Downtown Dover Closing Doors
04.18.25 The Friday Footnote: No more maple squares; Downtown Dover is headed toward transition, and here’s what that means for your home's value.
Harvey’s is gone. After 93 years and god knows how many trays of maple squares, the ovens are off, the “Gone Fishing Forever” sign taped to the door, and the family has taken the maple square recipe with them.
They earned their rest. They built something that mattered—decades of birthdays, Saturday breakfasts, and half-solved city plans scribbled on napkins in the corner booth. Harvey’s didn’t close because of high rents or low foot traffic. They closed because it was just time.
But they will not be the last downtown Dover business to shutter. Certainly, Harvey’s retirement is a voluntary exit, but the beginning of a downtown departure pattern. More are coming—although I’m not obliged to say how many or exactly who. In small cities like Dover, the connection between commercial life and residential value is intimate and real. We don’t have the sprawl to absorb the impact like a Boston or a Providence.
Bakeries, barbershops, quirky little boutiques, restaurants—when those third places fade, the places we don’t always admit that we love until the “For Lease” sign turns up in the window, we lose more than retail. We lose the shared stage where strangers become neighbors. And when the downtown dims, that ripples across the residential real estate landscape.
When downtown storefronts close in clusters, especially when they include even one anchor business like Harvey’s, the housing market begins to strain. The first change you see is days on market increase. Buyers still want to believe Dover’s a good bet, and they also start asking new questions like: Why did Harvey’s close? What’s going on downtown? How long has Earcraft been empty?
Showings slow down, especially for homes in walkable zones like my neighborhood. And housing inventory that used to fly lingers. These longer days on market can happen within the first six months after major closures.
In the next six months, homes within half a mile of the closures begin to experience what’s called a proximity penalty. According to national and New England studies, values on these homes dip anywhere from 5 to 10% compared to similar homes farther out from the downtown.
Blight creeps in at the margins here. Vacant windows equal less foot traffic equal fewer lights on after dark. And that affects perceived safety and livability, especially for buyers paying Seacoast-level premiums.
If the closures continue and the empty retail spaces stay vacant for too long, housing demand begins to distort. The top end (new builds over $1M) may still sell, but mid-range buyers begin shifting to adjacent towns with more vibrant cores like Newmarket or Exeter. And you get a two-tiered market: luxury homes selling to folks who don’t need the downtown anyway, and mid-tier homes sitting and dropping in price, or, quietly being pulled off the market. Meanwhile, the city’s tax base takes a hit from both sides: lower commercial activity and more residential price pressure.
And this is just the visible part of the collapse. Behind the scenes, even healthy businesses are hemorrhaging cash, crushed by federal policy. Toy companies like Keene’s Douglas Company now pay 145% in import taxes. They’ve shelved expansion projects and laid off staff. A local chocolatier, Keene International Market, saw a 20% tariff hike overnight on imported European foods, passed on via distributors. Busy Baby in Minnesota (okay, not a NH business but) reported $229k in tariffs on $159k in goods and nearly sunk the whole company. Federal policies flip weekly—sometimes daily. Business owners don't know what their costs will be next quarter, let alone next week, and planning becomes impossible when yesterday’s workaround is today’s liability.
"Uncertainty is the enemy of entrepreneurship," Neri Karra Sillaman, an entrepreneurship expert at Oxford University, told CBS MoneyWatch. "When the rules of the game are constantly shifting—one day you have a pause on tariffs, another day you don't have tariffs, if there are interest rate changes or political and economic instability—businesses cannot then confidently invest in growth." And Dover’s downtown is being marched toward that enemy line.
From a real estate perspective, when these downtown vacancies stack up, there’s a small window where you might scoop up a property near the core at a relative discount—if you believe in Dover’s rebound. And you should believe in the rebound. The city’s already moving to counter this; I’ve spoken to the folks doing the work, and they are absolutely amazing people. But policy, retail procurement, and recovery take time, and the market responds faster than most people expect.
For sellers, you have a choice, but time is not infinite. If you’ve been thinking about listing, you should do so now, before the downtown thins too much. Because once the shops close, your days on market will go up, and your price may begin to drift down, especially if you’re close to the commercial zone. The other option, of course, is to wait to sell until downtown rebounds and values climb again. That, however, could take a year or more. What you don’t want to do (unless you have to) is list in the middle after that consumer confidence dips, but before the bounce back.
You know, a lot of businesses don’t get to close on their own terms like Harvey’s, but the decisions we make right now, in this early dusk, will shape what kind of city wakes up on the other side. So watch the dip. Watch the clock. Dover’s not in freefall—but it’s in flux; and that’s exactly when the smartest moves are made.
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🏠 Homes within 0.5–1 mile of downtown Dover
📉 Sorted by days on market + price reductions
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The Bare Bones Numbers 💀📉
We’re standing smack dab center of fool’s spring, or maybe hopefully the spring of deception? 'Cause, the weather is saying GO, but the pricing and interest rates are saying WAIT.
Inventory is increasing, but choice inventory is still scarce. Buyers are re-engaging, but only if the home checks all the boxes. And maybe the biggest pattern of all is that every metric is moving faster than the average buyer or seller realizes.
Sellers still think it’s 2022, while buyers are trying to make 2025 math work on a 2015 budget. Median prices spiked, then dropped, but not enough to call it a trend—just enough to cause whiplash. Affordability took a nosedive and barely clawed its way back up. What we’re seeing is a market in motion without any kind of cool rhythm. Strategy matters more than ever: price it smart, negotiate hard, and don’t assume you’re ever seeing the full picture.
📍 Statewide New Hampshire Housing Market
Active Listings: 1,415
Closed Sales (Last 6 Months): 2,416
Pending Sales: 729
Median Sales Price: $529,900
Median Days on Market (DOM): 8
Inventory: 3.52 months
Affordability Index: 66.1
📍 Seacoast Area
Active Listings: 238
Closed Transactions (Last 6 Months): 458
Pending Transactions: 190
Days on Market (DOM):
Highest: 175
Average: 22
Median: 8
Pricing Trends:
Lowest List Price: $135,000
Lowest Sold Price: $115,000
Average List Price: $862,184
Average Sold Price: $713,909
Median List Price: $629,900
Median Sold Price: $580,000
📍 Tri-City Area (Dover, Somersworth, Rochester)
Active Listings: 43
📍 Durham, Newmarket, Madbury & Lee
Active Listings: 4
📍 Portsmouth & Newington
Active Listings: 35
PROPERTY OF THE WEEK
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