New Hampshire’s Record-Breaking Permitting Boom Faces a Reality Check

Housing permits in inventory-starved New Hampshire have reached their highest level in 20 years, but even this major burst of momentum is not enough to solve the Granite State's challenges.

A recent housing supply report from the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs (BEA) showed that cities and towns across the state issued building permits in 2024 for the construction of 5,822 housing units, the most since 2005.

Realtor.com® Senior Economist Joel Berner says the biggest hurdle facing New Hampshire's housing market is a shortage of homes, particularly affordable ones, so the surge in permits should come as a welcome development, offering buyers more options.

"If the new construction is big enough, it could lead to less competition between buyers and lower prices for these homes," he says.

Assuming all permitted homes ended up being built, by the start of 2026, New Hampshire's housing stock has expanded by approximately 26,000 since 2020, reflecting the strongest building cycle in decades.

"We as a state have been very successful in cutting the permitting wait times, Matt Mayberry, CEO of the New Hampshire Home Builders Association, tells Realtor.com®.

Mayberry attributes this permitting boom to a raft of initiatives aimed at increasing efficiency, including a state mandate requiring towns to accept third-party inspectors, the adoption of a unified statewide building code and the drastic slashing of permitting windows for driveways and terrain alterations. 

Despite reaching this milestone, New Hampshire remains short on tens of thousands of homes needed to keep up with the demand.

Based on a 2023 assessment, more than 32,700 housing units needed to be built as of last year to reach the ultimate goal of 88,000 new units by 2040 just to attain a balanced market.

So far, New Hampshire's construction pace remains 20% below the watermark and will require an additional 62,676 homes to meet its 2040 housing target.

Second-oldest state hit by labor shortages

According to Mayberry, the main culprit behind New Hampshire's housing crisis is its critical labor shortage, which comes down to demographics: The median age in New Hampshire is 43.4 years, making the Granite State the second-oldest in the nation, tied with Vermont and trailing only Maine.

"We tend to attract folks a little bit on the older side, but what that also means is where their grandkids might come to visit, grandkids aren't moving here," says the NHHBA CEO, explaining the dearth of working-age residents.

In a bid to boost the number of skilled builders and tradespeople statewide, Mayberry's organization has been working with high schools and colleges to remove the stigma associated with construction-related occupations.

"People still think of residential building as a dirty, sweaty job at minimum wage. Not even close," says Mayberry. "Give me a plumber who's been in the field for three years, and they're probably making more than a Columbia graduate." 


Another key problem creating a bottleneck in new-home construction is towns' reluctance to relax their minimum acreage of zoning.

"We have towns that will ask for a 3-acre minimum lot sizes for each house," says Mayberry. "So even before you turn a spoonful of dirt, your house is already at $300,000."

In February, the median listing price in New Hampshire stood at $584,000, roughly $180,000 higher than the national figure. That same month, Manchester, NH, reclaimed the title of the nation's hottest housing market after a nearly yearlong hiatus thanks to strong buyer demand coupled with tight supply.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in November, Realtor.com State-by-State Housing Report Card gave New Hampshire a C- grade, highlighting a widening gap between supply and demand fueled by affordability constraints and low construction rates. 

Since taking office in January 2025, Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Democrat, has made housing a cornerstone of her agenda, signing a slate of bipartisan bills aimed at loosening zoning restrictions, speeding up the construction process and allowing property owners to build detached accessory dwellings (ADUs). 

NIMBY stalls development

The latest permitting report shows that Ayotte's actions have begun bearing fruit: Housing units in multiunit buildings represented over 60% of units added in 2025, the highest share recorded in over 50 years ago.

Yet, Mayberry says many towns remain resistant to increasing density by allowing the construction of multifamily housing, because existing residents are driven by the "not in my backyard" mentality, focused on zealously protecting community character.

"They don't understand it's driving up their own cost. It's not helping them," he says.

State data confirms that housing production is geographically limited, with fewer than two dozen high-growth towns—home to 43% of the state's population—accounting for 63% of the housing built last year.

To move the needle on housing affordability in a meaningful way, Mayberry says all 234 municipalities that make up New Hampshire must go all in on development, from condominiums to micro-lots to office-to-apartment conversions.

He warns that towns that continue to cling to NIMBYism do so at their own peril.

"For those towns that say, nope, I want my 8-acre minimum parcels, when they're lying on the kitchen floor waiting for the ambulance to show up, but the nearest ambulance service is now 40 minutes away, you really wish you had created housing for those firefighters and EMTs," concludes the CEO.