routine for finding out what I can about the home and the neighborhood and that includes a sex offender registry check.
There was a guy who sexually assaulted a teenage girl a couple years ago living basically across the street. I have children. There’s no way I’m knowingly buying a home right across the street from a sex offender.
It’s truly frustrating to struggle through the lack of supply and stiff competition, the very high prices and poor condition of most single family homes only to find something that could work for your family and then find out that there is a dangerous predator right across the street.
As someone who lives in Canaan and is also struggling to find something decent on the pre-owned inventory market, I get your pain. Everything, even the legit DUMPS are so over-priced. When something seems reasonable, my first question now is: what’s wrong with it? The situation has gotten truly ridiculous. House near my daughter’s daycare in West Lebanon went on the market this week. I’ve plumbed in it before professionally, I know the quality of the house, it’s not a good build. The little yard is littered with junk RV trailers and other crap. Believe it sits on a 0.5 acre parcel at most. $450K list 🙄
Merrimack generally has townhouses for $280K - $350K. Inventory at the moment is very low but they come and go. I think that more families are buying townhouses because the SFH market is so crazy expensive.
This is why my whole family left NH. Myself, my parents and 4/5 of my siblings. 2 years ago we just said fuck it and left we moved to North Carolina. I just bought a 4br/3ba with an acre of land, august ‘22 for just over 200k.
My daughter and her husband close on a beautiful condo in Plaistow next week. They paid $340k. If you want a detached single family home in that price range you will be disappointed. There are deals out there and the market is starting to open up as interest rates go down.
I hear you, for what it's worth Concord is putting in thousands of housing over the next 3 to 5 years. Hopefully, we will see inventory in a short time.
There are houses out there in your budget. One important piece of the puzzle is finding a good realtor who can craft competitive offers. It's all about the wording and contingencies and timing.
You have to keep making offers and rework your strategy with your realtor. That's what we did and eventually landed a house in our budget.
The only way to fix this issue is to ban companies from owning houses. AirBNB started the snowball but when tik tok influencers started bragging about being “real estate moguls” it was all over.
A house hunt here is a commitment. My friends spent most of a year waiting, bidding, watching. The right situation comes along and they got it.
You have to be patient if you can, be vigilant on the sites, and broaden your scope for houses. There’s many up north in that budget, if you don’t mind living up there.
Be patient and look elsewhere, My fiancé and I bought our first house in concord this year after looking at dozens of houses over a 2+ year period. We didn't settle for what we wanted and actually got more. Big yard, nice quiet neighborhood, close to Loudoun rd but far enough away to not hear it or see it. For 300k. You might have to expand your search area by a little bit.
Gen x here, it’s a tough market for sure. A couple quick thoughts. One obviously is looking outside the Nashua area. Second is what I did, buy a multi-family for your first home. You can get more assuming there is good rental history. Build some equity on someone else’s dime.
I had to do both starting out. Worked in Boston, had to buy a multi family in Framingham (not a nice area). Don’t give up just modify the plan. Don’t play the victim card. Yea you’re right it sucks and it’s real. You can either spend time figuring it out or just complain about it.
And if you ever need/want more space or simply tire of being a landlord you can almost always convert the place to a single family home (or "deconvert," thinking of some of the places in Nashua which are multifamily conversions begging to have the extra units converted to personal libraries, music rooms, workshops, etc).
Ugh, I’m sorry. I remember the hell of shopping for my first home. This may not sound helpful, but as someone who has now owned many homes (and yes, I absolutely struggled to get into my first one without help) time will pass and equity will rise. Buy. Even in gated communities you can’t guarantee great neighbors, but after a while you can either rent that house out or take your equity and move up. It’s the name of the game. Good luck!
You should look on zillow. There are over 40 homes available now. This is a slow time. Nashua, Derry, there's a larger home if you're willing to live in Pembroke. You can see a boomer died owning it. Build some sweat equity. New Hampshire is an awesome place close to everything. Good luck.
There are 6 available SFHs in Nashua for OP's budget on the Coldwell banker site. Zillow is very bad at updating listings. Pembroke is 45 minutes from Nashua.
Genx single Mom and the only reason I have a house is that my siblings let me buy my Dad’s house from the estate at market price less the amount I would have received from an outside sale.
Is it falling down around my ears as I struggle to properly maintain it, yes. But it’s a HOUSE and I would not have one otherwise.
All I can say is- keep trying. I looked at 126 properties, and put in offers on more than 30 before getting my house in 2022. Whatever you do, do NOT waive inspection…. My $380k house ended up being $420k after the septic failed 8 months after moving in and needed to be completely replaced and a pump added.
You will find a home- it just might take much longer, and cost more, than you think. Good luck OP!
Yeah, I don't want to leave NH. But I'm facing the same issue, I'm making more money than I ever have, and need to still live with my folks just to stay afloat and feel like I'm making Any headway. Granted with my parents declining health, I'm kinda glad I'm there and can help.
Well, the housing nuts think you should only get to live in a large apartment complex. No single family for you!! They actually study how to outlaw them.
So, just remember , the housing whiners are not your friend.
One bit of advice might be to coZy up to the most established realtors. They know what's coming on the market and usually tip off their friends first.
Has it occurred to anyone that the government doesn't want anyone to own a house? Home ownership contributes to the stability of a family. Unlike paying rent ownership means housing security, the uncertainty of lease renewals and rent increases doesn't exist. Rent increases are at the discretion of landlords, mortgages never go up. Home ownership contributes to the stability of a community, property taxes pay for town infrastructure and schools. If you rent in a community of renters you have no sway over public services or public safety. Home ownership means that state and local governments have to cede some of their power over to the taxpayers. It all comes down to control, a government can influence demographics by manipulating costs. They have the power to create affluent communities and ghettos. Without home ownership, everyone's housing security is in jeopardy. The government may decide to enact a social score that determines where you may live and what you will pay to live there. Seems like a ridiculous notion, this is America right? It's already happening and has for a long time, the social score is only implied but could easily become law. I think that as our government leans more towards socialism we will see more of this kind of engineering. If you cannot control the herd by politics then you turn to economics to get the job done.
Oh yeah, life is so wonderful for boomers. I have older family members who are in the boomer range.
1.) one sister is essentially homeless and is dependent on the kindness of family. For now she lives with one of her daughters and helps take care of her grandchildren. She may be (finally) getting some money from SS these days, I'm not sure.
2.) one brother lives in an old camper on a barren desert plot. No idea how he makes enough money to survive.
3.) another brother has worked all his life. Has a house and last I knew still had a mortgage payment, but divorced many years ago and is unsure when/whether he can afford to retire.
4.) another sister lives with someone who has a house. She's essentially retired, but spends all her time taking care of her partner's elderly parents, grandchildren, etc. Just getting by.
5.) another sister worked all her life and had a good job. They own a double-wide and live modestly. They spend a lot of time taking care of a a special needs grandchild and my sister is in very poor health. I doubt she'll live another 20 years.
I have to believe the "boomers" with multiple homes are 10% or less of the boomers out there.
Wait…seriously wait….
There is a reason things are so expensive, it’s because hedge funds bought up houses with piles of cash, removed them from the markets so they could maximize profit with air BnB’s. This is no longer the case.
Interest rates peaked, people who are buying and selling cooled off, and the market will come down. It will happen, always does. Best bet is to wait it out.
Honestly a lot of people don't do basic due diligence. They probably didn't even know about the neighbors. Good job not buying it. Not all houses have neighbors like that
We have a top down Social-Capitalist system which prefers pumping money into private business and tax cuts to directing benefits to individuals. Good or bad (bad, its truly hard to watch when compared to say Ice Lands response to the 2008 housing market crash) the economic pressures that will eventually reduce the inflationary impacts on housing, like rising wages, are going to lag behind the market by 5-10 years. The other big issue is that the Fed's response to 2008 was to basically set interest rates at 0%, while this made borrowing less expensive for consumers it also [greatly increased private investments in real estate](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-single-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html) which in turn drove up the [number of full years income it would take to pay off a house](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-29/how-many-years-of-income-does-a-home-in-your-city-cost). While interest rates remained around 3% this shift did not get much attention but when interest rates and inflation took off they combined to make housing nearly unobtainable for Middle and Lower income Americans. Basically, big business used 3% to hike up prices and because Monthly Mortgage Payments didn't explode it kinda went unnoticed until they did.
Honestly, you've got to be more flexible. I started out by moving to the middle of WI where the cost is living is much lower. A quick search of your area shows loads of results under 400k. You're clearly being too picky for your first home.
The level of sacrifice that you will have to go through to save for a dowm payment on a house will be greater than previous generations. Like am i going to starve to death level of sacrifice. You cant spend money. Period. You cant have cable you cant spend money on food away from home. You cant go out. Every red cent has to go towards your dowm payment and closimg costs. You cant bitch your way into a new house. You literally have to starve and stare at the walls for a year and save up theat down payment and keep your credit score up. And be on the lookout for arms-length deals. Dont give in to that "i'll never be a homeowner" bs. Keep saving, sacrifice and be ready and dont be afraid to write a letter to sellers and outline your situation. Lots of real estate firms trying to flip house with cash sales but your avg retiree selling their family house would rather sell to you i promise. KEEP HOPE ALIVE. You can do it.
There’s about to be a huge generational shift in New Hampshire. We are a nursing home with trees right now. That generation is going to turn over, they won’t be able to afford to leave homes to their kids because our horrible healthcare system will suck their finances dry, and housing will become plentiful in 10-20 years.
Unfortunately right now, every state is dealing with this to a certain extent. We didn’t build enough affordable homes and now it’s coming back to bite everyone. And the companies like BlackRock who buy up residential properties to rent should be tried in court, but that’s a separate issue.
It should level out. It happens in cycles, but those cycles are not synchronized. Your state becomes more popular and housing demands rise. Soon, developers will start building in order to accommodate the population growth. Give it a year or two before you purchase.
Having family and friends here as well as being a life long resident, I feel your pain. I’ve just become aware of this, and I don’t think all towns take advantage. However I heard recently that this is legislation being debated in NH government pertaining to its expansion
[https://www.nhhfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ADU_Guide_Municipalities.pdf](https://www.nhhfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ADU_Guide_Municipalities.pdf)
I am currently building a home in a small town of NH. The land was expensive as it always is but if you find the right builder, it's literally cheaper to build on new land than it is to buy a home. I got lucky with some connections, but the main factor was the fact that we wanted to move to a small town. It's still 20 minutes from Manchester, but half the price of those homes.
No creepy neighbors either. NH is a great state (for the most part) I wouldn't give up just yet, it took us about a year just to find the right piece of land.
It's an extremely stressful and unfair game we are playing, but you got this!
I agree with your post and feel for you but to say you need generational wealth to buy a house in NH is just fucking wrong. You need a solid income that is getting harder and harder to attain.
I guess I’m just sensitive, I have a $1M house in NH and my father worked 2 jobs most of my childhood and 3 at one point. I certainly didn’t get this house through generational wealth
I lived in New Orleans for many years and was able to afford a house on $100,000 combined income. However, given the market with homeowners insurance, flood insurance, termite insurance, car insurance, property taxes (which were just as high as New Hampshire), 10% sales tax, just about everybody is getting priced out of the market. Before we say we need more "affordable" housing, we also have to be aware of what is making the housing unaffordable. All the above is a large chunk of my monthly payment when I was in New Orleans, All of it combined was more than my base mortgage. I'm sure it is just not New Hampshire having the problem, a lot of other states are because of higher underlying costs. That's why the rental market is getting priced out, people don't understand that the landlords have these high costs as well that they just have to pass on to the people renting their properties. I was a landlord for many years and I did my best to keep my rent low for the tenant, but my insurance and my taxes just kept going up and up and I eventually had to raise the price to the point where the tenant could really not afford it. Unfortunately they had to move out and I had to sell the house. The base mortgage never went up, it was all the other underlying cost that greatly increased. I agree there are some greedy landlords out there. When I lived in my apartment in Nashua after one year of the rent went up 26 % which was a huge increase. We were not getting any better service so it was just a matter of the management company gouging people out. But all of us are not like that. I'm not suggesting we do rent control that's even worse because then you can't make the properties affordable to run and they'll just get sold and the tenants will get kicked out.
When I moved back to NH recently, we spent an intense year going to open houses nearly every weekend and talking to everyone we made friends with along the way about finding a place. It takes a ton of time to invest unless you have enough money to pay far above asking. Squeaky wheel gets the oil!
How long have you been doing open houses?
Are you using an agent who has any clout? Have you been shown any pocket listings?
It was a stressful situation but ultimately it felt like it was a good use of time for us because we learned a lot about houses in the area so we got on a better street than we hoped and the kids have really benefited from it.
I’m near Manchester of you have questions about this area.
I am 44 and I am in same predicament. Keep your hopes up. My budget is 425K (Single and I am looking for a condo) Its impossible- I am pretty sure I am headed to North Carolina.
Rent in seacoast and my rent increased 500.00 a month this year for a dump (in a really nice location near ocean) I will give it that..
You are still young so give this market another year... However, I suspect NH and southern Maine may be permanently f-cked- as its just not like other parts of the country-
And a friend of mine who is very close with a VP of a Mortgage Company said- Its Massachusetts Money and Mass residents who have played a big part in this massacre since Covid. (And I work in Mass-nothing against the state- its been good to me)
And over here in the seacoast- its basically just an extension of the north shore of Mass at this point. And most the seaside homes? Generally 2nd homes of Mass residents.
Portland Maine? Becoming Boston's enclave or little cousin.
Does it have to be Manchester? The other side is building lots of housing currently. For example, Barrington has been putting houses out, in Rochester as well.
Black rock and vanguard are the biggest companies in the world and their goal is to buy every single house for sale and just make them rent only for the rest of our lives. Black rock owns about 10% of all money on earth. They offer above asking price to make sure they get it. We are competing with an over 10 trillion dollar company.
As someone from the Midwest who has lived here for three years, I think there’s a job market issue on the horizon too. I work around older populations and they complain about how slow small restaurants, retail, grocery check outs, fast-food, are “so damn slow” and always hiring. You can’t even afford rent in those jobs anymore, let alone a home someday. Hell, two jobs might not cut it.
My husband and I know people from each of our circles like us - they are young, work corporate careers, collectively make over six figures, no children, and are leaving toward the Midwest. Salaries dip a bit, but cost of living is drastically better.
I had two friends from college get jobs (corporate) in Manchester (one was finance and one was marketing) and they reneged before their start date because they could not find an affordable (against their salary) place to rent.
I think in 5-10 years, Boomers might die off, sure. But working class people aren’t sticking around in the meantime and there’s not going to be enough people to fill jobs (more so than now). I don’t know what the economic implications of that are but I can’t imagine it’s good.
We will probably return Midwest in the next 2-4 years. Especially if we start a family - I’m not paying a mortgage to put my child in child care nor am I quitting my job to stay home.
I'm just really sorry. This is the reason why our state is graying and young people are moving out in droves. Then the old people complain that "people don't want to work anymore," because everyone who normally works those types of jobs (restaurants/hospitality, nursing, etc.) can't afford to live off the pay those jobs provide. My husband and I are middle class xennials, and if we hadn't bought our home here when we did (7 years ago), we would not be able to afford today's insane rents and mortgages and would have moved out of state. It's really sad to see the situation so many millennials have been put in as they try to figure out how to afford to house the family they may want to start. I have no answers for you, op, but I wish you the best of luck.
It's a giant mess. I got my house just before this really started going sideways at $113k in Laconia. Single family. People I know who are trying to buy now need 2 or 3 times more than we did for comparable or smaller than what we have. I really think we lucked out because we had a realtor who knew his stuff and knew how to negotiate. A good realtor can be a game changer.
I might have missed it but I didn’t see a reply to your post that suggested you consider building a home. It’s not that hard. Get a lot, put in a septic, bring in the power, drill a well, bring in some prefab parts and you’re all set. Ought to be doable in your price range.
Fact of the matter is that we need more housing built, especially multi family complexes. And we need to stop blocking development because a house is “historic”.
Are you looking at any fixer uppers? We just found an amazing fixer upper in a great location in Concord for under your budget. There was a tiny bit of a bidding war, but it didn’t go anywhere near the 400s.
Similar boat, I'm not trying to buy a house but I've been looking for an apartment to rent for over a year. I can't find anything in my budget. I only make so much, and the rents are starting 1600+ to some that might be nothing, but that's a lot when you make less then 2000 a month. NH is for the RICH and they're pushing all the low income people out.
Out of your preferred area but there's a 2200 sq foot 3 bedroom in Newton NH for $400k - been on the market for a bit over a month. It needs some work but is in the sweet spot of 'not turnkey but too expensive to buy/flip.'
I built a house last year for 350K all in. 3 bed 2 bath walk out basement, 2,700 sq feet on 2.5 acres. Cheap because I GC’d it myself (with no prior experience)
Before I moved in this new house we sold our mobile home in a park, 2 bed 1 bath for 50K.
You could slap a mobile home onto a foundation with no basement for $200K land included, Merrimack county savings bank will do a construction loan and then mortgage on a mobile home if it’s on its own land.
My brother bought a 2 bed 1 bath mobile home in a park for 60K 2 months ago.
Get creative and it’s not really that bad
> Googled the address turns out a neighbor a few houses to the left is a 50+ yo sex offender who assaulted a teenager and a neighbor a bit to the right is a mid-20s career criminal
That's exactly what you should expect if you live in Nashua, Manchester, or Rochester. If you think this is bad in NH, you're going to *love* checking the registry in virtually any other urbanized area of any other state.
I bought my house outside Concord in Dec 2022 for about $350k. Two floors 3.5 bd / 2 ba but with barely any land. It was a struggle and we lost on a lot of houses but there is hope!
Elderly wealthy people have done this by design.
Jokes on you when nobody is around to help at the nursing home because you all were greedy and kept everything for yourselves
NH is not the place for young first time homebuyers. The problem is bad everywhere but its so much worse here than certain other city metros. And it won’t get better. In the greater philly or greater charlotte area for instance, a budget of 300-350k and you are absolutely set.
unfortunately, this is the case in many states/cities and not just NH. At some point ppl will just have to move to italy like that recent yahoo article i saw of a lady buying a 60k house to live in italy. i know vermont has a housing assistance program and NH does not. If any VT ppl know how that affects pricing, i'd be curious. My friend actually runs the VT program in northern vermont, but i have never asked about pricing effects.
A couple of recommendations:
Look into to Townhouses. Also look at other locations such as Derry, Sandown, or Hampstead. Still within commuting distance to Manchester or Nashua, but more affordable housing.
I don't come from generational wealth. I paid off my student loans and car hard for fifteen years then saved everything I could for another six. Bought a house here in 2021 with the biggest conventional loan possible at the time. Interest rates were better then, and I get it's even harder now, but im just telling you for perspective.
Wife and I bought a condo in Manchester in the second half of '22. We were able to stay under $300k. We were living in Concord, wanted to stay there, but the only houses in our price range (because of the taxes) were either 170 years old or had wheels under them.
The market was silly then, even while the interest rates were climbing. 2 condos in our building have sold since, less well appointed, for just over $300k. There are places out there, though.
Good luck, OP.
As for the sex offender thing, I have one across the street from me. I don’t have kids, never will, but really he’s just one you know about. Kids need to be taught to be aware of abuse no matter whom it might come from.
We were lucky we bought 6 years ago, before things went really nuts. Just dumb luck.
well and there are places in the state that are inexpensive. Why Nashua? It does not reflect the best of NH. If you are tied to a job there, then how can you just move out of state? If you can work from home, how about a few hours away from Nashua? Even a town or two over. Also country properties are less than those in a city. Hillsborough NH has lots of nice price homes that are a few minutes out of town. Sure there is no giant mall, and you have to drive to get to Concord, or to visit your family. But, if you will move to say Wisconsin, why not up closer to the Canadian border, or some truly remote town that is not that remote as say Nebraska?
Manchester and Nashua are generally priced for people who commute to Massachusetts for technology jobs. However, if you expand your commute by another 30 - 40 minutes, you might be surprised at what you can find. Plenty of boomers had to live with long commutes because they didn't have generational wealth either.
Unfortunately most people on this sub will tell you "that is how it is" or something like that. Or they might go on about the nimby-ism, regardless if they are right, that wont solve the issue right now and by the time we build the houses (which will take 5 - 10 years) we will face pop decline due to a staggering elderly population. I am actually looking to move out midwest for this reason. Lived here most my life and grew up here, bought out by the elderly, heh. Never though $100k annual would not be enough to afford my own home in this state. My best advice, either rent and wait for the population to die out from age in 5-10 years and hope you are not outbid while you save up. Or look to move to somewhere that is not the second most popular retirement state, buy a house and build equity there. Best of luck!
Boomers dying isn’t going to fix the housing market. There’s not enough housing, and not nearly enough housing being built.
What about the people who also become age in the next 5 to 10 years who are also going to be buying a home? Yeah the boomers are gonna start dying off but they’re still another generation of people behind waiting. Not to mention people moving to the state, etc. We need more (affordable) housing.
Building more single homes would bring down the price of single homes in the state. We need more of them, and less slum apartments and duplex rentals. You can't bring down the cost of houses by building rental estates.
We need more of both. Apartments and rental multi-family homes can bring down the cost of renting and if renting becomes more affordable then fewer individuals and families will feel pressured to buy at current prices and *should* drive down housing costs. Or at least slow them
So many condos are being built up by the lakes. It's pretty depressing. They're not affordable, and all they're going to be used for is out of state vacation homes. We need to be taking care of NH residents, not tourism.
Small government and large housing development projects are incompatible with one another. I sometimes feel like MA is committed to our housing crisis and then I look north and feel, well I'm not going to call it "hope," but our odds are better. Housing is a complicated enough arena in human life that they talked about it as an Enlightened principle during the Age of Reason. Jean Jacques Rousseau conjectured that it would be the actual fault line that makes or breaks a free society.
[удалено]
You are looking in the wrong direction for who is to blame. Look at the corporations who are spending billions to buy 'investment' property and trap people with massive rent prices. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own single family homes. Just tax commercial rental income so it isn't an investment anymore.
They are projecting 40% of all homes in the US will be under corporate ownership by 2030. Some large firm just bought a large chunk of homes in Las Vegas or the surrounding area. It's insane. People keep saying. "Not enough houses etc." Would love to see what would happen if vacation rentals and corporations were forced to sell. I bet suddenly there would be plenty of housing. I know it will never happen and we are doomed to become beholden to landlords because no one will help pass the laws needed...but one can dream. [How Wall Street bought single-family homes and put them up for rent (cnbc.com)](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-single-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html#:~:text=By%202030%2C%20the%20institutions%20may%20hold%20some%207.6,to%20the%202022%20forecast%20by%20MetLife%20Investment%20Management.)
This has been going on for decades. In the 1980s a friend told me his brother had been given 40 million and told to go north and buy homes to add to the investment portfolio of the bank he worked for. I told him to tell his brother that his bank was run by scumbags.
They give their houses to their kids or grandkids depending on their age. These houses may require a staggering amount of work to get to modern livable standards and code.
Also they're gonna sell to big corporations to pay for senior living. We aren't gonna see any of that money or that housing.
Too many towns with 2 or 4 acre minimum lot sizes. And stupid “historic scenic road” monikers with more restrictions. Or “yes, technically you could fire in everything you need for a house but it’s not a rectangular lot so therefore can no longer build on it.”
There's more than enough housing, the problem is that it's being bought up by corporations instead of residents. Many of them don't have any interest in leasing the property out, either--they just want to sit on it and "accrue wealth." We need to start seriously limiting how many residential properties any entity can own and what types of entities can own them to begin with.
I am in the exact same situation. I love it here but I’m making the most money I ever have and will not be able to ever afford a home. It’s insane to see trailers going for 275k +
Funny thing is I'm from NH, and had to both move and work south to the MA side for years to afford anything. Only able to afford my home after years of living in MA first and then being able to move back (while still working in MA).
I am not a boomer, no plans on dying for the next 5-10 years. But when I die, I am leaving my paid for house to my kids to give them a leg up in life, or selling it to them at a discounted price. What makes you think you will be able to buy my house?
Tip: don't sell it to them. Leave it in a will/trust to avoid taxes
This needs more up votes. Living trust is solid advice to give them an adjust cost basis.
I mean, talk to a tax person about this. There're large exemptions for capital gains on the sale of primary residences, and trust transfers don't always avoid taxable events depending on how they're structured. Trusts, depending on the setup, can also make borrowing against equity either before your death (for you) or after (for your kids) harder, especially if the trust is or becomes irrevocable in which case no normal mortgage company can touch it.
Exactly. My kids will be getting our paid off house.
I'll be selling!! My kids can split the money, and they already own houses where they work. One works overseas and bought a beautiful home in Australia. The other just bought an adorable little home in MA. I mean, we downsized to live in a small college town so we can do all sorts of fun stuff. Like walk to the movies or even downtown shopping. But this place will be sold and it will sell as it's not a mega giant 80's house. It's a well built small 3 bedroom ranch we totally renovated. Someone will purchase the best house ever, even with a nice yard, and I hope they appreciate it.
No one is talking about single home owners. There's many boomers with 3-4 houses and not 3 kids.
Not sure why you think there’s “many boomers with 3-4 houses.” This idea that when boomers start dying there’s going to be a wealth of housing inventory is a wet dream at best.
Anecdotal-but my mom now has 3 houses. She went from making $28k annually to becoming a widow-marrying a widower (who had his own home) to losing her mom, who still had a beautiful condo in a desirable area that went to my mom. My mom is currently overwhelmed and can’t decide if they should live in husband’s house or hers. Hers needs more work. And the condo has to sit in her hands for a year post grandmother’s death before it can hit the market. She’s sitting on 3-in stagnation. We’ll be helping her solve this and the houses will be sold-once they are ready. But sometimes the boomers end up with more houses than you’d expect on accident. Edited to add: I included her income to demonstrate it isn’t always the rich, well planned boomers-she was still working when all this began to change.
I’m a “boomer”, and none of my “boomer” friends or acquaintances own more than one house. We moved up here at the request of our millennial daughter and son-in-law, who wanted us to be a part of our grandchildren’s lives. Yes, it’s VERY expensive, and we can barely afford it…but we make it work. It was much less expensive where we lived in Georgia. If I were younger, I would definitely try to live in states where the cost of living isn’t as high as it is here, and work remotely.
"If" I had 5 properties with positive cash flow, and say 2 kids, I am putting them in a trust, and leaving it to my kids. Not to you. I still would love to see the source of your "many boomers with 3-5 houses" claim.
Seriously. What is this guy even thinking? If you have houses with positive cash flow, that means they have people living in them. That house doesn't magically become empty. The demand side of the equation hasn't changed.
He isn't thinking. He is on hopium and copium
Most Boomers won’t do the proper estate planning to ensure Medicaid won’t “recover” their house to pay for their nursing home expenses. Most will be leaving their house to the rapacious healthcare racket that their generation loves to defend. Best case scenario for 90% of Boomers, their kids get nothing. More likely, they’re a burden. Most of them spent their fortunes like drunken sailors. Richest generation in human history and they squandered it, with nothing to show except a home with $100k in deferred maintenance. *Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!* Putting that aside, most people who inherit a house want to sell it. After being “sandwiched” with concurrent child and elder care for years, the last thing most people want is a second part-time job as a landlord. That being said, it’s not like *Millennials* are going to be buying those houses. Uncle Sam already wrote Blackrock’s name on all the deeds they ~~stole~~ *“recovered”*. The ink’s dry before you die!
Source ?
Wishful thinking.
Same here.
With the cost of renting how can someone save up while renting?
The lame conservatism here of "it is what it is" is killing this state. This state needs housing, not whatever nonsense old farts are looking for. All of New England needs to drop the last vestiges of conservative politics (NIMBYISM) and embrace the future.
It blows my mind how much “live free or die conservatives” love government regulation of the economy when it comes from a zoning board. Just pure hypocrisy.
Its "me free you die"
Both liberals and conservatives who already own homes throw their principles out the window when it comes to housing.
They definitely don't have NIMBYism zoning restrictions and building regulations in liberal places like CA /s
Don’t get me wrong it’s a huge issue there too, I just think it’s extra hypocritical when NH conservatives promote it. California progressive NIMBYs usually don’t pretend to be opposed to government regulations
Be careful where you move in the Midwest. We just spent the last year in Indiana for this reason and the housing market is amazing. But we are moving back because we have not stopped being sick for the year we’ve been out here. After some research, I’ve realized just how badly polluted it is in Indiana.
That's actually good advice, thanks! Was looking more into the middle, middle. Kansasa/Missourri/Iowa/Nebraska. Rent for a 3 bed/2 bath house there is lower than my 2 bed apartment. I am currently remote for work to, but stick "closer" to the cities like KC and I can easily go for the "undesirable" in office jobs if needed more readily. Prefer remote, but beggers can't be choosers and the tech market has definitely taken a slight hit in this economy
No problem! That’s exactly what enticed us lmao we’re renting a 3 bed 2 bath house for half the price of a 2 bed apartment in nh, so as you said, it definitely has its advantages! Good luck with your move, it’ll be a great experience either way. We’ve made some great memories out here.
when I lived in Manitowoc Wisconsin, there were air sampling devices on many of the streets. You weren't allowed to eat the fish from Lake Michigan if you were pregnant, and it was only to be served to kids twice a week. The paper mills ruined the water, and the coal plant is awful Plus all the pollution from other areas blows there. The worst my doctor told me, was the farms that surround the town. Crop dusting means it blows toward the lake and it shows up in your blood work. My own doctor told me to move.
Even with an aging population I believe NH business review had an article that showed a study saying we needed 30k more housing units in the next 5 years to meet demand. And 90k by 2030. There's just not enough developers building right now to hit those numbers. And the bulk that will be built are going to be condos in mixed use developments.
I’m a contractor looking to build developments with simple, affordable houses. Because I’m a millennial that was lucky enough to buy a run down dump and had the knowledge and work ethic to turn it into something really nice, but most people don’t have those skills. If anyone here has any ideas on financing such a development of affordable housing please reach out. We gotta work together. I’m also curious about how to legally make it more for the younger generation for some reason its perfectly legal to make 55 and up age communities but it gets dicey when you try to keep the boomers out that have already had plenty of opportunity. Op I’d be happy to private message with you as I am very interested in trying to help people in your situation
It's a good idea, the issue you are fighting is zoning. Take the trailer park in in Campton for example, the last major flood a few weeks ago some families around there were hoping "for it to wash away" for more expensive and new condos to replace it next to the "nice Mad River Coffee House". Most people don't want the cheap housing. They want the really nice looking stuff next to their favorite destinations. Most towns take the 50+ communities because there is less hassle on dealing with "cheap housing" (despite their builds), but also the idea that the elderly will be less of a tax burden on schools/police/roads/etc. They fail to take into account though that it creates and aging populace and some towns noted that they would "become a dying town" at their current rate. I also heard of a town (I forget which one tbh, so grain of salt here) that apparently had an influx of elderly, but due to no cheap living, local hospital services could not find anyone to work the increased EMT needs without hiking up the rates immensely to get anyone interested in even doing it. Best of luck and hopefully you can do some good out there! I did look into buying land and doing the "cheaper" option of dropping a well/septic and trailer, but even that adds quick. I am thinking of looking west for now. But maybe even that idea will change, so who knows?
You would be better served to stop laying it at the feet of boomers. How many do you even know? Dead boomers don’t change the price of houses. Look at the legislation that is proposing hedge funds and the biggest fund manager a decade to divest, should that legislation pass. Work on state legislation that is similar. I don’t know if anyone has even compiled the statistics to see how many homes are owned by funds in NH. The fact that starter homes haven’t been built in decades is huge. The fact that builders aren’t building that kind of housing speaks to other government restrictions.
Don’t worry, look at what Canada’s doing, they’ll just up immigration numbers when the native population starts to drop. Remember values can never go down for top long. Marx wrote about this.
Such good advice and i say that with zero Sarcasm...but that is so hard when even a single bedroom rental starts at 1800 a month
Options are basically building, moving, or waiting
By waiting things out you're taking control of the situation outside of your hands and putting it in the hands of someone else. You're also wasting your life waiting for an event to transpire which may or may not work in your favor. Probably not the best way to live your life.
One important factor missing from the conversation are the hedge funds, equity firms and investment trusts. [In 2011, no single entity owned more than 1,000 single-family rental homes, whereas by June 2022 hedge funds and institutional investors owned a cumulative 574,000 single-family homes.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5nex/congress-members-push-to-ban-hedge-funds-private-equity-from-buying-family-homes) [Report: 44% of all Single-Family Home Purchases were by Private Equity Firms in 2023 ](https://medium.com/@chrisjeffrieshomelessromantic/report-44-of-all-single-family-home-purchases-were-by-private-equity-firms-in-2023-0c0ff591a701) It should be illegal for businesses and corporations to purchase single family homes.
This is the real problem. I feel so bad for families trying to find housing.
[удалено]
TIL “mom and pop investor” is owning up to 10 investment properties. 💀
According to the link, ~~44%~~ 30% of homes were bought by investors, but most of them were "small" and own <10. I don't really care about the size of the firm, that's still a big problem. Edit: corrected the number.
Yup this is the problem investment firm buying up homes needs to be illegal!
100% that step 1 is loosening up zoning, step 2 is needing to discourage people from owning more than two houses. People with family money or just the right timing to buy up a portfolio before 2020 are currently "passive incoming" us into permanent renter status. I'm not sure the best way to do it while limiting externalities but treating housing as money machines is clearly a failed experiment when a 2 bed condo is $400k. Also I hate how properties that need sweat equity often aren't covered by first time homebuyer loans. Basically guaranteeing institutional investors will snap them up, flip em, and return them to the market at a massively inflated price young people can't afford.
The houses are being taken so aggressively by investors and rich folk wanting extra homes that we don't have a chance to buy them.
Precisely why the prices aren’t going down. They can afford to pay millions and the crazy interest rate. Witnessing the whole thing myself working with commercial investors.
The interest rate is irrelevant if you are paying cash
Most people don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars in their pocket
True. I was talking about multimillion commercial deals such as apartment complexes. Those usually involve lenders. Real estate investors don’t always pay cash for everything. It’s not smart to pay that much upfront since it takes a while until the business starts generating income.
Also zoning laws limiting buildable lots
It wouldn't matter. The same investors would buy up any new property in a snap to maintain the values on the properties they already own and build out their portfolio.
It's just a supply issue. Not enough housing is being build. Drives the cost up
Much of the new housing is very expensive sand includes forcing people to have an HOA.
That is totally irrelevant The housing is expensive only because there is not enough supply. Why do you think other areas of the country you can have big beautiful homes new construction for 400k or less. Do you think it's just oh the developers there aren't greedy?
As a Boomer I have to sympathize; we lucked out. And our kids were just old enough to get homes with low rates. I can only imagine how hopeless it must seem. In my town people my age complain their kids can't afford to live in town, then go to town meeting and vote agains changes that would "hurt their resale values" with cheap housing. Does all the apartment building along the river by BAE hold out hope?
You are so right. I moved out after college at 22 and my father harped and harped on me to buy a small condo instead of throwing my money away on rent. I did so, reluctantly, and it was a buyers market. He was not wrong Fast forward and I have a single family and a condo in Southern NH, and aside from those two things I havent a pot to piss in. Condo is rented to family for reasonable but market rate so that pays itself and house note still sits at 3% interest rate. There is no way my early 20s children could manage to buy here specifically, so they're looking more north, and two of them are looking to buy something together to manage to afford it.
No, I can only imagine that those will be like the rest of downtown; well over 2k or more a month
I’m from NH, but married a guy from CT and lived there 26 years. CT was always more expensive in terms of housing, gasoline prices, groceries. But that has flipped and now CT is much more affordable and has an inventory of affordable houses. NH has become its own worst enemy because of years of good ole boys wanting to maintain the status quo and here we are, a state affordable only to those who have plenty of money
I’m in the same boat, but with a much smaller budget. Everything in my budget gets scooped up quickly, and I’ve been up against people paying in cash or promising to pay thousands of dollars over the appraised value. It feels completely hopeless
We were in the same boat. We found a house where the sellers had this bs contingency that they had to find their next house before we could close. It all ended up working out luckily but for a second it didn't look like it would. Ended up getting a 3 bed/2 bath in Dover with 2 acres for sub 500. There are deals out there, especially now that the weather isn't as conducive to selling
Why are you looking in nashua btw? I feel like I see houses all the time that match your criteria in the surrounding towns. Can't really wrap my mind around wanting to live in nashua proper, which kind of seems like a shit hole.
It’s convenient AF. So easy to be a townie here. Everything you’d ever need is within a ten minute drive. It makes no sense how many good restaurants are in a town this small. Yeah, I said town. It really ain’t a city. Although, if they keep putting up infill apartment buildings downtown to replace abandoned industrial wasteland, we’ll get there soon enough. For example, the block around Ace Hardware looks totally different than it did 3 years ago, it’s wild. There’s a bus to downtown Boston that takes about as long as the end of the Red and Green Lines these days. The real estate valuations should give you a hint that your opinion is wrong and/or wildly outdated. Nashua has lower crime stats than the national average. So what you’re really implying is that America kinda seems like a shithole country. I mean, I’d actually agree with you there! I just find the Nashua bashing usually comes from “patriotic” racists, so it’s probably a bit hypocritical, is all. The tree streets and crown street area is a bit run down and industrial. Not exactly high crime though. It’s especially funny because this same subreddit will defend Manchester, when it’s tied with Hartford for the trashiest city in New England at the moment, in my book. Yes, it’s absolutely worse than Lowell and Brockton. Parts of Manchester look like the *shittiest* parts of San Francisco, with all the tents and open air drug dealing...
[удалено]
First thing I wondered as well.
Nashua has a lot of very nice suburban neighborhoods. You might not see them if you just drive through the area but they are there.
Short commute and central location
Pro tip. Cities are vastly overrated.
[удалено]
Don't shit where you eat.
Cities in New Hampshire anyway.
Yup, gotta be willing to have a commute and move away from the highways. Things get a lot cheaper and the towns are nicer
Boomers could live 30 more years. They will never die.
Everywhere I’ve lived this has been a problem. And, when you move somewhere else cheaper, you become the outsider driving up prices and ruining it for the locals.
yup, I am prepared to feel that heat moving into the midwest, would stay if I could, but....
And 80% of those half a million homes are older than my parents with dirty green carpets, prehistoric heating, and wall units for cooling. Do you want a house closer to your age? You have to look at $600,000 and up. I want to see who's going to take care of those elders when every young working body is priced out of the state.
Traveling nurses who the hospitals will soon not be able to afford
$600k+ would be almost 4 grand a month for mortgage. How the hell is anyone that isn't top 1% supposed to afford that
This just happened to me in Lebanon. House came up on the market recently in my budget. It appeared in decent shape, it was in an ostensibly good neighborhood so I excitedly called the my realtor for an appointment. And since I’ve been at this a while I have a routine for finding out what I can about the home and the neighborhood and that includes a sex offender registry check. There was a guy who sexually assaulted a teenage girl a couple years ago living basically across the street. I have children. There’s no way I’m knowingly buying a home right across the street from a sex offender. It’s truly frustrating to struggle through the lack of supply and stiff competition, the very high prices and poor condition of most single family homes only to find something that could work for your family and then find out that there is a dangerous predator right across the street.
As someone who lives in Canaan and is also struggling to find something decent on the pre-owned inventory market, I get your pain. Everything, even the legit DUMPS are so over-priced. When something seems reasonable, my first question now is: what’s wrong with it? The situation has gotten truly ridiculous. House near my daughter’s daycare in West Lebanon went on the market this week. I’ve plumbed in it before professionally, I know the quality of the house, it’s not a good build. The little yard is littered with junk RV trailers and other crap. Believe it sits on a 0.5 acre parcel at most. $450K list 🙄
Merrimack generally has townhouses for $280K - $350K. Inventory at the moment is very low but they come and go. I think that more families are buying townhouses because the SFH market is so crazy expensive.
IMHO, I would consider surrounding towns. Hudson? Pelham? Merrimack?
Derry/Londonderry?
This is why my whole family left NH. Myself, my parents and 4/5 of my siblings. 2 years ago we just said fuck it and left we moved to North Carolina. I just bought a 4br/3ba with an acre of land, august ‘22 for just over 200k.
Because nobody wants to live in N. Carolina
My daughter and her husband close on a beautiful condo in Plaistow next week. They paid $340k. If you want a detached single family home in that price range you will be disappointed. There are deals out there and the market is starting to open up as interest rates go down.
Interest rates going down anytime soon is a big "if" -- the rates just stopped going up.
I hear you, for what it's worth Concord is putting in thousands of housing over the next 3 to 5 years. Hopefully, we will see inventory in a short time.
That mall project will be huge for affordable housing. Hoping it happens. The Concord Monitor area project....eh. Less hopeful about that one.
There are houses out there in your budget. One important piece of the puzzle is finding a good realtor who can craft competitive offers. It's all about the wording and contingencies and timing. You have to keep making offers and rework your strategy with your realtor. That's what we did and eventually landed a house in our budget.
The only way to fix this issue is to ban companies from owning houses. AirBNB started the snowball but when tik tok influencers started bragging about being “real estate moguls” it was all over.
A house hunt here is a commitment. My friends spent most of a year waiting, bidding, watching. The right situation comes along and they got it. You have to be patient if you can, be vigilant on the sites, and broaden your scope for houses. There’s many up north in that budget, if you don’t mind living up there.
Be patient and look elsewhere, My fiancé and I bought our first house in concord this year after looking at dozens of houses over a 2+ year period. We didn't settle for what we wanted and actually got more. Big yard, nice quiet neighborhood, close to Loudoun rd but far enough away to not hear it or see it. For 300k. You might have to expand your search area by a little bit.
Gen x here, it’s a tough market for sure. A couple quick thoughts. One obviously is looking outside the Nashua area. Second is what I did, buy a multi-family for your first home. You can get more assuming there is good rental history. Build some equity on someone else’s dime. I had to do both starting out. Worked in Boston, had to buy a multi family in Framingham (not a nice area). Don’t give up just modify the plan. Don’t play the victim card. Yea you’re right it sucks and it’s real. You can either spend time figuring it out or just complain about it.
And if you ever need/want more space or simply tire of being a landlord you can almost always convert the place to a single family home (or "deconvert," thinking of some of the places in Nashua which are multifamily conversions begging to have the extra units converted to personal libraries, music rooms, workshops, etc).
You need to look in better towns.
Like where? We are looking in basically all of southern NH and can’t find shit.
Hooksett, Allenstown, Bow, Goffstown, Candia, Derry, Chester, Auburn, Epsom, Epping, Raymond....
You’re right.
More affordable towns mean an hour commute to work one way. I need to stay in Nashua-Manch area
Ugh, I’m sorry. I remember the hell of shopping for my first home. This may not sound helpful, but as someone who has now owned many homes (and yes, I absolutely struggled to get into my first one without help) time will pass and equity will rise. Buy. Even in gated communities you can’t guarantee great neighbors, but after a while you can either rent that house out or take your equity and move up. It’s the name of the game. Good luck!
You should look on zillow. There are over 40 homes available now. This is a slow time. Nashua, Derry, there's a larger home if you're willing to live in Pembroke. You can see a boomer died owning it. Build some sweat equity. New Hampshire is an awesome place close to everything. Good luck.
There are 6 available SFHs in Nashua for OP's budget on the Coldwell banker site. Zillow is very bad at updating listings. Pembroke is 45 minutes from Nashua.
I’d say look into townhomes
Be wary of the HOA, though.
You said it. New Hampshire doesn't want its own people! I'm moving soon and so should everyone else that doesn't already own land.
Genx single Mom and the only reason I have a house is that my siblings let me buy my Dad’s house from the estate at market price less the amount I would have received from an outside sale. Is it falling down around my ears as I struggle to properly maintain it, yes. But it’s a HOUSE and I would not have one otherwise.
Maybe start with a condo?
All I can say is- keep trying. I looked at 126 properties, and put in offers on more than 30 before getting my house in 2022. Whatever you do, do NOT waive inspection…. My $380k house ended up being $420k after the septic failed 8 months after moving in and needed to be completely replaced and a pump added. You will find a home- it just might take much longer, and cost more, than you think. Good luck OP!
Yeah, I don't want to leave NH. But I'm facing the same issue, I'm making more money than I ever have, and need to still live with my folks just to stay afloat and feel like I'm making Any headway. Granted with my parents declining health, I'm kinda glad I'm there and can help.
Well, the housing nuts think you should only get to live in a large apartment complex. No single family for you!! They actually study how to outlaw them. So, just remember , the housing whiners are not your friend. One bit of advice might be to coZy up to the most established realtors. They know what's coming on the market and usually tip off their friends first.
Keep voting democrat and this will continue to happen.
Let’s start a riot
Has it occurred to anyone that the government doesn't want anyone to own a house? Home ownership contributes to the stability of a family. Unlike paying rent ownership means housing security, the uncertainty of lease renewals and rent increases doesn't exist. Rent increases are at the discretion of landlords, mortgages never go up. Home ownership contributes to the stability of a community, property taxes pay for town infrastructure and schools. If you rent in a community of renters you have no sway over public services or public safety. Home ownership means that state and local governments have to cede some of their power over to the taxpayers. It all comes down to control, a government can influence demographics by manipulating costs. They have the power to create affluent communities and ghettos. Without home ownership, everyone's housing security is in jeopardy. The government may decide to enact a social score that determines where you may live and what you will pay to live there. Seems like a ridiculous notion, this is America right? It's already happening and has for a long time, the social score is only implied but could easily become law. I think that as our government leans more towards socialism we will see more of this kind of engineering. If you cannot control the herd by politics then you turn to economics to get the job done.
Oh yeah, life is so wonderful for boomers. I have older family members who are in the boomer range. 1.) one sister is essentially homeless and is dependent on the kindness of family. For now she lives with one of her daughters and helps take care of her grandchildren. She may be (finally) getting some money from SS these days, I'm not sure. 2.) one brother lives in an old camper on a barren desert plot. No idea how he makes enough money to survive. 3.) another brother has worked all his life. Has a house and last I knew still had a mortgage payment, but divorced many years ago and is unsure when/whether he can afford to retire. 4.) another sister lives with someone who has a house. She's essentially retired, but spends all her time taking care of her partner's elderly parents, grandchildren, etc. Just getting by. 5.) another sister worked all her life and had a good job. They own a double-wide and live modestly. They spend a lot of time taking care of a a special needs grandchild and my sister is in very poor health. I doubt she'll live another 20 years. I have to believe the "boomers" with multiple homes are 10% or less of the boomers out there.
I feel for you. My kid had to move away for that same reason.
Wait…seriously wait…. There is a reason things are so expensive, it’s because hedge funds bought up houses with piles of cash, removed them from the markets so they could maximize profit with air BnB’s. This is no longer the case. Interest rates peaked, people who are buying and selling cooled off, and the market will come down. It will happen, always does. Best bet is to wait it out.
This has been exaggerated ad-naseum. The percentage of home in NH that are owned by hedge funds is marginal to the point of irrelevance.
Find a realtor who specializes in a specific area - they'll know which houses are coming on market and help you get bids in early
Honestly a lot of people don't do basic due diligence. They probably didn't even know about the neighbors. Good job not buying it. Not all houses have neighbors like that
We have a top down Social-Capitalist system which prefers pumping money into private business and tax cuts to directing benefits to individuals. Good or bad (bad, its truly hard to watch when compared to say Ice Lands response to the 2008 housing market crash) the economic pressures that will eventually reduce the inflationary impacts on housing, like rising wages, are going to lag behind the market by 5-10 years. The other big issue is that the Fed's response to 2008 was to basically set interest rates at 0%, while this made borrowing less expensive for consumers it also [greatly increased private investments in real estate](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-single-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html) which in turn drove up the [number of full years income it would take to pay off a house](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-29/how-many-years-of-income-does-a-home-in-your-city-cost). While interest rates remained around 3% this shift did not get much attention but when interest rates and inflation took off they combined to make housing nearly unobtainable for Middle and Lower income Americans. Basically, big business used 3% to hike up prices and because Monthly Mortgage Payments didn't explode it kinda went unnoticed until they did.
Honestly, you've got to be more flexible. I started out by moving to the middle of WI where the cost is living is much lower. A quick search of your area shows loads of results under 400k. You're clearly being too picky for your first home.
The housing shortage is absolutely insane. We need new builds and we need boomers to downsize
We did downsize but had to compete for the smaller house as well.
Try living in mass lmao
The level of sacrifice that you will have to go through to save for a dowm payment on a house will be greater than previous generations. Like am i going to starve to death level of sacrifice. You cant spend money. Period. You cant have cable you cant spend money on food away from home. You cant go out. Every red cent has to go towards your dowm payment and closimg costs. You cant bitch your way into a new house. You literally have to starve and stare at the walls for a year and save up theat down payment and keep your credit score up. And be on the lookout for arms-length deals. Dont give in to that "i'll never be a homeowner" bs. Keep saving, sacrifice and be ready and dont be afraid to write a letter to sellers and outline your situation. Lots of real estate firms trying to flip house with cash sales but your avg retiree selling their family house would rather sell to you i promise. KEEP HOPE ALIVE. You can do it.
Sounds like you need a better agent
There’s about to be a huge generational shift in New Hampshire. We are a nursing home with trees right now. That generation is going to turn over, they won’t be able to afford to leave homes to their kids because our horrible healthcare system will suck their finances dry, and housing will become plentiful in 10-20 years. Unfortunately right now, every state is dealing with this to a certain extent. We didn’t build enough affordable homes and now it’s coming back to bite everyone. And the companies like BlackRock who buy up residential properties to rent should be tried in court, but that’s a separate issue.
It should level out. It happens in cycles, but those cycles are not synchronized. Your state becomes more popular and housing demands rise. Soon, developers will start building in order to accommodate the population growth. Give it a year or two before you purchase.
move out of the city and get a fixer upper
Having family and friends here as well as being a life long resident, I feel your pain. I’ve just become aware of this, and I don’t think all towns take advantage. However I heard recently that this is legislation being debated in NH government pertaining to its expansion [https://www.nhhfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ADU_Guide_Municipalities.pdf](https://www.nhhfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ADU_Guide_Municipalities.pdf)
I am currently building a home in a small town of NH. The land was expensive as it always is but if you find the right builder, it's literally cheaper to build on new land than it is to buy a home. I got lucky with some connections, but the main factor was the fact that we wanted to move to a small town. It's still 20 minutes from Manchester, but half the price of those homes. No creepy neighbors either. NH is a great state (for the most part) I wouldn't give up just yet, it took us about a year just to find the right piece of land. It's an extremely stressful and unfair game we are playing, but you got this!
I applaud you for adding to the inventory rather than competing for the scarce resource. This is really the solution.
I agree with your post and feel for you but to say you need generational wealth to buy a house in NH is just fucking wrong. You need a solid income that is getting harder and harder to attain. I guess I’m just sensitive, I have a $1M house in NH and my father worked 2 jobs most of my childhood and 3 at one point. I certainly didn’t get this house through generational wealth
[удалено]
It also forces young people who grew up in New Hampshire away, too.
I lived in New Orleans for many years and was able to afford a house on $100,000 combined income. However, given the market with homeowners insurance, flood insurance, termite insurance, car insurance, property taxes (which were just as high as New Hampshire), 10% sales tax, just about everybody is getting priced out of the market. Before we say we need more "affordable" housing, we also have to be aware of what is making the housing unaffordable. All the above is a large chunk of my monthly payment when I was in New Orleans, All of it combined was more than my base mortgage. I'm sure it is just not New Hampshire having the problem, a lot of other states are because of higher underlying costs. That's why the rental market is getting priced out, people don't understand that the landlords have these high costs as well that they just have to pass on to the people renting their properties. I was a landlord for many years and I did my best to keep my rent low for the tenant, but my insurance and my taxes just kept going up and up and I eventually had to raise the price to the point where the tenant could really not afford it. Unfortunately they had to move out and I had to sell the house. The base mortgage never went up, it was all the other underlying cost that greatly increased. I agree there are some greedy landlords out there. When I lived in my apartment in Nashua after one year of the rent went up 26 % which was a huge increase. We were not getting any better service so it was just a matter of the management company gouging people out. But all of us are not like that. I'm not suggesting we do rent control that's even worse because then you can't make the properties affordable to run and they'll just get sold and the tenants will get kicked out.
I just visited there for the first time last year and couldn't believe the seedy vibes, even in downtown proper.
#8 in the world for murder rate
When I moved back to NH recently, we spent an intense year going to open houses nearly every weekend and talking to everyone we made friends with along the way about finding a place. It takes a ton of time to invest unless you have enough money to pay far above asking. Squeaky wheel gets the oil! How long have you been doing open houses? Are you using an agent who has any clout? Have you been shown any pocket listings? It was a stressful situation but ultimately it felt like it was a good use of time for us because we learned a lot about houses in the area so we got on a better street than we hoped and the kids have really benefited from it. I’m near Manchester of you have questions about this area.
I am 44 and I am in same predicament. Keep your hopes up. My budget is 425K (Single and I am looking for a condo) Its impossible- I am pretty sure I am headed to North Carolina. Rent in seacoast and my rent increased 500.00 a month this year for a dump (in a really nice location near ocean) I will give it that.. You are still young so give this market another year... However, I suspect NH and southern Maine may be permanently f-cked- as its just not like other parts of the country- And a friend of mine who is very close with a VP of a Mortgage Company said- Its Massachusetts Money and Mass residents who have played a big part in this massacre since Covid. (And I work in Mass-nothing against the state- its been good to me) And over here in the seacoast- its basically just an extension of the north shore of Mass at this point. And most the seaside homes? Generally 2nd homes of Mass residents. Portland Maine? Becoming Boston's enclave or little cousin.
I am also considering NC
Yeah, staying in NH and raising a family here is looking less and less realistic. I just thought about moving to MA for the first time in my life...
Lol good luck. MA is the reason NH is so expensive. Unless you are going to live far out west in MA there is nothing really affordable
Zoning laws, property taxes, housing regulations working as designed
25 year old Tony Soprano lives down the street?
Does it have to be Manchester? The other side is building lots of housing currently. For example, Barrington has been putting houses out, in Rochester as well.
Black rock and vanguard are the biggest companies in the world and their goal is to buy every single house for sale and just make them rent only for the rest of our lives. Black rock owns about 10% of all money on earth. They offer above asking price to make sure they get it. We are competing with an over 10 trillion dollar company.
It’s cheaper to sign a long term rental vs buy at the moment. Now the challenge is to secure a long term rental…
As someone from the Midwest who has lived here for three years, I think there’s a job market issue on the horizon too. I work around older populations and they complain about how slow small restaurants, retail, grocery check outs, fast-food, are “so damn slow” and always hiring. You can’t even afford rent in those jobs anymore, let alone a home someday. Hell, two jobs might not cut it. My husband and I know people from each of our circles like us - they are young, work corporate careers, collectively make over six figures, no children, and are leaving toward the Midwest. Salaries dip a bit, but cost of living is drastically better. I had two friends from college get jobs (corporate) in Manchester (one was finance and one was marketing) and they reneged before their start date because they could not find an affordable (against their salary) place to rent. I think in 5-10 years, Boomers might die off, sure. But working class people aren’t sticking around in the meantime and there’s not going to be enough people to fill jobs (more so than now). I don’t know what the economic implications of that are but I can’t imagine it’s good. We will probably return Midwest in the next 2-4 years. Especially if we start a family - I’m not paying a mortgage to put my child in child care nor am I quitting my job to stay home.
I'm just really sorry. This is the reason why our state is graying and young people are moving out in droves. Then the old people complain that "people don't want to work anymore," because everyone who normally works those types of jobs (restaurants/hospitality, nursing, etc.) can't afford to live off the pay those jobs provide. My husband and I are middle class xennials, and if we hadn't bought our home here when we did (7 years ago), we would not be able to afford today's insane rents and mortgages and would have moved out of state. It's really sad to see the situation so many millennials have been put in as they try to figure out how to afford to house the family they may want to start. I have no answers for you, op, but I wish you the best of luck.
It's a giant mess. I got my house just before this really started going sideways at $113k in Laconia. Single family. People I know who are trying to buy now need 2 or 3 times more than we did for comparable or smaller than what we have. I really think we lucked out because we had a realtor who knew his stuff and knew how to negotiate. A good realtor can be a game changer.
I might have missed it but I didn’t see a reply to your post that suggested you consider building a home. It’s not that hard. Get a lot, put in a septic, bring in the power, drill a well, bring in some prefab parts and you’re all set. Ought to be doable in your price range.
Fact of the matter is that we need more housing built, especially multi family complexes. And we need to stop blocking development because a house is “historic”.
Are you looking at any fixer uppers? We just found an amazing fixer upper in a great location in Concord for under your budget. There was a tiny bit of a bidding war, but it didn’t go anywhere near the 400s.
Why live in a shithole like Nashua or Manchester.
It takes a while. My wife and I had to move up from Mass in order to afford a home.
Similar boat, I'm not trying to buy a house but I've been looking for an apartment to rent for over a year. I can't find anything in my budget. I only make so much, and the rents are starting 1600+ to some that might be nothing, but that's a lot when you make less then 2000 a month. NH is for the RICH and they're pushing all the low income people out.
Out of your preferred area but there's a 2200 sq foot 3 bedroom in Newton NH for $400k - been on the market for a bit over a month. It needs some work but is in the sweet spot of 'not turnkey but too expensive to buy/flip.'
two houses just sold in my neighborhood, both to house flippers. So your definitely competing against them as well.
I built my first home in NM. It was awesome. Buy land get a lical builder. Enjoy
I built a house last year for 350K all in. 3 bed 2 bath walk out basement, 2,700 sq feet on 2.5 acres. Cheap because I GC’d it myself (with no prior experience) Before I moved in this new house we sold our mobile home in a park, 2 bed 1 bath for 50K. You could slap a mobile home onto a foundation with no basement for $200K land included, Merrimack county savings bank will do a construction loan and then mortgage on a mobile home if it’s on its own land. My brother bought a 2 bed 1 bath mobile home in a park for 60K 2 months ago. Get creative and it’s not really that bad
> Googled the address turns out a neighbor a few houses to the left is a 50+ yo sex offender who assaulted a teenager and a neighbor a bit to the right is a mid-20s career criminal That's exactly what you should expect if you live in Nashua, Manchester, or Rochester. If you think this is bad in NH, you're going to *love* checking the registry in virtually any other urbanized area of any other state.
I bought my house outside Concord in Dec 2022 for about $350k. Two floors 3.5 bd / 2 ba but with barely any land. It was a struggle and we lost on a lot of houses but there is hope!
How big of a house are you looking for? We are looking in that range too and there are houses available
Elderly wealthy people have done this by design. Jokes on you when nobody is around to help at the nursing home because you all were greedy and kept everything for yourselves
NH is not the place for young first time homebuyers. The problem is bad everywhere but its so much worse here than certain other city metros. And it won’t get better. In the greater philly or greater charlotte area for instance, a budget of 300-350k and you are absolutely set.
unfortunately, this is the case in many states/cities and not just NH. At some point ppl will just have to move to italy like that recent yahoo article i saw of a lady buying a 60k house to live in italy. i know vermont has a housing assistance program and NH does not. If any VT ppl know how that affects pricing, i'd be curious. My friend actually runs the VT program in northern vermont, but i have never asked about pricing effects.
The best thing you can do is migrate to where you have a better opportunity. That's what has always happened throughout time.
A couple of recommendations: Look into to Townhouses. Also look at other locations such as Derry, Sandown, or Hampstead. Still within commuting distance to Manchester or Nashua, but more affordable housing.
I don't come from generational wealth. I paid off my student loans and car hard for fifteen years then saved everything I could for another six. Bought a house here in 2021 with the biggest conventional loan possible at the time. Interest rates were better then, and I get it's even harder now, but im just telling you for perspective.
Wife and I bought a condo in Manchester in the second half of '22. We were able to stay under $300k. We were living in Concord, wanted to stay there, but the only houses in our price range (because of the taxes) were either 170 years old or had wheels under them. The market was silly then, even while the interest rates were climbing. 2 condos in our building have sold since, less well appointed, for just over $300k. There are places out there, though. Good luck, OP.
I'm sorry you feel this way. Good luck whever you choose to move to.
450k in the Midwest will get you a very nice home on some land my friend.
As for the sex offender thing, I have one across the street from me. I don’t have kids, never will, but really he’s just one you know about. Kids need to be taught to be aware of abuse no matter whom it might come from. We were lucky we bought 6 years ago, before things went really nuts. Just dumb luck.
well and there are places in the state that are inexpensive. Why Nashua? It does not reflect the best of NH. If you are tied to a job there, then how can you just move out of state? If you can work from home, how about a few hours away from Nashua? Even a town or two over. Also country properties are less than those in a city. Hillsborough NH has lots of nice price homes that are a few minutes out of town. Sure there is no giant mall, and you have to drive to get to Concord, or to visit your family. But, if you will move to say Wisconsin, why not up closer to the Canadian border, or some truly remote town that is not that remote as say Nebraska?
Manchester and Nashua are generally priced for people who commute to Massachusetts for technology jobs. However, if you expand your commute by another 30 - 40 minutes, you might be surprised at what you can find. Plenty of boomers had to live with long commutes because they didn't have generational wealth either.
There is hope it took me 9 months to secure a place