Upper Valley real estate agent Amy Redpath in October had a home listed for sale in Hartland, and the sellers received eight offers.
“I thought that was magic,” Redpath said about the response.
But that was nothing compared to Redpath’s recent listing in Hartland, a four-bedroom, 2½ bath, 2,656-square-foot 1850 cape on a 2.8-acre lot that was listed for $449,000. Within minutes of the home going on the market earlier this month, Redpath’s inbox began filling up with eager buyers.
Over the next couple weeks, 24 parties viewed the property — half of them via Facetime and Zoom because of the pandemic — and the sellers received 15 offers.
“We had to cut it off at 24,” Redpath said of the showings. “We were turning people away.”
Despite offers from people as far away as California and Brooklyn, the house is under contract for above asking price to a buyer with a “local presence,” said Dan Emanuele, co-owner of the property, who declined to say for how much because closing has not taken place.
Emanuele, head of private banking at Mascoma Bank, bought the Hartland home 10 years ago with his wife, Laurie, for $335,000. He said that even with the knowledge of the local real estate market that comes with the job, he was surprised at the response.
“It was crazy,” he said.
The pandemic may have wrecked many businesses in the Upper Valley last year, from restaurants to retail stores, bed and breakfasts to music venues, health clubs to club sports. But if you are in the real estate business or sold your home, chances are you had a very good year.
“It’s fair to say that this is one of the most exceptional years in real estate, and I’ve been in it 21 years,” said Alan DiStasio, president of Four Seasons Sotheby’s in Hanover. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
That’s because Upper Valley home sales benefited from an unusual confluence of factors that drove prices through the roof.
Foremost was an influx of “COVID-19 refugees” seeking a rural haven away from densely populated cities and suburbs, along with continuing low interest rates that make borrowing cheap, a rising stock market that enables wealthy buyers to spend more money and a rise in remote work that lets employees live anywhere they want.
Real estate market data is now in and tallied for 2020. It shows a record number of sales, and at the highest prices since before the Great Recession more than a decade ago.
From million-dollar estates in Woodstock and Hanover to starter homes in Claremont and Canaan, the number of homes sold and median sales prices posted massive increases (the lone exception was Lebanon, where the number of homes sold rose 1.6% but the median sales price fell 1.7%).
At the same time, the trends suggest that the party could cool this year as the rush to buy homes in the Upper Valley has shrunk the inventory of available homes to buy.
The sharp spike in home sales driven by out-of-region buyers also makes home ownership increasingly out of reach for many families in the Upper Valley, where household income has not kept anywhere near pace with escalating home sales prices.
The region has been in a severe housing shortage for years, and the flow of in-migrating buyers driving up home prices is widening the gap between the haves and have-nots.
Mike Kiess, workforce housing coordinator at Vital Communities, noted the Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Regional Planning Commission estimated a shortage of 3,800 to 4,600 homes in its region in 2012, the last time a survey was conducted (a new one is in the works and will be issued this spring, he said).
“Things have only gotten worse since then,” Kiess said.
Many of the buyers coming from outside the Upper Valley can put down more cash toward the purchase, tipping the balance in their favor over a local resident who might qualify for a loan “but doesn’t have the liquidity,” he said.
“Picture yourself as someone who has enough income to buy a home but not in this market because you don’t have cash, so you basically can’t afford it,” Kiess said. “You’re losing people who are at that home-buying stage.”
On the New Hampshire side, in Grafton County, the number of single-family homes sold in 2020 increased 17.4% to 1,401, while total sales volume jumped 38% to $484 million, according to New Hampshire Realtors, the state’s real estate industry trade association. The median home sales price rose 14% to $259,450.
Sullivan County, long an economic laggard in the state, had even greater activity: The number of single-family homes sold in 2020 jumped 26% to 755, while total sales volume rocketed 67% to $238 million. The median home sales price increased 20% to $224,000.
Meanwhile — perhaps suggesting that Vermont’s image as one of the healthiest states in the country is drawing new residents — Windsor County posted even greater increases than its New Hampshire neighbors.
The number of closed homes sales in Windsor County in 2020 jumped 33% to 994, according to the Vermont Association of Realtors, while dollar volume soared 72% to $386 million. The median sales price increased 25% to $292,200.
Orange County also benefited from the general lift in values, with the number of closed sales in 2020 up 23% to 301 while dollar volume jumped 43% to $77 million, and median sales price rose 14% to $225,000.
The “luxury” market — defined as homes that sell for $1 million or above — did exceedingly well, especially in wealthy Woodstock and surrounding communities.
The Woodstock area, which includes Barnard, Pomfret, Quechee, Reading, Bridgewater, Hartland, Plymouth, West Windsor and Woodstock, had 38 homes that sold for more than $1 million in 2020 compared with 13 in 2019, according to Snyder Donegan Real Estate Group, a Woodstock and Hanover agency that handles many high-end listings in the Upper Valley.
Overall, 391 homes sold in the Woodstock area — up 62% — with 118 of them selling at or above the asking price, said David Donegan, a partner in the firm.
“The luxury real estate market has been strong and rising in the past several years,” Donegan said via email, which he attributed to the “healthy (and) safe environment we live in, strong stock market and low interest rates and now furthered by the shift towards working remotely, even from a second home.”
But it has not only been upscale towns like Woodstock, Norwich and Hanover, home to many Upper Valley professionals and wealthy second homeowners from New York and Boston, that attracted buyers. Long-standing working class communities such as Claremont and towns in Sullivan County — which reported the biggest jump percentage-wise in median sales price and the second-biggest jump in closed sales among New Hampshire’s 10 counties — also saw massive growth.
“This is probably the biggest year I’ve seen in 30 years,” said Roz Caplan, owner of Century 21 Highview Realty in Claremont, who said her agency’s sales were up $9 million in 2020 from 2019.
“That’s a lot for us,” Caplan said. “It’s not that we were selling a greater number of homes. It’s that people were making unbelievable offers.”
“One of my agents brought a property on the market that was assessed at $199,000 and it was listed and sold at $265,000. We got 10 offers on it. We’re still getting calls on it even though it’s under contract.”
Cheryl Herrmann, a longtime Norwich real estate agent, said it was not uncommon over the past year to receive “six to eight” offers on a property. She said the influx spurred by COVID-19 has been even greater than what she saw in the months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
“In 2001, there were a lot of people coming in from outside the area. This is the second big crisis, but it’s lasting longer and more people are saying, ‘We have got to have that safety.’ ”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
Clarification
Sales data for homes in Norwich and Woodstock as cataloged by the Vermont Association of Realtors and reflected in a chart and graphic with this story includes sales in some adjoining Zip codes. A separate analysis by Snyder Donegan Real Estate Group found the median sales price of a single-family home in Norwich increased by 27.4% in 2020, to $667,500, and by 3.1%, to $530,000, in Woodstock.
