The price of buying a house in New Hampshire has risen significantly over the past few years.
In Concord, the median home price has almost doubled since 2000.
But there may be signs the housing market is starting to cool---if only a little bit.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
On a recent cloudy, wet day, realtor Simone Barry walked through the residential neighborhood behind New Hampshire Public Radio's building in Concord.
It's a neighborhood filled with many older houses that sit close together, and where recently, several "for sale" signs have sprouted.
Barry is the principal owner of the local ReMax Connection agency, and has been selling houses for nearly 20 years.
She says the sudden appearance of the signs is not unusual.
at this time of the year, it just that the....it is our busy season. people are just getting over being in that cold weather and the snow and they don't like to move during that time of the year so this is the time of year that's ideal for them.....
The Northern New England Real Estate Network reports that the market remains strong houses in the middle of the price range, about 250,000 dollars.
But there may be a softening for houses that sell for more than a half million dollars.
Derek Malila is a mortgage broker who owns Blue Water Mortgage Corporation in Hampton.
that house that may have sold last summer for 750, very well could be ..selling for just over 700 this year...depending on the desirable of the neighborhood and stuff like that as well...
Malila says the most exclusive properties, like those on a lakefront or on the seashore, will still get their price.
But sellers of other million dollar properties have had to reduce their expectations.
Malila says the market is going through what he calls "a correction".
Falling prices on the high end could be more significant that you might think.
Some economists look at softness for expensive homes as a kind of "canary in a coal mine" for the housing market across the board.
Economist Richard DeKayser is the chief economist at National City Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio.
...its generally accepted that when a real estate market starts to weaken, the weakness is first apparent at the high end of the market. that is to say with higher priced properties. but that's only an historically observed tendency....there's no economic law that says its got to follow that progression every time. but again that's usually where market analysts look when trying to identify a turning point, at the high end of the market.
Another indication that a slowdown may be at hand is the length of time it takes to sell a house.
The latest data shows in Merrimack, for example, it takes nearly 40 days longer to sell in 2005 than it took the year before.
But New Hampshire real estate professionals say they don't think prices are going to fall very far, if at all.
Location, as they say, is everything in real estate.
And location favors New Hampshire.
The average price of a house in New Hampshire is still priced about 60,000 dollars lower than in eastern Massachusetts.
And real estate agents say so long as Massachusetts buyers continue to come north, the New Hampshire market will continue to do just fine.
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