NASHUA – With urban dwellers looking for a piece of green, the real estate market in the Nashua and Milford areas is at a low and experts expect this trend to continue for some time.

Bean Group realtor Barry Warhola said the inventory in Nashua is incredibly low and the home buying situation “challenging.”

“People aren’t selling because they know they can’t buy and sell at the same time,” he said. “With a limited number of houses to show, we’re still getting a plethora of buyers coming up from Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York and we’re just indundated.”

Warhola said that with so few houses to show, homes are getting incredible amounts of offers and open houses run fast and furious.

“I look at open houses at this point as glorified showings,” he said. “Because some of the agents force all of the showings into the open house. But either way you’re getting a lot of people through the houses and many offers, no matter what.”

Another problem is that area towns, Warhola said, are “dragging their feet on new construction.”

“That’s causing a larger problem,” he continued. “I should have four to fourteen more listings but we’re waiting on permits.”

One reason for delays in permits could stem from people working from home instead of their office.

“My one builder has been waiting for two months to get his permits,” Warhola said. “They finally told him that he needed to go before another board. And he asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me two months ago?’ And their response was, ‘Oh, we didn’t realize. Sorry.'”

This also happened in Milford to Warhola, where it took almost 60 days to get a permit, versus the normal period of time, which is two weeks.

“Everybody is asking us to get more inventory to help ease the burden of prices going up,” he said. “But no one wants to allow the developers to build – which I get. But there are a lot of compounding factors for why the inventory is low.

Warhola said that in Nashua, the other problem is that we’re running out of land.

And if you are buying (or selling), cash is king.

“There are a lot of cash buyers,” Warhola said. “Most of the houses I sell right now are 20 percent down, if not cash. As opposed to ’07, as the prices were going up then, we were doing 100 percent financing and 3 percent to 5 percent down.”

Warhola added that he hasn’t had a deal where the seller has paid closing costs in a year.

“That used to be the norm,” he said. “Every deal the seller paid the money towards closing costs. But now they’re paying just their normal closing costs. Back ten, fifteen years ago, the seller would be paying all the buyers closing costs for them so they could mortgage off their closing costs.”

Ultimately in Nashua, sellers are weary of selling, even if it’s $50K over asking price, because as Warhola put it, “where are they going to go?”

“I probably have a call every week on that,” he said. “Someone calls and says that they want to sell their house. And then ask, ‘Where can I go?’ I tell them, ‘You have to sell your house and then try.’ I ask them if they have temporary housing.”

Back in the day, you bought and closed on the same day. Warhola said that does still happen. But it’s rare.

“I had a lot of people who will buy and ‘stretch their budget,'” he said. “And then sell their house with a two or three week layover. So they’re not really stretching their budget. On paper, they’re stretching for a couple of weeks while they have two mortgages.”

Currently the median sales price is $337,182 and home prices are up 1.6 percent compared to last year. On average, homes in Nashua sell after ten days on the market compared to 30 days last year. In March ’21, 68 homes sold, down from 82 in March ’20.

Warhola said while cash is untouchable in the buying game, people are making up differences in appraisals and skipping home inspections.

“I didn’t have a no-home-inspection deal with a residential buyer for probably most of my career,” he said. “And now it’s the norm.”

Meanwhile in Milford for example, availability is even lower. Amherst Coldwell Banker realtor Siobhan Dalton, a member of the Coldwell Banker Diamond Society, said the outlook is not good.

“This market is driving us all crazy,” she said. “Agents are frustrated, buyers are frustrated, sellers are thrilled. But we’re in this kind of log jam because there are so many buyers out there who want to jump in and purchase a house. But there is so little for them to see out there.”

As of Tuesday, Milford had six homes on the active market, which includes all price ranges for single family homes. Amherst had seven homes on the market, all single family homes. Wilton and Lyndeborough had five each.

Dalton said the problem is that sellers can’t find anything that they want to get into.

“There’s not enough for sellers to see so they can say, ‘Let’s move on, we see all these condos that we want to buy,'” she said. “But they can’t find anything that they like well enough to put their house on the market. So they’re sitting tight.”

Dalton said no one is happy with the current situation and speaking with realtors, some who have been in the business for 40 years, they have all said that they’ve never seen anything like it.

“The flipside is that I’m scared to death as to what will happen once these folks try to sell the house that they’re spending $100,000 more than what they’re worth,” she shared. “I’ve been dealing with a lot of people, some very intelligent people who work in high finance and they’re just shaking their heads.”

Many buyers don’t want to be in a boat where they’ll be trying to sell a house that can’t recoup a huge over-asking purchase.

Milford has seen an increase in the average sold price of $321,830 in 2019 to $434,192 in 2021. Likewise, Amherst has seen an increase from $413,571 in 2019 to $569,813 in 2021.

Dalton said the real estate market will not be in the same situation that it was in back in 2008.

“The rates are there and the banks are qualifying people very well,” she explained. “You’re not seeing people getting into loans that shouldn’t be getting into loans. That’s kind of what happened back then. That’s a good thing.”

And as realtors work on commission, Dalton said, “If you’re not sitting at the closing table and getting something closed, you have no income.”

Like many realtors, Dalton said it’s tough when you’re going through up to nine offers on a house for one buyer and they still don’t get it.

Dalton called what’s happening, “The Wild West.”

“Buyers are so frustrated with having to offer so much over the asking price just to have their offer considered,” she said. “I had a buyer offer $100K over the list price and he did not get the house. A cash buyer was the winner, even though my buyer had solid financing and a huge down payment and deposit.”

Some buyers are saying that they’ll start looking for homes in Massachusetts. Dalton said that’s no better than New Hampshire.

“If people think they’ll find a better way to do this down in Massachusetts, they’re in for a rude awakening,” she stated. “Massachusetts is worse than we are. People are trying to get out of the cities and they’re coming in from all over the place. People are throwing money around and they don’t care.”

With current conditions, one appraiser that Dalton knew went from appraising to becoming a realtor instead.

“Inspectors are dying on the vine,” she said. “They’re not getting the phone calls anymore because people are waiving the home inspections.”

With everything topsy-turvy, Dalton said that most houses are going under agreement within three to five days.

“Those are the prevailing numbers,” she said. “And if they’re not going under agreement right away, it’s new construction, because that takes longer. But for the most part if the property is priced right, it’s a done deal.”

Showings have also been streamlined because of the large number of buyers out there, Dalton said.

“What we’re doing now to make it easy on a seller, because it is a seller’s market, is we’re doing two open houses on the weekend,” she said. “The open house is being set up so that only agents who have made appointments to bring their buyers may go to that open house.”

Buyers are given only fifteen minutes to do a home walk-through.

“They have a time slot,” Dalton said. “They go in and have fifteen minutes, then they’re out and the next agent and buyers go in and so forth.”

After that, all offers must be submitted by 6 p.m. on Monday. Dalton said sellers are getting between ten and fifteen offers.

“We have to sit there with a spread sheet and help them analyze the numbers,” she said. “We have to figure out which ones look good and which ones don’t. It’s crazy.”

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