Housing Values in Southern New Hampshire

I spent a few hours today getting dizzy looking at real estate listings before I realized that squinting at thousands of thumbnail pictures and scanty descriptions isn’t a good daily activity. With my eyes running down, it finally occurred to me to see what I could find out about Winchester, the New Hampshire town that had the largest number of listings in my ballpark, and which I’ve driven through maybe once in my life.

As soon as I put “Winchester NH Real Estate” in Google, I was presented with quite a few sites that had more or less the same content, which means it’s public domain or syndicated. A visit to the New Hampshire State Government website is in order next time I’m online with a decent connection. Two facts jumped about Winchester jumped out at me, in the “I didn’t know that” sense. First, it’s a very small town, just a few thousand people which could easily translate into less than a thousand homes, which makes me wonder why so many of them are for sale. Second, at least two of the sites I came across quoted some statistics from the year 2000, when the average house value in Winchester was given in the mid-80K’s. So, these bargain properties I’ve been looking at between $120K and $160K may be market up 50% to 100% from what they sold for just six or seven years ago.

Yes, I’ve heard that the housing market had been going up and I’ve been watching it since the 1990’s, but I’d though most of the appreciation was in the family friendly market. I pulled up the Google satellite map of Winchester, and it looked like your typical very small town, with one major intersection that showed some commercial activity. It may be exactly what I’m looking for, I’m not sure yet, but I can’t believe it’s what most house hunters are looking for in the area.
Of course, maybe the reason so many properties are for sale is that with the increasing valuations, the original occupants can’t afford the property taxes. A few thousand dollars of property tax would be a lot of money to a family with low wages who might get money back from a negative income tax (credits) and free health insurance if they move down to Massachusetts this year. Maybe that’s part of why Massachusetts housing prices seem to be holding steady at the low end – expectation that out-of-state residents with major health issues will be buying in for the benefits.

Aside from looking for historical pricing data on the state website, which will only make me angry, I need to look into the NH building code and how it’s enforced. I don’t understand the basic zoning designations there, whether they are state, local, or made up by the realtors to fill in a blank for an online form. And while I’m at it, I should look for rental pricing data, not that I have any interest in buying investment property, but because it’s the only way I know of for determining whether real estate prices are anything like reasonable. If you can rent a house and live there for less than it would cost on a monthly basis to buy a house and live there, the only financial motivation for buying is speculation.