Why Your Gut's Not Wrong
Home prices are dropping—except when they're not. Houses are lingering longer—unless they vanish in days. Here's why your gut feeling about the market is spot on and what nobody is telling you.
The Housing Market Should Feel Weird Right Now
One of my friends called me about 165 Dover Point Road when the property went up on the market. They were just curious, not actually interested in purchasing.
Dover Point was sold, by the way, in six days for $15,000 over the asking price. Which is weird because since about February, I’ve been telling people that properties have been sitting on the market longer and dropping in price. And this also seems to be the real estate party line: you’re not going to get the price you want, and your house is going to sit for longer.
So Dover Point was this mysterious anomaly. And the thing about me and mysteries is that we don’t get along very well. I started digging into the data, and what I discovered was shocking, to say the least.
The heavy green line in the charts, that’s us in 2025.
February was like the market whispered, “What if we just… tried $700k and see what happens?”
Well, houses for sale waited around for about thirty days to sell, and you saw huge price decreases in March. That’s what happened. So yeah, telling people that home prices were dropping and sitting on the market longer made perfect sense to say.
But did you notice something else in these two charts?
Even though prices dropped in February, prices remained about $200k above pandemic-era pricing.
So what we’re seeing is a micronism of Econ 101—a tiny, distorted echo of how the market should behave—where the supply of available homes is genuinely up (just over 5 months’ worth of inventory1), and prices are dropping but only within our current moment in time. Because when you look at the affordability index, we went from a score of 70 to 29 in just a month—and that is bad, bad.
Secondly, despite February’s sky-high prices, homes are selling faster now than they did at the peak of the pandemic. Even faster than the post-pandemic boom.
And. Here’s the kicker. No one seems to be talking about the bidding wars anymore. Of course, we’re not talking the waiving-your-firstborn circus of 2021, but quiet bidding wars still landing 2 to 3% over asking. That’s certainly down from the 4 to 6% madness of the pandemic. But we’re starting from a much higher price point now. So 2% over today’s asking price often equals or exceeds what 6% over looked like in 2021.
We are not operating on a single-variable supply-demand curve anymore. We are in a multi-variable distortion zone, where the pricing floor has been permanently warped. Welcome to Behavioral Econ 410.
During COVID, people didn’t just bid high—they reset the idea of what a home is worth. That reset compounded by record-low mortgage rates, remote work enabling urban flight, and “this is the last house I’ll ever see” panic acted like a psychological re-zoning. Once enough homes sold at that new number, appraisal logic followed. Now every house that’s sort of like that one that went for $840K last year is benchmarked on the lie of scarcity that no longer exists.
Down isn’t down when you’re still 30% above baseline. Even with inventory rising fast, the average list price in New Hampshire is $745,812 today. That’s down from the April peak of $825, yes, but still $200k higher than pre-pandemic levels, and $120k above the 2021 average for this time of year.
Interest rates should cool prices. That’s what the textbooks say. But 7%2 rates also mean no one wants to list—because who’s eager to give up a 3% mortgage unless they absolutely have to? So instead of a wave of fresh, reasonably priced homes, we get this Frankenstein market: inventory is technically rising, and the homes showing up are the kinds of modest, functional houses we grew up in—nothing flashy, just average three-bed colonials and ranches. But the problem is, they are priced based upon a historical pandemic anchor bias. And the $450K to $550K “missing middle”3 now floats near the $740K mark.
The New Hampshire real estate market behavior is no longer anchored in rational economics, but in memory, trauma, and recalibrated perception.
But then there is also the secret, underground market that you don’t know about.
165 Dover Point Road was listed by Compass, and here’s what we don’t know:
We don’t know how long the for-sale sign was in the yard.
We don’t know when the property first became available to buyers.
We only know this: the listing showed up in the MLS4 for six days—and only after my friend asked me to look it up and I couldn’t find it.
At the time of that phone call, there was no listing in the MLS. But there was a sign in the yard. And there was a Compass.com listing.
The moment you put a sign in the yard or publish the listing online—that’s public marketing under NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy. And though not state law, if a listing goes public without hitting the MLS inside one business day and you are a REALTOR® and signed and agreed to the Realtor ethics, MLS Policy 8.0 says the association may fine the broker and can refer it to an ethics panel—up to and including a licence-law review if the state deems it serious.
Currently, Compass has about 10,000 listings nationwide that are available only to Compass agents and Compass buyers. They call them Private Exclusives. You might know them better as pocket listings.
To know about 165 Dover Point Road, you had to be in the Compass ecosystem—or drive past the house. When I searched, it wasn’t visible on Zillow. It wasn’t available to agents outside Compass. It wasn’t in the MLS—until it suddenly was.
Of course, a seller-signed Delayed-Marketing waiver could explain the gap, something only the MLS audit log can confirm.
To be clear, Compass is not alone in this. Coldwell Banker, Howard Hanna, and even Keller Williams have systems in place that market homes exclusively to in-house agents and clients before (or instead of) making them publicly available.
The brokerages say it’s about privacy. Control. Flexibility. “Helping sellers test the market.”
When I got my license in 2021, that kind of marketing—holding a listing back from the public—was still allowed. Then they changed the policy and said no more.
And now, the new but same 2025 policy says, yeah, go ahead and mark the listing as Delayed Marketing with a signed seller waiver.
But make no mistake: these systems don’t necessarily help sellers. They protect inventory, lock buyers into brokerage pipelines, and manufacture exclusivity in a market that’s already closed off by price.
Office Exclusive (Pre-2025) vs. Delayed Marketing Exempt Listing (2025 Policy)
Home prices aren’t just about supply and demand, especially when no one is seeing the true supply.
There’s an economic theory-concept called Perfect Competition, where pretty much everything is equal. And when you are in a perfect competition environment, five situations must be true:
Perfect information
– All buyers and sellers have full and immediate access to all relevant info: pricing, quality, availability, etc.Homogeneous products
– Every unit of the product is identical, so it doesn’t matter who you buy it from.Free entry and exit
– Anyone can enter the market (to buy or sell) at any timeMany buyers and sellers
– No single buyer or seller can influence the price.Price takers, not makers
– Sellers have no control over the price.
People get mad when I say real estate operates in perfect competition.
Well, Realtors get mad. And the clients go, “Wait, how can that be? Every house is different. It’s not like buying a loaf of bread.”
But the house isn’t the product. The house is only context. The product is the agent. Because, in theory, every agent is publicly searchable. Every buyer and seller has access to the same inventory of Realtors. Every Realtor does the same job under the same license law. Buyers and sellers can freely hire and fire agents. And commission is pre-set by market norms, not true price discovery.
That’s textbook perfect competition.
Identical products, free entry/exit, perfect information, many sellers, no control over price. Except that the systems the products (the real estate agents) work within are rigged to violate every assumption of a free and open market.
The listings, the headlines, the mortgage calculators—they’re all part of the script. You’re told it’s about the house. And every agent is trained to present the same canned pitch. You’re cast as the rational actor, the willing buyer, the seller with “just the right price.” You’re trapped inside a brokerage war for control over what you’re even allowed to see.
This isn’t a market. It’s a narrative economy.
It performs freedom. It performs choice. It even performs data. But when you peel back the story, you discover scarcity manufactured by design, agents commodified by system logic, and trust gamed by automation and branding.
And you? You’re not a consumer. You’re a character in someone else’s sales funnel.
This isn’t just a weird moment.
It’s the next phase of a housing system.
And unless we start demanding transparency, real inventory access, and a reset on our collective price memory, the squeeze will keep tightening—quietly, invisibly, and unevenly.
Don’t accept this as normal. Ask your agent the uncomfortable questions:
How and where exactly are you marketing my house?
Am I seeing everything on the market—or just what’s convenient for your brokerage?
Is the listing delayed, private-exclusive, or immediately public? Prove it.
The Bare Bones Numbers 💀📉
📍 Statewide New Hampshire Housing Market
Active Listings: 2,236
Closed Sales (Last 6 Months): 2,638
Pending Sales: 950
Median Sales Price: $525,000
Median Days on Market (DOM): 6
Inventory: 5.1 months
Affordability Index: 29
📍 Seacoast Area
Active Listings: 348
Closed Transactions (Last 6 Months): 521
Pending Transactions: 230
Days on Market (DOM):
Highest: 147
Average: 11
Median: 6
Pricing Trends:
Lowest List Price: $189,000
Lowest Sold Price: $199,000
Average List Price: $745,812
Average Sold Price: $743,636
Median List Price: $620,000
Median Sold Price: $618,000
📍 Tri-City Area (Dover, Somersworth, Rochester)
Active Listings: 69
📍 Durham, Newmarket, Madbury & Lee
Active Listings: 16
📍 Portsmouth & Newington
Active Listings: 36
PROPERTY OF THE WEEK
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Estimated payment: $3,378/mo
Estimation provided by Keller Williams Realty Inc.
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This charming and well-maintained New Englander is ready for its next chapter. Recently the seller has refinished floors in 2 of the 3 bedrooms. Perfectly situated on a corner lot, this property offers easy access to public transportation, shopping, and major commuting routes, making it ideal for convenience and lifestyle. The outside has a newer roof, vinyl siding and solar to complete the ease of maintaining the home. Make the space your own with your personal touches.
Inside, the home is both spacious and inviting. Step into the enclosed porch, a perfect spot to enjoy your morning coffee or relax in the evening. The porch flows into the central dining room, adjacent to the light and bright kitchen, complete with a convenient laundry closet and a full bathroom just steps away.
The first floor also features a cozy den with a fireplace and built-in hutch—perfect for intimate gatherings—and a formal living room at the front of the house with plenty of space to entertain.
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Don’t miss your opportunity to see this lovely property! Your new home awaits! Solar Panels are leased through Sun Run. Lease Payments attached to documents, lease transferrable. Home inspection available to interested buyers.
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A balanced market, according to many real estate pundits, is 6 months. But if you’ve been reading me long enough, you actually know those pundits are absolutely wrong because 4 months’ worth of inventory, which favors the sellers, is a truly balanced market. Please, someone debate me on this. I’m itching to lay out my argument (which is also incredibly boring, which is also why I don’t write about why a 4-month inventory of homes is balanced—already I see you reading this footnote yawning away, reaching for another cup of coffee).
We won’t talk about how 7% is just an average interest rate and so you shouldn’t really worry about the interest rate because the interest rate is going to do what the interest rate is going to do, so just go ahead and buy a home already. Cause that’s just agent talk for buy a house now so I can make a buck. Nor will we look at the 1984 rate that ballooned to 19%. Heck, half the people I know don’t even remember 1984 except for the Wonder Woman movie, and even then, the trailer was better.
A real-life dual-income household with 5% down should be able to afford a home without selling a couple kidneys. Remember when the news was freaking out about half million dollar homes and now I’m talking about them like that should be affordable?
The MLS is the regional database Realtors use to publicize homes.