Portsmouth NH Homes Condos Real Estate

The Coastal NH Real Estate Daily

Ann Cummings — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:59:33 +0000

New Castle New Hampshire Real Estate | Homes For Sale in Newcastle NH

Ann Cummings — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:18:14 +0000

Newcastle NH is a quaint little village, an island actually, that is full of antique homes and has a wonderful feel to it. New Castle has its own elementary school, and the little town center area is made up of the post office, the fire department, a church and now there’s also a nice little mom and pop store in the town center as well. New Castle is also home to a coast guard station, Fort Constitution.

Great Island Common is a wonderful seaside park right on the water, at the mouth of Portsmouth Harbor. It’s a great spot for picnics, gatherings, quiet time, and just watching the river and ocean traffic. We love the Common and love catching moonrises, especially full moons over the water, and we can spend plenty of time there watching all the boats and tankers come into port.

A great destination hotel, one of the ‘grand dame’ type old hotels, Wentworth-by-the-Sea, is located on Newcastle. What a beauty this hotel is, and what a location too! Right across the street from the hotel is Wentworth Marina, where you’ll find boats of all varieties docked there, especially in the summer time.

Two causeways connect Newcastle to the mainland, which bring you to Portsmouth on one end and to part of Rye across the other causeway.

With New Castle being a small island community, there aren’t as many homes or condos for sale at any given time as you’ll find in surrounding towns. Currently we have 14 homes for sale in Newcastle, and those are priced from $419,900 to $2,290,000. This link – Homes for sale New Castle NH – will open to show you information about each home for sale. You’ll see maps that show the location of each home as well as detailed property information on each home currently for sale in Newcastle NH.

If you’ve been thinking about buying a home in New Castle or the general Seacoast areas of NH and southern Maine, this just may be the right time for you. “Should I Buy Now? Yes! And Here’s Why” will show you why the numbers seem to be indicating this very thing.

If you’d like to make your home here in the Seacoast areas of NH or southern Maine, let us know – we’d love to show you the area and help you find that special home just right for your needs. We love living here and we know you’ll love this area too!

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com. 1—888-349-5678 ext. 3839 for Ann and ext. 3801 for Jim.

Ann Cummings and Jim Lee, REALTORS
RE/MAX Coast to Coast
150 Mirona Road
Portsmouth NH 03801
603-431-1111 x 3839 and x 3801
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Portsmouth NH Real Estate Market | Portsmouth Homes For Sale

Ann Cummings — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:08:54 +0000

The Portsmouth New Hampshire real estate market is a busy market!

Even when the real estate market in other areas is slow there are still sales going here in Portsmouth.

Portsmouth NH Homes For Sale

Looking for a home in Portsmouth? We have 74 houses currently for sale and here’s a breakdown of houses for sale by price range:

Under $300,000 - 23 houses offered for sale
$300,000 – $400,000 - 19 houses offered for sale
$400,000 – $500,000 - 12 houses offered for sale
$500,000 – $700,000 - 13 houses offered for sale
$700,000 – $999,999 - 6 houses offered for sale
over $1,000,000 - 6 houses offered for sale

We have one waterfront home for sale in Portsmouth and it’s located at 363 Newcastle Avenue in Portsmouth.

If you’ve been thinking about buying a home or condo in Portsmouth or the general Seacoast areas of NH and southern Maine, this just may be the right time for you. “Should I Buy Now? Yes! And Here’s Why” will show you why the numbers seem to be indicating this very thing.

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com. 1—888-349-5678 ext. 3839 for Ann and ext. 3801 for Jim.

Portsmouth NH Real Estate | 5 Things To Do Before Listing Your Home For Sale

Ann Cummings — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:02:20 +0000

Are you thinking about selling your home? If you are, you want to seize the opportunity to make a really good first impression so it’s worth taking a little extra time and effort BEFORE you actually put your home or condo on the market for sale.

Seacoast NH Real Estate – Selling Your NH Seacoast Home

This list of top 5 things to do BEFORE putting your home on the market will help you do just that:

Have your home pre-inspected – by having this done before you list your home or condo for sale, you’ll know in advance what issues might come up, and it also shows potential buyers that you put extra effort and care into getting your home ready for the market.
Neaten up, tidy, clean, and organize – you’re going to be moving anyway, so if you clean out things you’re not going to keep and start packing other things up, you’ll have a neater more inviting home for potential buyers to view. By paring down personal things out on display, cleaning out closets/basement/garage, packing up those things you rarely or never use, your house will feel roomier and will allow potential buyers to visualize their furniture and belongings in your house. Clean everything and make it shiny and inviting – clean windows, carpets, ceiling fans, baseboards, etc. – taking these extra steps send a message to potential buyers that you really care about your home and it gives them a very nice feeling as they’re viewing your house with thoughts of possibly buying it.
Create inviting curb appeal – potential buyers judge a house by the way it looks from the outside. If it doesn’t say to them, ‘come in and see the rest of me’, you often lose most buyers without them ever having seen the inside of your house. Mow the grass, trim the bushes, seal the driveway, straighten out bricks or stones used in walkways, put some mulch down around flower beds, weed them if they need it. Is there any painting or power-washing needed? Take a look at your house from across the street and see what you see as your put yourself in the shoes of a buyer looking at it from the outside for the first time.
Warranties and home information – find all warranties and manuals for your appliances, furnace, hot water heater, etc. Write out a list of vendors and contractors you use for work on your home with their contact info – these vendors know your home and buyers appreciate this kind of information, and again it shows how much you care about your home by sharing this information. Set up a 3 ring binder notebook and insert all of this information into it in an organized way. Leave this in a location where it can be perused by potential buyers.
Written estimates – if there are things in your home that need replacement, such as roof, carpeting, furnace, etc., get written estimates for replacing/repairing these items and have a copy of those handy, in the 3 ring binder above would be a great location. Knowing these amounts will help potential buyers budget for them, and will be very helpful with the negotiations. Without written estimates from contractors for items needing replacing, often buyers tend to estimate far higher than the real cost because they have no numbers to work from.

Taking care of these suggestions before you put your home on the market should go a long way with those buyers who’ve chosen to look at your home with the thoughts of possibly making it their new home. You rarely get a second chance with buyers so creating the best first impression you can will really be a big factor when your home is put on the market for sale.

If you’re a homeowner who’s thinking about selling your Portsmouth NH real estate, make sure you work with a local REALTOR who really knows the market, and knows how to help you strategically position your property.

My partner, Jim Lee, and I live and work right here in Portsmouth, and we have our fingers on the pulse of the local NH Seacoast real estate market – let us put our knowledge and successful track record to work for you. Read and hear what our clients have said about our services – Client Stories.

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com. 1—888-349-5678 ext. 3839 for Ann and ext. 3801 for Jim.

Ann Cummings and Jim Lee, REALTORS
RE/MAX Coast to Coast
150 Mirona Road
Portsmouth NH 03801
603-431-1111 x 3839 and x 3801
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Search NH and Maine coastal real estate – Search Maine NH real estate for sale and feel free to set up real estate searches for your next home!

New Hampshire Waterfront Living | Spring Beauty

Ann Cummings — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:53:36 +0000

Making your home in New Hampshire with four distinct seasons delivers seasonal beauty all year round. Spring along the NH Seacoast is just exquisite, as I’m sure it is in many places around the country!

This spring brought us quickly from winter to spring buds, blooms, and blossoms, and we have loved seeing all the beautiful colors a little sooner than we typically do. Every day brings new things popping open and showing off their gorgeous spring colors.

Seeing all the new growth, buds, leaves ready to pop out, and more is convincing proof that there is always something to be thankful for and that every day brings something new to rejoice in and enjoy – we just need to look around and there is it…..

If you’d like to make your home in the NH Seacoast areas or southern Maine, let us know – we’d love to show you the area and help you find that special home just right for your needs. We love living here and calling Portsmouth NH home and we know you’ll love this area too!

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com. 1—888-349-5678 ext. 3839 for Ann and ext. 3801 for Jim.

Ann Cummings and Jim Lee, REALTORS
RE/MAX Coast to Coast
150 Mirona Road
Portsmouth NH 03801
603-431-1111 x 3839 and x 3801
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Search NH and Maine coastal real estate – set up your personal Seacoast NH real estate and/or Southern Maine Real Estate searches

Portsmouth NH Condos | Real Estate Market Update

Ann Cummings — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 01:33:02 +0000

Portsmouth NH is a great condo area, with a wide variety of condos and price ranges to offer. We have condominium complexes that were built new as condos, and we have also have condo conversions, which are typically large older homes or buildings that have been converted from their previous uses into condominiums.

Portsmouth NH Condos For Sale

We currently have 68 condos for sale in Portsmouth, and those prices range from $90,000 to $1,409,400. The average asking price of those Portsmouth condos is $466,792, and the price per square foot of those condos on average is $320/sf. The average days on the market right now is running about 195 days.

In the last 6 months, we had 57 condos sold in Portsmouth, and the prices of those sold condos ranged from $99,900 to $1,451,200. The average asking price of those condos that sold in that time frame was $364,424 and the average selling price of those Portsmouth condos was $344,407. The average days on the market for those condos ran about 165 days, and those sellers received on average 95% of their last asking price.

Portsmouth New Hampshire Condos Absorption Rate

The current rate of sales of condos in Portsmouth is about 9 sales a month, and based on that, we have about a 6 1/2 month supply of condos on the market in Portsmouth. That number is referred to as the Absorption Rate, and it means that at the current pace of sales, we have about a 6 1/2 month supply on hand, assuming no other condos in Portsmouth came on the market for sale.

If you’re an owner of a Portsmouth condo and you’re thinking about selling, you need to keep that number – the Absorption Rate – in mind. In order to get your condo sold at a faster pace than the current time frame, it’s important that you work with a local REALTOR who knows the Portsmouth real estate market and who can help you strategically position your condo to beat the rate of absorption.

My partner, Jim Lee, and I live and work right here in Portsmouth, and we have our fingers on the pulse of the local Seacoast market – let us put our knowledge and successful track record to work for you. Read and hear what our clients have said about our services – Client Stories.

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com. 1—888-349-5678 ext 3839 for Ann and ext 3801 for Jim.

Consider it SOLD – start packing!!

Bridges Connecting Communities | Portsmouth NH Memorial Bridge

Ann Cummings — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 23:01:08 +0000

Portsmouth New Hampshire’s Memorial Bridge has connected the 2 communities of Portsmouth NH and Kittery Maine since 1923. And now, for a fairly short time, this bridge won’t be connecting these 2 communities in the physical way that it has all that time. But it has connected and brought together communities within each of these 2 towns in really interesting ways that I’d bet most of us never thought about before the bridge dismantling began.

All the years I’ve lived here, this bridge has been mostly a means by which to get across the river. Many days, I’d go back and forth across it several times a day, depending on appointments I had. From time to time, I’d be stuck on it while it was in the up position for a ship or tanker to go through which often gave me time to sit and just soak in the view for a few minutes. And I suspect that’s what the bridge was for most others who traversed it daily as well – a means to get where we’re going.

Portsmouth NH Community Bridge-Watchers

Jim and I became avid bridge watchers as soon as they began preparing the sections for removal, and we joined the ranks of other area residents who were doing the same. We’d go down and watch the workers several times a day, and as they got closer to being able to remove the middle section, we’d go down and watch for hours at time on the days/nights the middle section was to be removed. This picture is of the middle section being floated upriver to be tied up to the dock so it could be readied for shipping down to the Boston area. The NH DOT Memorial Bridge Project site does a great job keeping the community updated on changes and progress.

During those visits, we would end up meeting all kinds of people down there doing the same thing we were. The conversations with various people were really interesting – many of them sharing amazing memories with us. We met people who told us of their childhood memories of Sunday drives with their parents and crossing the bridge, other memories were of fishing with grandparents, boat trips, family members who’d worked on the bridge. We met a man who was in his late 80’s who shared some special memories of dating his girlfriend and how he proposed to her on the bridge. Some many wonderful people from all walks of life and some very special memories that have been shared with us…

We have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, all the wonderful people we’ve met through a common interest in bridge-watching. Several times this past week I went down to see how the tearing down of the approach road to the bridge in downtown Portsmouth is being torn down. I took a quick lunch with me twice and sat on one of the benches to watch for awhile. Each time 1 or 2 people approached me and chatted for a bit, one man sat down beside me to eat his lunch. Over that quick lunch I learned of some of his memories too – the memories he shared with me had to do with long ago fishing trips that his dad had taken him on, fishing under the bridge. As he finished his story, I noticed tears in his eyes, which put tears in mine. I’d venture to say, many a set of eyes have moistened up as cherished times connected to this wonderful bridge have been shared. Who knew this kind of bonding and sharing would go on because of the dismantling of a bridge??

The crews working on the bridge are in the process of taking down the Kittery Maine side, pictured in the middle picture above. Our new bridge is slated to be up, operational and open for traffic in July 2013. And I know when the bridge begins to go back up, many of those same people we’ve met will be there watching again, just as we will be too. Bridge-watchers, what wonderfully interesting bonds this has created!

The Memorial Bridge was a backdrop to our wedding on June 26, 2011 – it appears in the background of many of our wedding pictures.

It’s a little special to us as well…..

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com 1-888-349-5678 ext 3839 for Ann and ext 3801 for Jim.

NH Seacoast Homes | Absorption Rates

Ann Cummings — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 01:24:06 +0000

New Hampshire Seacoast homeowners who are thinking about selling their homes, or who already have their homes or condos on the market for sale, should know what the absorption rate is for their town. Knowing what the absorption rate is will help to strategically position their home or condo when putting it up for sale.

Real Estate Absorption Rates

So, just what the heck does ‘absorption rate’ mean? And why is it important to know?

The absorption rate tells us how long it will take to absorb the current inventory in any given area. For example, the absorption rate for Portsmouth, as of today April 5th is 7.7 months or 33.2 weeks. These numbers mean that it will take, on average, 7.7 months or 33.5 weeks to sell all the homes currently for sale in Portsmouth. The higher this number is, the more aggressive homeowners need to be to get their homes sold. And all of this is predicated on the laws of supply and demand – an oversupply will show higher numbers, and an under supply of homes will show lower numbers, which would indicate a seller’s market. These rates are based on the assumption that no new listings come on the market – the absorption rates only take into consideration those properties currently on the market for sale.

NH Seacoast Homes Absorption Rates

Here are the absorption rates for single family homes in the local towns in the greater NH Seacoast area:

Portmouth Homes For Sale – 7.7 months or 33.2 weeks
Newcastle Homes For Sale – 14.5 months or 63 weeks
Rye Homes For Sale – 10.8 months or 47 weeks
North Hampton Homes For Sale – 12.7 months or 55.2 weeks
Hampton Homes For Sale – 11.4 months or 49.4 weeks
Exeter Homes For Sale – 9.3 months or 40.2 weeks
Stratham Homes For Sale – 15.2 months or 66 weeks
Greenland Homes For Sale – 6.6 months or 28.5 weeks
Newington Homes For Sale – 16.6 months or 72 weeks
Newmarket Homes For Sale – 7.2 months or 31.1 weeks
Dover Homes For Sale – 8.1 months or 35.1 weeks

These are the most of the towns that are considered the Seacoast area here in New Hampshire. As you can see, some of the towns have much better absorption rates than others, and that means that real estate in those towns is selling better than in other towns. We’ve very much got a mixed real estate market going on here in the greater Seacoast area, and this just really does prove that all real estate is local – there is no such thing as a national real estate market.

If you’re a homeowner who’s thinking about selling your real estate, make sure you work with a local REALTOR who really knows the market, knows local absorption rates and knows how to help you strategically position your property so you can beat the absorption rate in your town.

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com. 1—888-349-5678 ext 3839 for Ann and ext 3801 for Jim.

Portsmouth NH Homes | Real Estate Market Status

Ann Cummings — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 01:40:41 +0000

“How’s the real estate market?” That’s a question we are often asked, as most people have an interest in real estate usually because they own real estate and/or they know how real estate markets seem to impact much of the economy.

The Portsmouth NH real estate market has been busy since before the Christmas holidays – lots of showings have been going on, offers written, many of them eventually turn into contracts after some challenging negotiating at times, and those contracts in turn lead to real estate being sold and changing ownership. And that’s GREAT news!

Chart supplied by Altos Research 4-2-2012

While we are still in a buyer’s market, there’s evidence that the market is slowly making some turns in the other direction. The sales that are happening are taking place at a slightly higher pace than property coming on the market for sale is happening, as evidenced by the number of sales versus the number of homes coming on the market. Demand is increasing, especially in certain locations, and days on the market are becoming shorter.

Since we’re still in a buyer’s market, we’re not seeing prices increase overall as yet. As the laws of supply and demand dictate, when demand continues and the supply isn’t keeping pace, prices will begin to turn in an upward direction and we’ll see a shift in the market toward a balanced market then into the direction of a seller’s market.

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com. 1—888-349-5678 ext 3839 for Ann and ext 3801 for Jim.

Portsmouth NH Homes | Coastal Sunrises

Ann Cummings — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:02:59 +0000

Living here on the coast of New Hampshire allows us to see some spectacular sunrises!

We live a short 3-4 minutes drive to the ocean, and we get to see some amazing scenery because of that. We love chasing sunrises and sunsets, and these pictures are from some of the more recent beautiful sunrises over the marsh and over the ocean around the corner from our home here in Portsmouth NH.

Living the coastal NH lifestyle brings many benefits – seeing these kinds of sunrises is one of those many wonderful joys!

Call us or email us – we’re here to help you with your real estate needs – ann@anncummings.com and jim@jimlee.com. 1—888-349-5678 ext 3839 for Ann and ext 3801 for Jim.