New, Affordable Units Mean Greater New Hampshire Home Loan Flexibility
A new apartment building (pictured below) in downtown Exeter, N.H., offers a small solution to the need of affordable housing in the Granite State’s popular Seacoast region, but real estate trends may encourage first-time buyers to start looking for their first home.
Construction began recently on the 30-unit building, the Portsmouth Herald reports, but it will take roughly a year before the units - half of which will be held at “affordable” levels while the other half go for market rates - are available.
While the project is being developed, the current Southern New Hampshire housing market may give those on the lower income bracket a chance to look at buying their first home.
“We are in a snail’s pace market,” Realtor Florence Ruffner joked. “Prices have leveled; people can get in now that maybe couldn’t get in six months ago. I think it’s a good time for someone to jump into the market.”
With New Hampshire mortgage rates around 6.625 percent and the inflated market becoming more normal, Ruffner said now is a great time to buy a home.
“I think it’s gone back to a more normal market,” said Ruffner, the owner of Ruffner Real Estate in Exeter and a 25-year industry veteran. “It can now take 6-9 months to sell a property, before it was just wild. That was just a very different kind of market. It’s more like what it used to be before the wave. We rode the wave and now it’s calm.”
While the market is calm compared to last year, there is still plenty of business.
“People are taking longer in making decisions … they have the luxury of taking their time. Still, people are not giving houses away, and they shouldn’t. People are entitled to fair market value of their home,” she said.
As for the affordable housing in downtown Exeter, Ruffner understands not everyone can afford his or her first home right away. While it may provide housing for about 15 workers, the state, lending institutions or someone needs to come up with programs for first-time buyers, she said.
Norrisbrook, a condominium complex in Exeter, has units selling for about $150,000, complete with two bedrooms, two baths, living room and dining room. These prices have come down substantially from a year ago.
“There are things in town that the first-time buyer can get in to start out,” she said.
Mark Danie, a loan officer with CCO Mortgage, thinks the New Hampshire market is switching from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market.
“It’s a supply-and-demand situation. Those out there looking for the $250,000 range have many to select from. They are able to compare and contrast properties. They can be more picky than they were before.”
While some may consider mortgage rates high compared to a year or two ago when they were at 5.5 percent, the rates today are good compared to how they’ve been over the past 40 years.
In 1986, Danie was locked into a 10.5 percent rate when he bought his house. Today, he could have bought the house with a 6.5 percent rate.
There’s also the matter of property tax, which is relatively expensive in New Hampshire, Danie said, and always plays a part in how much the first-time home buyer can afford.
Buying a $200,000 home in Exeter, which is considerably low, with a 95 percent home loan at 6.625 percent, would cost roughly $1,216 a month. But taxes could be as expensive as $5,000 a year.
