Unitil Corp. has added a hybrid electric bucket truck to its fleet. The vehicle uses a rechargeable battery to power the boom — the arm with the bucket attached — rather than its diesel engine. The truck allows for the engine to be turned off while an electric power take-off system is used for boom operation. If the battery runs low, the power source for the boom can be switched over to the engine until the battery is recharged, the company said. The company expects to add its second hybrid electric bucket truck to the fleet later this year along with several Ford F150 hybrid pickup trucks.
The median price for a new home in New Hampshire continues to skyrocket, hitting a record $440,000 in March, according to the latest monthly snapshot from the NH Association of Realtors.
The $440,000 median sale price is up 20.5 percent from the same period last year, according to the association. Condo units hit a median sales price of $350,500 last month, a 31 percent increase from last year.
The current median sales price represents a major leap from just February, when the state’s median sales price breached $400,000 for the first time. Sales prices have climbed rapidly in recent years; New Hampshire’s median price first broke the $300,000 mark only in 2019. In 2002, the median home sales price was $200,000.
And one metric often used by real estate agents and industry analysts – the number of months’ supply of inventory – continues to fall. Currently, it would take just “0.8 months” to sell all the state’s inventory if no new homes came on the market, according to the latest report. A healthy market would take six months, housing economists say.
As prices have jumped across the state, the number of closed sales has continued to dwindle, dropping 23 percent since this time last year. Just 811 single-family residential home sales were closed in March 2022. Between March 2021 and this March, the number of listings dropped 14.1 percent with just 1,134 on the market.
The high prices and low supply have driven families into the rental market, increased rent and lowered vacancy rates in the state, analysts say.
– ETHAN DEWITT/NEW HAMPSHIRE BULLETIN
