Susan Cole
Susan Cole, whose first introduction to real estate was as the daughter of a city assessor in Lebanon, is the 2025 president of the New Hampshire Association of Realtors (NHAR).
She has owned her own real estate company — Susan Cole Realty in Lebanon — since February 2017, rooted in the region where she grew up and committed to the association’s continuing task of trying to get more housing stock built in the Granite State.
Cole doesn’t expect the current state of the residential real estate market to change going forward — high prices, aggravated by limited supply, will likely continue in 2025, she said.
“I grew up going to City Hall, spending a lot of time around valuations and assessments of property and ownership issues and that kind of thing, just watching my dad navigate that as a little kid,” said Cole.
She has an education background in science, worked for a time in a radiation oncology group, but then stayed home to raise her daughters on the Lebanon farm that has been in the family for 10 generations.
“When they started school, I thought, what else do I want to do? What else do I know? And it sort of fell into place for me — this combining my love for the area and also the importance of property ownership,” said Cole.
Her profession as a real estate professional has also scratched an itch she had to be involved in education.
“I think that this type of profession lends well to that desire,” she said. “For me, that’s one of the greatest joys I get in this profession, is my ability and my desire to to help people through a process, teach them all that I know, and watch the journey unfold from there.”
As the year comes to a near close, November trends show not much has changed for New Hampshire residential property buyers and sellers.
The NHAR report for November shows the median price for a single-family house was $500,000. That’s down from the all-time record high of $540,000 in June, but it’s still 11% more than November 2023 and more than twice as much as the average median of $227,500 recorded in 2014.
Supply remains squeezed, as evident from the months supply data point. A four- to six-month inventory of homes for sale is expected in a balanced market. November’s months supply was 1.9.
All that has challenged buyers to afford what’s currently on the market. An affordability index of 100 indicates a buyer has exactly enough money to afford all the costs associated with purchasing a house in a certain market. The affordability index in New Hampshire for November was 60.
The situation with residential condominiums and townhouses was only marginally better in November. The median price was $410,000, down 4.4% from last November, the inventory supply was 1.9 months, and the affordability index was 73.
With a new administration in Washington, D.C., there is an expectation based on the election results that the economy will improve affordability for food, durable goods and homes. Some of that depends on interest rates and whether the Federal Reserve continues cutting rates by small amounts through 2025, which has an effect on mortgage rates, which has an effect on potential homebuyers and sellers.
Cole doesn’t believe all that will have much of an impact here in New Hampshire. The real impact, she said, will come from continued efforts to loosen zoning regulations that in many communities throttle residential development, particularly workforce housing.
She’ll continue the push, as other NHAR presidents have before her, to get the public educated, get the state Legislature moving to increase the housing stock.
“That has to be one of our tools in the tool belt, because it’s going to take an all-hands-on deck-approach to improve the inventory status, therefore the affordability status for buyers moving forward,” said Cole. “I see that as a real tool to help accomplish that, not the only tool, but a real tool that we can use.”
Cole got her Realtor license in 2009 and worked for other realty companies before setting up her own shop in 2017. In preparation for her new role as NHAR president, Cole has participated in its leadership academy, chaired task forces and subcommittees, and served other officer roles within the organization.
She has no particular agenda or pet projects that she intends to pursue in 2025.
“My goal is truly to continue to strengthen the organization, to help in any way I can for us, to elevate the bar, to support our Realtor members, therefore, to help with home ownership across the state,” she said.
Here, by county, are the median single home prices for November:
- Belknap $500,000
- Carroll $449,000
- Cheshire $365,000
- Coos $210,000
- Grafton $407,500
- Hillsborough $505,000
- Merrimack $447,500
- Rockingham $655,000
- Strafford $469,000
- Sullivan $360,000
Here are the median condo prices for November:
- Belknap $482,500
- Carroll $432,500
- Cheshire $300,000
- Coos $745,000 (reflects the sale of one condo)
- Grafton $418,000
- Hillsborough $377,500
- Merrimack $341,000
- Rockingham $479,500
- Strafford $267,500
- Sullivan $401,400
New Hampshire is often listed as being a “hot market” when it comes to residential real estate.
Realtor.com’s listing of hot markets has New Hampshire ranked as No. 7 for November, despite a median listing price of $557,000 for a house, far more than other areas higher on the list (in order from No. 1: Springfield, Mass., Rockford, Ill., Hartford, Conn., Lancaster, Penn., and Worcester, Mass.).
And the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has New Hampshire as No. 1 in its most recent listing of hot markets going into 2025. That listing shows the Granite State as part of the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) that includes Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Massachusetts-New Hampshire.
