What’s moving in the Lakes Region — and what isn’t

The Lakes Region housing market this fall does not look like the market of two or three years ago. There are more houses on the board. Buyers take a second look. Price reductions are no longer rare. And yet the region is still doing something the rest of New Hampshire is only doing in pieces: it is selling houses, at high prices, without the old frenzy.

That split — more choice, still real demand — is the story.

Statewide, the New Hampshire Association of Realtors put the July single-family median at a record $580,000. Closed sales were up 10.4% from July 2025.

Inventory rose 15.6%, to 2,992 homes, and months of supply reached 2.7. That is better than the one-month markets of the early 2020s. It is not a balanced market. Economists still treat five to six months as normal. New Hampshire has not seen four months of supply since 2018.

The Lakes Region sits inside that statewide picture and also apart from it.

Roche Realty Group’s midyear count of the 25 towns that make up the region found 539 single-family sales from Jan. 1 through June 29, almost the same unit count as the year before. Dollar volume told a different story: $437 million, up nearly 20%. The median sale price was $535,000, up 10.3%. Median time on market was 16 days, a few days slower than 2025, still fast by any longer historical measure. The range ran from $120,000 in Franklin to $12.3 million on Black Cat Island in Meredith.

Waterfront did the heavy lifting on volume. Twenty-nine Lake Winnipesaukee single-family sales closed in that same first half for $92.6 million — 43% more dollars than a year earlier — at a $2.3 million median. Those houses did not fly. Median days on market for Big Lake waterfront was 65 days. They sold. They just did not sell on the first weekend.

That pattern has held into September. A current Lakes Region snapshot shows a median list price around $650,000 and a median sold price, trailing 60 days, around $600,000. Homes are closing at about 98% of list. Active inventory is in the mid-500s. Months of supply is about 4.4 — closer to balance than the state as a whole. Roughly 160 houses have sold in the last 30 days. Recent closings at the top of the market include multi-million-dollar properties in Laconia, Meredith, and Gilford. Those are not “hot” in the old sense. They are proving that a scarce shoreline still finds a buyer when the dock, the view, and the number line up.

So what is selling quickly?

Not the asking price on the brochure. The mid-year listing median in the 25-town snapshot was $699,000 — well above what was actually closing. The houses that go in two or three weeks tend to be the year-round three- and four-bedroom stock in the band where most local buyers still live: roughly the $400,000 to $650,000 range, updated enough that a buyer does not have to price a full renovation into the first year. Laconia, Gilford, Belmont, and Sanbornton have been absorbing a lot of that mid-price inventory. Belknap County’s midsummer sales jump — unit volume way up even when the median wobbled — looked like a mix shift: more ordinary houses trading, not only trophy waterfront.

Condos are a quieter chapter. First-half unit sales were down. The median rose to $485,000. Turnkey units still trade. Projects that ask the market to ignore location or condition do not.

Land is its own market. Limited inventory and waterfront adjacency have kept Lakes Region parcels priced above the statewide land median, and they still move faster than land in much of the rest of New Hampshire. Buildable lots with a clear path to a house continue to draw interest. Speculative or constrained parcels take longer.

Rates are part of the filter. Thirty-year mortgages have been in the mid-to-high 6% range. That does not empty the Lakes Region of out-of-state buyers. It does change who can stretch, and it makes a sloppy list price expensive. Sale-to-list near 98% is not the same as the 105% summers. Sellers are getting paid. They are not getting a bonus for optimism.

Affordability sits underneath all of this. The New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute has tracked a 78% rise in the statewide single-family median since 2019. A household that wanted to buy a median house in 2025 without spending more than 30% of income needed on the order of $158,000 a year. The REALTORS’ affordability index has been stuck in the high 50s: median income is a little more than half of what the median house requires. That is why starter inventory still disappears when it appears, and why so much of the activity in the region is either move-up, second-home, or cash that is less tied to the monthly payment.

Concord tried to change the supply side this year. Multifamily housing in commercial zones is now largely allowed by right. Parking rules were tightened. Right-to-list contracts were banned. Those laws will matter in Laconia and on the commercial strips before they matter on the islands. They will not add a dock on Winnipesaukee. Production takes years. The 2026 market is still living off a decade of too little building.

The observational point is simple. The Lakes Region is not frozen and it is not 2021. Houses that are priced to what closed this year, not what someone hoped last year, are trading. Waterfront is still its own asset class — slower, richer, less forgiving of a weak setting. Everything in between needs a reason to exist at that number. Buyers have enough listings now to walk. The ones who stay are buying the house in front of them, not the story about the market.

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This article was written by Randy Miller, a Realtor at Roche Realty Group in Meredith and can be reached at 603-279-7046. Data was compiled from PrimeMLS and is subject to change. Visit rocherealty.com to learn more about the Lakes Region and its real estate market.