"Prices are rising but closing a sale is harder" in other words closings are still down even when compared to last year which was by no means a great year. Closings may be down but maybe that has something to do with the fact that buyers are encountering competition from other buyers. Competition means someone loses and I can tell you that in a multiple offer situation there is always someone who loses. Multiple offers are happening in our area and happening often. Homes need to be in excellent condition and priced very aggressively to see multiple offers and when that happens the seller wins.

It's an interesting market we are in and I think this down turn has hit every one harder than the last one but we're on the turn...a very slow turn, one that might take a few years to make but slowly we're turning. If you are a buyer don't sit on the fence too long as interest rates are rising and NH just might be quicker to recover than other states.

The New Hampshire Association of REALTORS Market Trends report was just published and reprinted below with permission. As always it's interesting reading.

New Hampshire stands out again
-by Peter Francese

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is perhaps the most valuable provider of indicators of how our state is doing compared to our neighbors and the nation. It may surprise you to learn just how well New Hampshire does in this comparison.

If any state is going to recover in a timely fashion, it's going to be New Hampshire.

REALTORS® might want to share the three charts below with anyone who doubts that our state is in much better shape to recover from the economic funk so frequently reported in the news. But at least one publication is not following the bad news pack. Barron's cover story for their July 14 issue was titled, "Home prices are about to bottom."

That story can be accessed by clicking here. The article doesn't mention our state, but it may have a positive effect anyway on people from other places who were thinking about buying a home here. One of the more interesting parts of the article was how uninterested the major media were in any positive real estate news. I guess gloom and doom stories sell better.
Chart I below shows the growth in number of people with jobs from May of last year to May of this year. New Hampshire's growth at 1.6 percent is way above any other state in this region as well as being far better than the barely positive US figure of 0.2 percent. Chart II shows that our unemployment rate at 4 percent is the lowest in the region and well below the national 5.5 percent rate.
Finally, Chart III shows the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's index (as reported by the Boston Bank) of economic activity for each of the New England states and the nation. At nearly 200, the index for New Hampshire is far and away the region's highest and is also 24 percent above the national index.

Source for Charts I, II and III: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

If any state is going to recover in a timely fashion from this recession and reverse the decline in home sales, it's going to be New Hampshire. From a pricing point of view, the recovery may already be in progress. Median home price for residences statewide have risen steadily for the past four months and are now 11 percent above what they were in February.
For the first half of this year, the statewide median home price is still 8 percent below the first half of last year. That's way below the national drop, and at our current rate of climb, prices here should be in positive territory by the end of the year.
Nevertheless, only 1,127 residential properties and 281 condominiums were sold statewide in June and those sales were respectively 20 percent and 38 percent below the sales for June of last year. So prices may be slowly rising, but closing a sale is harder. The home next door to ours, for example, just sold after nearly three years on the market, to the great relief of everyone involved. Perhaps it's a harbinger of better future buyer activity.

NH residential (non-condominium) sales

Source: Northern New England Real Estate Network (NNEREN). Statistics are based on information from NNEREN for the respective periods shown for the respective regions in the State of New Hampshire or all towns in the State of New Hampshire. All analysis and commentary related to the statistics is that of the New Hampshire Association of REALTORS® and not that of NNEREN.