May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor: The Dover Real Estate Thunderdome

Dover’s housing market is tight: high prices, and battling buyers. With 1,380 new homes on the way, will it be enough? Zoning laws, affordability gaps. stalled developments--let the games begin!

- a part of the 2/14/25 Friday Footnote portion of Coffee with Steve.

🏡 Dover Market Breakdown

Over the last six months in Dover, New Hampshire we’ve had 57 single-family home sales. As of yesterday, we have 20 single-family homes for sale right now. The average sales point sits at 1,095,000 and the median is 1,030,000.

🏡 Dover, NH Market Breakdown

Over the Last Six Months Closed Listings:

• 57 homes sold

• Days on Market (DOM):

  • Highest: 86

  • Lowest: 0

  • Average: 13

  • Median: 7

• Home Prices:

  • Highest: $2.25M

  • Lowest: $359.9K

  • Average: $689K

  • Median: $524.5K

• Current Listings:

• 20 homes for sale

• DOM:

  • Highest: 194

  • Lowest: 1

  • Average: 47

  • Median: 20

• Home Prices:

• ◦ Highest: $10.95M

• ◦ Lowest: $429K

• ◦ Average: $1.5M (skewed by high-end listings)

• ◦ Median: $1.03M

🚨 Is Dover’s Market Really This Expensive? Let’s Dig In

Those current Dover numbers seem damn scary! An average price point of 1.5 million and a median at 1,030,000!!!!. Geesh, Louise. But we really need to take a closer look at exactly what’s going on to get a better picture of the Dover real estate market.

• 3 homes are priced under $500k.

• 4 homes are priced between $595k and $600k.

• 1 home is priced at $669.9k.

The 6 million-dollar-homes are new construction not even yet built. 2 Juniper Knoll was built in 2024 and has sat on the market for 168 days now, listed at $1,110,000. 15 Banner Drive also built in 2024 and has been on the market for 122 days listed at $669,900.

If we remove the yet to be built new construction from the market, the average home price in Dover drops to $658k and our median sits at $599.9k.

Further, if we also remove the two highest priced homes from the list, 289 Tolend and 2 Juniper respectively, that further refines our numbers, bringing our average to $575.7k and our median to $589k. However, that also only leaves us with 10 available homes for sale in Dover, which is a very tight market. In Strafford county as a whole, numbers loosen a bit.

📊 Strafford County: A Slightly Less Insane Market

🏡 Strafford County Market Snapshot

Closed Sales in the Last 6 Months:

• 289 single-family homes sold

• DOM:

  • Highest: 101

  • Lowest: 0

  • Average: 15

  • Median: 7

• Home Prices:

  • Highest List Price: $2.25M

  • Lowest List Price: $130K

  • Average List Price: $526,675

  • Median List Price: $459,000

  • Average Sold Price: $526,935

  • Median Sold Price: $450,000

• Current Listings:

• 79 homes for sale

• DOM:

  • Highest: 296

  • Lowest: 1

  • Average: 79

  • Median: 66

• Home Prices:

  • Highest: $10.95M

  • Lowest: $150K

  • Average: $873,734

  • Median: $873,745

Additionally in Strafford County, 31.14% of homes sold for less than asking price, 22.15% closed at the exact list price, and 46.71% sold for more than asking price. Those homes that sold for less than asking lost an average of $24,756.43, and the homes that closed over their list price averaged a gain of $17,060.33.

Even though the median days on market statewide is 62, that’s not enough inventory to shift New Hampshire into a buyer’s market, let alone a balanced market. Traditionally, a balanced market sees at least 5 to 6 months of inventory—that is, the number of homes for sale is roughly equal ot the number of homes sold in that same time period.

🏠 New Hampshire’s Housing Market—Warp Speed Ahead

🏡 Statewide Market Overview (New Hampshire)

• Homes for Sale: 1,173

• DOM:

  • Highest: 926

  • Lowest: 0

  • Average: 90

  • Median: 62

• Home Prices:

  • Highest: $11.95M

  • Lowest: $59,900

  • Average: $864,085

  • Median: $615,000

However, in today’s real estate landscape—where demand consistently outpaces supply—a more realistic balance is closer to 3 or 4 months of inventory. And the state has only 2 months worth of inventory, which is well below that 3 month threshhold for balance.

• 0 to 3 months of inventory → Strong Seller’s Market

• 3 to 4 months of inventory → Balanced Market (but leaning seller-favorable)

• + months of inventory → Shifting

• 6+ months of inventory → Clear Buyer’s Market

Strafford is even tighter than the state as a whole, and Dover remains a high-demand area, despite high price points, with homes selling faster than the statewide average.

To reach a balanced market of 3 to 4 months of inventory, New Hampshire needs at least 1,750 to 2,300 active listings statewide. Dover needs at least 9 more homes on the market to reach the minimum balanced threshold of 3 months of inventory and 18 more homes to reach a full 4-month balanced market. But until inventory rises to that level, sellers will maintain the upper hand, and buyers will continue to face challenges finding suitable homes that meet their needs.

🚀 Is Dover Heading for a Housing Crisis?

I don’t believe Dover is in a full-blown housing crisis yet, but we’re “Warp Factor 7, Captain” heading there. If you’re a local worker hoping to buy in Dover, your competition isn’t just other buyers but six-figure remote workers and investors who engage with these price tags at full impulse power while the rest of us reroute auxiliary power just to afford rent. The median household comes 40% short of the needed income to purchase a home. The local workforce and lower-middle-class families are being priced out. If supply constraints persist and affordability continues to erode, Dover could hit a crisis point within the next few years.

The good news here is that while Dover might be careening forward at Warp 7, Strafford county is only about Warp 5. The county median home price sits at $450k, substantially lower than Dover’s adjusted $589, and inventory is still tight, but not Dover-level suffocating. The same affordability pressures are creeping in though, just slightly slower.

The state as a whole however? While on the surface that median home price of $616 seems more managemable than Dover or even Strafford County as a whole, the statewide median household income is $90k. That’s a 40+% income gap, the same affordability chasm seen in Dover. Statewide, we are flyin into a full affordability crisis at ludicrous speed. Unless housing inventory dramatically increases or wages somehow engage (yes, a Jean-Luc Picard references, I might as well going with this), homeownership will become a privlige reserved for the wealthiest buyers, and that’s a long-term economic problem.

🏗️ The Zoning Problem: Why We Can’t Just Build More Homes

The glimmer of hope? State lawmakers are finally taking action. For years, restrictive zoning—what Rep. Joe Alexander (R-Goffstown) calls “snob zoning”—has kept property sizes large and blocked denser housing developments. But this year, bipartisan efforts are emerging to challenge those barriers, paving the way for more housing and (hopefully) a slowdown in this affordability crisis.

If passed, House Bill 631 would enable housing development in commercial areas by right; House Bill 577 would allow detached accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and prevent municipalities from imposing excessive lot size, parking, or aesthetic restrictions; ancdHouse Bill 459 would prohibit towns from enforcing minimum lot sizes beyond what’s necessary for septic and sewer systems, targeting what Alexander calls snob zoning.

🏢 The Fox Run Mall: A Case Study in Missed Opportunities

Right now, Torrington Properties has spent three years and $66 million acquiring the 82-acre commercial site, the cherished but forgotten almost dead Fox Run Mall. Torrington Properties is in the middle of a large-scale redevelopment that does not include a housing component. Fox Run is slated for retail, restaurants, and office space only—essentially, a refresh of the same model that’s already struggling. Because the property isn’t zoned for residential use by right. Torrington would need to fight for zoning changes—a battle they’re not eager to take on.

Malls are failing because their economic foundation has collapsed. The old model—relying on department stores to pull in crowds—doesn’t work when those very same retailers are shutting their doors. In many ways, malls were always meant to function as mini-main streets, just with artificial skylights instead of real ones. Their walkable layout, existing infrastructure, and massive parking lots make them perfect for mixed-use redevelopment. The parking alone, often a costly hurdle in urban planning, is already built in. And most malls sit near highways and transit stops, making them prime candidates for smart growth development. A built-in residential population transforms a mall from a 9-to-5 retail ghost town into a 24/7 community hub. If 3,000+ people called the Fox Run Mall home, they’d eat at its restaurants, work in its office spaces, and shop at its stores. Add in remote-friendly coworking spaces, fitness centers, and entertainment venues, and suddenly, what was once an obsolete shopping center is a self-sustaining neighborhood.

Besides the Fox Run Mall, other key properties around New Hampshire that could benefit from HB 631:

• Steeplegate Mall – Concord

  As of June 2024, only a few tenants, including JCPenney, a trampoline park, and a health club, remain operational. The mall's owners have proposed demolishing most of the structure to construct a mixed-use development featuring 625 apartments and retail spaces.

• Lilac Mall – Rochester

  With several anchor tenants closing over the years, its expansive parking areas and existing infrastructure make it a prime candidate for redevelopment.

• Former Office Buildings in Manchester
  Vacancy rates having increased to 13.5% by mid-2024, older office buildings, particularly those around the I-93/Route 3 corridor, are becoming obsolete as businesses shift to remote work models.

• Vacant Commercial Lots in Nashua

  Several vacant commercial parcels, especially along major arterials, currently zoned for commercial use, have remained undeveloped due to market conditions.

I’m not saying any of these redevelopments would be easy—converting office space to residential comes with its own set of infrastructure challenges and logistical hurdles. But Torrington’s reluctance to push for housing isn’t about feasibility—it’s about red tape. They could fight for a zoning change, but they don’t want to spend years in legal battles. However, if HB 631 passes, that hesitation becomes irrelevant. Housing would be allowed by right, opening the door to a true reimagining of the Fox Run Mall.

The idea of ADUs as a housing solution is simple: let homeowners build small additional units on their properties to increase density without radically changing the character of single-family neighborhoods. It sounds like a great plan, but ADU increases to housing don’t happen at scale. In 2017, New Hampshire passed a law mandating that all municipalities allow ADUs in single-family zones. But individual towns quickly tacked on owner-occupancy requirements, parking mandates, and permitting hurdles, making ADUs just difficult enough that few people actually built them.

Or they’re building them illegally. New Hampshire’s “live free or die” Yankee can-do mentality often translates into people skipping permits and building anyway—go ahead and ask me how many homes I’ve been inside with unpermitted work. And why wouldn’t people skip permits? If you own the land, what business is it of the government’s what you do with it?

The study Not (Officially) in My Backyard revealed that in San José, California, for every one legally permitted accessory dwelling unit (ADU), three to four informal ADUs were built without permits. While no equivalent study exists for New Hampshire, we can apply a similar framework to estimate the number of informal ADUs locally, starting at the state level and narrowing to Strafford County and Dover.

Since 2017, approximately 1,000 ADUs have been legally permitted across New Hampshire. If San José’s informal-to-formal ratio applies even conservatively, the state could have 3,000 to 4,000 unpermitted ADUs. Strafford County, at roughly 9.6% of the state's population, likely contains 300 to 450 informal ADUs, concentrated in cities like Dover and Rochester, where housing pressures are strongest. Dover alone likely has 90 to 180 unpermitted ADUs, ranging from basement apartments to converted garages—homes quietly addressing the region’s housing crunch while existing outside regulatory oversight. We also don’t have to guess whether ADUs work.

So, we know ADUs can work, but not as a one-off policy. Without real zoning reform, New Hampshire is just hoping homeowners will build their way out of a housing crisis—one backyard cottage at a time. Back in California, one of the few places where ADUs have made a measurable impact, had to pass a series of laws over decades to make ADUs viable. It wasn’t a single piece of legislation that made ADUs work—it was a constant dismantling of barriers over time, paired with financial incentives and massive public awareness efforts. And even then, ADUs are still only a fraction of California’s housing solution, not a fix-all. New Hampshire’s ADU policy, much like ADU policies across the country, is a slow-moving political Band-Aid on a deep wound. Easy for politicians to point to ADUs as the solution without having to make the tough choices that would actually increase housing supply—like loosening zoning laws for multi-family developments or investing in large-scale, affordable housing projects.

⚖️ Single-Family Zoning: The Root of the Problem

Which brings us to the real problem: single-family zoning itself.

For decades, we’ve been told that single-family zoning is about preserving neighborhood character, about protecting homeowners from undesirable development. But what it was actually designed to do—and what it still does—is keep certain people out.

Single-family zoning exists because of racism and classism.

Before the 1917 Supreme Court case Buchanan v. Warley, cities could explicitly ban Black residents from white neighborhoods. When that was ruled unconstitutional, they found a loophole—if they couldn’t exclude people based on race, they could exclude them based on income. Large lots, high home prices, and restrictions that kept lower-income (and disproportionately nonwhite) families from moving in.

Fast forward a century, and New Hampshire (along with many other states) still uses these same tactics, just under different names. Minimum lot sizes of two acres, five acres, even ten acres in some places make it financially impossible for lower-income residents to buy in. Zoning laws continue this pattern, limiting density and ensuring that property values—and barriers to entry—stay high.

What’s most absurd is that this rigid zoning doesn’t even make sense anymore. Take Littleworth Road in Dover, a place where single-family homes sit directly across from industrial storage warehouses. If zoning is supposed to create “cohesive neighborhoods,” then how does that fit? It’s just a mess of reactionary zoning decisions made over decades, with no real planning behind them.

New Hampshire loves its independence, but the irony is that its strict zoning laws are one of the most government-controlled, artificial constraints on the free market that exists. If we actually wanted to solve the housing shortage, we wouldn’t be talking about just ADUs—we’d be dismantling the restrictions that got us here in the first place.

📍 So Where Does Dover Go From Here?

And maybe at this point, this week’s real estate market report feels a little bit like a rant—like for whatever the reason it doesn’t feel like that perhaps the state is doing enough to fix the housing crisis—that House Bills 631, 577, and 459 are just spitting into a very deep bucket.

However, before I officially call it a rant, let me point out that Dover is abuzz with several projects to ease housing issues. Dover's existing zoning framework already supports mixed-use developments in certain districts. The Residential-Commercial Mixed-Use (RCM) Overlay District, for instance, is designed to allow a blend of residential and commercial uses on a single parcel, promoting flexibility and a sense of community.

The Cochecho Waterfront Development project is aimed at providing 400 residential units and approximately 26,000 square feet of commercial space. The development includes mixed-use buildings, multi-family residences, and townhouses, all complemented by a new 3.4-acre public riverfront park. The city’s investment in public infrastructure—like new street systems, utilities, and shoreline stabilization—sets a foundation for this vibrant mixed-use opportunity. And I know I’ve already mentioned Littleworth, but the Ltitleworth Business Park development will span over 85 acres designated for industrial use, with an adjacent 100-acre plot proposed for mixed-use residential and commercial development. The plan envisions nearly 1 million squre feet of industrial space and up to 800 residential units. The area is supposed to create a community vib similar to Dover’s Pointe Place. 239 Knox Marsh Road, another proposed mixed-use project featuring 180 residential units and an 84-room hotel.

🔮 What’s Next for the Market?

Those three projects alone will create 1,380 housing opportunities just in Dover alone. So, I’m left wondering, if you happen to remember the following paragraph from way earlier on in this week’s real estate market report:

To reach a balanced market of 3 to 4 months of inventory, New Hampshire needs at least 1,750 to 2,300 active listings statewide. Dover needs at least 9 more homes on the market to reach the minimum balanced threshold of 3 months of inventory and 18 more homes to reach a full 4-month balanced market. But until inventory rises to that level, sellers will maintain the upper hand, and buyers will continue to face challenges finding suitable homes that meet their needs.

Rule of Acquisition #242: More inventory means less profit—convince the buyers it's their fault for not being rich enough.

Rule of Acquisition #95: Expand or die.