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New Hampshire · Market Intelligence

New Hampshire Feasibility Studies

An independent, lender-grade feasibility practice for New Hampshire across SBA 7(a) and 504, USDA Rural Development, EB-5, and conventional capital. This page is our standing, sourced read on where New Hampshire markets are constrained rather than oversupplied, how deals actually get funded by region, and where New Hampshire feasibility studies fail review.

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1.41M
Residents, July 20241
~1%
Two-bedroom rental vacancy, near-record tight5
59.5%
Of state & local tax from property, highest US reliance2
43.4
Median age, 2nd-oldest US state4
The New Hampshire Thesis

A statewide New Hampshire number is indefensible.

New Hampshire is five economies wearing one license plate: the affluent, Boston-commuter Southern Tier of Manchester, Nashua, and the tax-free border-retail belt; the defense-and-tourism Seacoast around Portsmouth and Pease; the seasonal Lakes Region and White Mountains; the eds-and-meds Upper Valley anchored by Dartmouth; and the distressed, depopulating North Country. Coös County was the only one of the state's ten counties to lose population from 2020 to 2024, while Carroll County grew five percent.1 The same asset class is severely undersupplied in one region and thin to the point of unfinanceable in another.

Two facts dominate every New Hampshire pro forma. First, the property-tax burden is among the highest in the nation and varies enormously town to town: 2025 rates run from $2.62 to $36.54 per $1,000, so a $500,000 home is taxed about $5,650 in Stoddard against $11,990 in Amherst.4 A consultant who applies a national-average tax load to a New Hampshire asset materially understates opex and overstates NOI and DSCR. Second, the housing shortage is among the most acute in the country, with two-bedroom vacancy holding near or below one percent for years against a roughly five-percent balanced benchmark.5 Here the risk is not oversupply the sponsor did not price; it is a market so tight that employers cannot staff the very asset being built.

What follows is organized as a working desk: a live supply-and-constraint monitor, a funding-routing map, the review failures that sink New Hampshire studies, the regulatory edges that decide outcomes, and a per-region demand fingerprint. Every figure is dated and attributed in the sources below.

The Supply & Pipeline Monitor

Where New Hampshire markets stand, region by region.

A supply-pressure read for each region and asset class, refreshed each quarter from named primary sources. New Hampshire's defining feature is that housing is severely undersupplied statewide, so this is largely a constraint monitor. A dash means we hold no current tracked reading, not that the market is balanced. Data current to Q2 2026.

Supply pressure: Undersupplied / Tight Balanced Oversupplied Softening / thin / seasonal
Region Multifamily / Housing Self-Storage Industrial Office Hotel
Southern Tier Undersupplied~1% vacancy UndersuppliedManchester 4.26 sf/capita Balanced–tight5.9% statewide vac. BalancedManchester tightening Balanced
Seacoast UndersuppliedExpensive, constrained No read Balanced SofteningPease larger blocks BalancedSeasonal
Upper Valley Severely undersuppliedDartmouth-driven No read Balanced No read BalancedDartmouth events
Lakes Region UndersuppliedSeasonal / 2nd-home distortion No read Thin No read SeasonalLaconia rally spike
North Country Distressed / thinCoös −165 pop. Thin ThinMill collapse Thin Seasonal

Readings compiled from sources 5–13 below. Vendor estimates for the same region can differ; each figure is attributed at its point of use.

Housing: severely undersupplied, and the constraint that defines every pro forma

New Hampshire runs one of the tightest rental markets in the nation. NH Housing's Residential Rental Cost Survey, conducted with the UNH Survey Center, recorded a statewide two-bedroom vacancy rate of 0.6 percent by mid-2023 and "well under one percent" across all units in recent surveys, against a roughly five-percent balanced benchmark last reached in 2009–2010.5 The statewide median gross two-bedroom rent reached $1,833 in early 2024, up 3.9 percent year over year and 36 percent over five years, with county rents ranging from $1,161 in Coös to $2,069 in Rockingham.5 The single-family median sale price hit a record $565,000 in June 2025.5 NH Housing pegs the shortage at 23,500 units in 2023, rising to a projected 90,000 by 2040.6 The 2025 legislature responded with HB 577, allowing accessory dwelling units by right, and HB 631, permitting multifamily in commercial zones from July 2026; Manchester also leans on the RSA 79-E tax-relief program for residential conversions.24

Self-storage: balanced statewide, undersupplied in the southern tier

Per-capita supply is reported in a wide band by vendor: selfstorage.com cites 6.07 square feet per capita across 266 facilities against a 5.4 national average, while StorTrack cites 9.61 statewide with Manchester at just 4.26 square feet per capita across ten stores.78 Nashua street rates average roughly $137 per month, and developers report southern-tier submarkets near new apartment supply as underserved.9 This is a market where a single statewide per-capita assumption fails: the number nearly doubles depending on the vendor, and Manchester itself sits well below the national line.

Industrial: tight warehouse, digesting manufacturing

Colliers tracks 74.5 million square feet across six New Hampshire submarkets. The market closed 2025 with vacancy at 5.9 percent and asking rents at $11.26 triple-net, with clear category divergence: warehouse absorbed more than 514,000 square feet while manufacturing gave back roughly 635,000 square feet, including the Anheuser-Busch Portsmouth closure.10 Only about two million square feet is under construction, with minimal speculative product. The signature cluster is defense and aerospace: BAE Systems' Electronic Systems sector employs roughly 6,774 people in New Hampshire, the state's largest manufacturing employer, across Nashua, Merrimack, Manchester, and Hudson, and carries a $35.5 million CHIPS award for its Nashua Microelectronics Center.11 Manchester's Amoskeag Millyard, more than three million square feet of former textile mills, is a national adaptive-reuse and biofabrication story, while the North Country's timber and paper base has collapsed.

Office and hotels

Office vacancy rose to 13.8 percent at the end of 2025, with roughly 216,000 square feet converting to residential and a clear flight to quality favoring Class A.10 Lodging is dominated by highly seasonal tourism: New Hampshire draws roughly $7.5 billion in annual visitor spending from about 14.6 million travelers, supporting some 70,000 jobs and more than $320 million in tax revenue.12 The construction pipeline is modest, with 19 projects and 1,903 rooms tracked statewide in Q3 2025 against 142 projects across New England.13 Seasonality is the critical underwriting factor: summer, foliage, and ski peaks give way to weak shoulder seasons, and events such as Laconia Motorcycle Week produce demand spikes that annualized averages will always mask.

Senior housing: strong demand, no CON barrier, staffing-constrained

New Hampshire is the second-oldest state, with a median age of 43.4 and 20.8 percent of residents over 65, and 26.7 percent aged 60 and over.416 Because the state repealed its Certificate of Need program in 2016, assisted living and independent living are market-driven, so strong demographic demand meets no regulatory supply barrier.17 That makes New Hampshire a genuinely attractive senior-housing development market, gated not by permits but by a severe workforce shortage, high property taxes, and high New England construction and energy costs. Skilled nursing is the exception: a residual bed moratorium constrains new Medicaid-certified beds.18

The Funding-Routing Map

How a New Hampshire deal actually gets funded.

Feasibility work exists to satisfy a specific reviewer. Knowing which channel funds your asset in your region is half the battle. This is the routing most feasibility pages never publish.

SBA and USDA administration in New Hampshire
A single SBA district office and a shared USDA structure serve the entire state.19
ChannelCoverage
SBA New Hampshire District Office (Concord)Entire state
Granite State Development Corp. (504 CDC)New Hampshire and New England
Capital Regional Development Council (CRDC)Central New Hampshire mission lending
NH Business Finance Authority (BFA)Statewide state financing authority
USDA Rural Development (Montpelier, VT / Concord, NH)Rural New Hampshire

On the 504 side, Granite State Development Corporation is the dominant New Hampshire CDC, having placed roughly $600 million with more than 1,000 New Hampshire businesses since 1982; claims to be the largest CDC in New England are self-reported and unresolved without the SBA data file.19 On the 7(a) side, the SBA approved 667 loans totaling $163.3 million in the state in fiscal 2024, with an average 7(a) loan of $244,889, roughly 45 percent below the national average; Meredith Village Savings Bank was named New Hampshire SBA Lender of the Year for that year, and third-party aggregators list TD Bank, Live Oak Bank, KeyBank, and Citizens among the leading lenders by volume.20 For rural credits, USDA Business and Industry, REAP, and Community Facilities programs route through a distinctive combined Vermont and New Hampshire state office headquartered in Montpelier, with a Concord office; much of the state outside the southern-tier metros is USDA-eligible, especially the North Country, Lakes Region, White Mountains, and Connecticut River Valley.21

  • Southern-tier owner-occupied real estate plus long-life equipment (Manchester, Nashua, Salem)SBA 504 via Granite State Development Corp. for the real estate, paired with a local bank first mortgage.
  • Southern-tier working capital or acquisitionSBA 7(a) via TD Bank, Citizens, Enterprise, Bank of New Hampshire, or Live Oak.
  • A project in the North Country or rural New Hampshire (Coös, Carroll, Grafton, Sullivan, Cheshire)USDA Rural Development B&I, REAP, or Community Facilities via the Montpelier office, paired with local banks and CDCs.
  • Underserved, women-, minority-, or veteran-owned, needing a microloan or smaller facilityCapital Regional Development Council or a New Hampshire mission lender.
  • A hotel, senior-housing, or other special-purpose asset, anywhere in the stateA national special-purpose lender paired with a New Hampshire 504 CDC; price the town-specific property-tax load first.
Common Review Failures

How New Hampshire feasibility studies fail review.

Each failure below is tied to a real New Hampshire number. These are the recurring reasons a New Hampshire study loses credibility with a lender or agency, engineered out of our deliverables before they ship.

  1. Statewide-average error

    Applying one blended statewide read ignores the affluent Boston-commuter Southern Tier against the distressed, depopulating North Country and the seasonal Lakes Region. Coös lost 165 residents from 2020 to 2024 while Carroll grew 5.0 percent and Rockingham added 8,200.1

  2. Property-tax burden mispricing

    New Hampshire raises 59.5 percent of state and local tax revenue from property taxes, the highest reliance of any state, and 2025 town rates span $2.62 to $36.54 per $1,000. A $500,000 asset is taxed about $5,650 in Stoddard versus $11,990 in Amherst. Underwriting without the town-specific rate and equalization ratio understates opex, overstates NOI, and produces a fatally flawed DSCR.24

  3. Housing shortage and workforce blindness

    With two-bedroom vacancy near or below one percent and a 23,500-unit shortage, employers cannot staff. Any operating business, a hotel, restaurant, senior-housing facility, or manufacturer, must model the staffing constraint the housing shortage drives; ignoring it overstates achievable revenue.56

  4. Demographic headwind misread

    New Hampshire is the second-oldest state, and it has recorded more deaths than births since 2020, so growth depends entirely on in-migration, chiefly from Massachusetts. That is a headwind for workforce-dependent product and a tailwind for senior housing; a study that treats the population as organically growing is wrong on both.14

  5. North Country distress ignored

    Coös lost its paper and pulp base and now carries per-capita income of $36,850 against $50,867 statewide, poverty near 12 percent, and a median age of 49.9; the state has designated it a distressed place-based economy under SB 180. Conventional feasibility built on southern-tier assumptions simply fails there.1526

  6. Seasonality misread

    New Hampshire tourism and lodging are highly seasonal, with summer, foliage, and ski peaks and weak shoulders. Underwriting a lodging or tourism-dependent asset on annualized averages without modeling the seasonal curve is a recurring failure mode.12

  7. Energy-cost omission

    New Hampshire has the sixth-highest electricity costs in the country, and New England's May 2025 residential average of 29.24 cents per kilowatt-hour ran 67 percent above the 17.47-cent national average, driven partly by winter gas-pipeline constraints. A pro forma that omits this opex line understates operating cost.22

Regulatory Edges

The New Hampshire rules that decide feasibility outcomes.

Four regulatory realities separate a New Hampshire study that survives review from one that does not. The first is the one competitors most often state wrong.

No Certificate of Need, but a residual nursing-bed moratorium

New Hampshire repealed its Certificate of Need program effective June 30, 2016, when RSA 151-C sunset and the Health Services Planning and Review Board held its final meeting and disbanded; the "need" review process was not replaced, and facility licensure now runs through the Department of Health and Human Services under RSA 151 and the He-P 800 rules.17 Hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging, and assisted living are therefore market-driven, which raises competition and oversupply risk relative to CON states. Any competitor page referencing a live New Hampshire CON process is working from decade-old information. One residual lever is decisive and frequently missed: a nursing-facility bed moratorium under RSA 151:2 ties new Medicaid-certified beds to July 1, 2016 counts, so skilled nursing is not freely expandable even though there is no CON board.18

The property-tax burden and the school-funding wildcard

Because New Hampshire levies neither a broad personal income tax nor a general sales tax, property tax carries the school and municipal load and funds 59.5 percent of all state and local tax revenue, the highest reliance in the country; effective rates run roughly 1.3 to 1.9 percent depending on methodology and vary extremely by town.23 The balance is a live forward risk: in June 2025 the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled the Statewide Education Property Tax constitutional in Rand v. State while upholding that state education funding is inadequate, with a base-adequacy threshold near $7,356 per pupil against roughly $4,266 paid; the state asked the court to revisit the Claremont precedents in early 2026.25 The outcome could shift the state and local property-tax balance materially, which is why town-specific rate and equalization analysis is mandatory in every New Hampshire study.

New England energy costs

New England electricity costs are among the highest in the continental United States. New Hampshire ranks sixth nationally, and the region's May 2025 residential average of 29.24 cents per kilowatt-hour ran 67 percent above the national average, driven partly by winter gas-pipeline constraints.22 Winter heating and snow-removal costs are real line items, and the 8.5-percent Meals and Rooms tax is a direct lodging pro-forma factor.23 Energy and seasonal operating cost belong in the opex build, not a footnote.

Tailwinds in the sponsor's favor

Several changes cut the other way. New Hampshire has no state personal income tax and no general sales tax, and the Interest and Dividends tax was fully repealed effective January 1, 2025, making it a complete no-income-tax state; it also levies no inventory tax, which favors owner-occupant industrial users.23 Modest supply-side zoning reform arrived with HB 577 and HB 631, and the SBA doubled its combined 7(a)-plus-504 ceiling to $10 million effective July 4, 2026, materially enlarging bankable deal size.2427

Region Divergence

Eight New Hampshire markets, eight demand fingerprints.

Each region carries its own economic base and its own supply position. These are the units of analysis for a New Hampshire study, and each anchors a dedicated market page.

Millyard & defense

Manchester

The state's largest city: healthcare, the BAE defense cluster, finance, and the three-million-square-foot Amoskeag Millyard adaptive-reuse district. Home to SNHU, whose 189,531 enrollment is 97 percent online, a student-housing mirage the naive study mistakes for demand.14

Boston-commuter

Nashua

Defense and precision manufacturing anchored by BAE's Nashua workforce of nearly 4,000, with rents carrying a Massachusetts-commuter premium. Multifamily undersupplied; self-storage underserved near new apartment supply.11

Seacoast & aerospace

Portsmouth & the Seacoast

Pease International Tradeport, strong dining and tourism, and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard workforce that lives heavily in New Hampshire. Housing is expensive and constrained; office carries larger available blocks at Pease.

Tax-free border retail

Salem & the border belt

Massachusetts and Maine shoppers cross for tax-free goods; the state-run liquor outlets generated $766.7 million in sales and $122 million for the General Fund in 2024. Large-format retail is sited for cross-border traffic, a genuinely distinctive driver.26

Eds-and-meds

Lebanon–Hanover / Upper Valley

Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Health, the state's only academic medical center and largest private employer with more than 16,000 staff and a 396-bed hospital. The tightest housing market in the state, severely undersupplied.15

Government & insurance

Concord

State government, healthcare, and insurance anchor the capital. A tight rental market and a stable public-sector employment base, distinct from the commuter economics to its south.

Tourism & second homes

Lakes Region & White Mountains

Lake Winnipesaukee, the North Conway outlets, and the ski corridor. Seasonal, second-home-distorted demand with sharp spikes such as Laconia Motorcycle Week; underwriting must model the seasonal curve, not the annual average.12

Distressed & pivoting

North Country / Berlin

The collapsed paper-mill economy of Coös County, now pivoting to ATV and OHRV tourism around the Jericho Mountain trail network. Low-value and thin, with per-capita income well below the state line; conventional feasibility on southern-tier assumptions fails here.15

By Asset Class

New Hampshire feasibility studies by asset class.

Each asset class carries its own New Hampshire demand drivers, from the acute housing shortage to tax-free border retail to the aging-population senior-housing opening. Explore the analytical approach by property type.

New Hampshire Questions

New Hampshire feasibility study questions.

Does New Hampshire require a feasibility study for an SBA loan?

Under SBA SOP 50 10 8, a feasibility study is discretionary rather than universally mandated, and lenders commonly require one for special-purpose properties and startup or ground-up projects that lack operating history. New Hampshire's seasonal lodging, senior housing, and adaptive-reuse mill projects are exactly the special-purpose collateral for which feasibility analysis is frequently expected.

Does New Hampshire have a Certificate of Need law?

No. New Hampshire repealed its Certificate of Need program effective June 30, 2016, when RSA 151-C sunset and the Health Services Planning and Review Board disbanded. Hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging, and assisted living are market-driven, so any content referencing an active New Hampshire CON process is a decade out of date. One residual lever remains: a nursing-facility bed moratorium under RSA 151:2 tied to July 1, 2016 bed counts.

Which New Hampshire real estate markets are oversupplied right now?

The dominant New Hampshire risk is undersupply, not oversupply. Statewide two-bedroom rental vacancy has held near or below one percent for years against a roughly five-percent balanced benchmark, and NH Housing pegs the shortage at 23,500 units in 2023 rising to a projected 90,000 by 2040. Where softening exists it is narrow: office vacancy reached 13.8 percent at end-2025 and manufacturing gave back space, while warehouse remained tight.

Who funds SBA and USDA loans in New Hampshire?

SBA programs run through the New Hampshire District Office in Concord, with Granite State Development Corporation the dominant 504 CDC. In fiscal 2024 the SBA approved 667 loans totaling $163.3 million in the state, with an average 7(a) loan of $244,889. Rural and North Country credits route through USDA Rural Development's combined Vermont and New Hampshire state office in Montpelier, which also staffs a Concord office.

Why does the property-tax burden matter so much in a New Hampshire feasibility study?

New Hampshire raises 59.5 percent of state and local tax revenue from property taxes, the highest reliance of any state, because it levies neither a general sales tax nor a broad personal income tax. Rates vary enormously by town, from $2.62 to $36.54 per $1,000 in 2025, so a $500,000 asset is taxed about $5,650 in Stoddard versus $11,990 in Amherst. Applying a national-average tax load understates operating expense and overstates NOI and DSCR.

How is a New Hampshire feasibility study different from a national one?

New Hampshire is five economies on one license plate: the affluent Boston-commuter Southern Tier, the defense-and-tourism Seacoast, the seasonal Lakes Region and White Mountains, the eds-and-meds Upper Valley around Dartmouth, and the distressed North Country. A defensible study is built region-by-region against town-specific property-tax rates, the near-one-percent rental vacancy, high New England energy costs, and the non-CON healthcare market rather than a statewide average.

Underwriting a New Hampshire project? Start with the market read.

Feasibility Study Company prepares independent New Hampshire feasibility and market studies, built to the standard your lender or agency applies. A methodology briefing walks through the analytical framework, the deliverable composition, and the current New Hampshire market data for your region and asset class.

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Sources

Data sources and dates.

Every figure on this page traces to a named authority. Real-estate readings are point-in-time and vendor-dependent; each is attributed at its point of use.

  1. UNH Carsey School of Public Policy and U.S. Census Bureau, New Hampshire population estimates (population as of July 1, 2024; released March 2025), including county change and net-migration data.
  2. Tax Foundation, state-and-local tax burden and property-tax reliance analysis (2026); 59.5 percent property-tax reliance and 1.50 percent effective rate on owner-occupied housing.
  3. ATTOM, property-tax rates by state (2025); New Hampshire ranked sixth by effective rate at 1.29 percent.
  4. New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, property-tax and demographic analyses (2024–2025); 2025 town rates $2.62–$36.54 per $1,000; median age 43.4; 20.8 percent over 65.
  5. New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, Residential Rental Cost Survey (2024, conducted with the UNH Survey Center) and "Who Can Afford to Live in New Hampshire?" (October 2025); vacancy, gross-rent, and single-family price data.
  6. New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, statewide housing-needs assessment (2023); shortage of 23,500 units rising to a projected 90,000 by 2040.
  7. selfstorage.com, New Hampshire self-storage supply (2025); 6.07 square feet per capita across 266 facilities.
  8. StorTrack, New Hampshire and Manchester self-storage supply (2025); 9.61 square feet per capita statewide, Manchester 4.26.
  9. Yardi Matrix via RentCafe and SpareFoot, Nashua self-storage street rates (2025–2026).
  10. Colliers, New Hampshire Industrial and Office Market Reports (Q2 2025 and year-end 2025); 74.5 million square feet, 5.9 percent industrial vacancy, 13.8 percent office vacancy.
  11. NH Business Review, BAE Systems Electronic Systems New Hampshire employment and CHIPS award (2025).
  12. Dean Runyan Associates and the NH Division of Travel and Tourism Development (2025, via the Keene Sentinel); $7.5 billion visitor spending, 14.6 million travelers.
  13. Lodging Econometrics, U.S. Construction Pipeline Trend Report (Q3 2025); New Hampshire 19 projects and 1,903 rooms.
  14. NCES IPEDS via CollegeTuitionCompare, Southern New Hampshire University enrollment (AY2024–25); 183,892 exclusively online of 189,531 total.
  15. Business NH Magazine, New Hampshire hospital systems, largest employers, and Coös County profile (2025–2026); Dartmouth Health and North Country income data.
  16. New Hampshire Commission on Aging, older-adult population share (2023); 26.7 percent aged 60 and over.
  17. New Hampshire RSA 151-C, Certificate of Need repeal effective June 30, 2016; UNH law faculty summary; NH DHHS licensure under RSA 151 and He-P 800 rules.
  18. New Hampshire RSA 151:2, nursing-facility bed moratorium tied to July 1, 2016 bed counts.
  19. U.S. Small Business Administration, New Hampshire District Office (Concord); Granite State Development Corporation public disclosures.
  20. SBA fiscal 2024 New Hampshire lending (Nautix Capital citing SBA Open Data, secondary); GoSBA lender rankings (secondary); Meredith Village Savings Bank NH SBA Lender of the Year (December 2024).
  21. USDA Rural Development, combined Vermont and New Hampshire State Office (Montpelier, VT; Concord, NH office).
  22. EIA via NH Journal, New England and New Hampshire electricity prices (2025); May 2025 residential average 29.24 cents per kilowatt-hour.
  23. New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration, TIR 2025-001 (Interest & Dividends repeal), Business Profits and Business Enterprise taxes, and the 8.5 percent Meals and Rooms tax (2025).
  24. New Hampshire HB 577 (Chapter 197, accessory dwelling units, effective July 1, 2025) and HB 631 (Chapter 201, multifamily in commercial zones, effective July 1, 2026); St. Anselm Initiative for Housing Policy and Practice zoning tally (2025).
  25. Rand v. State and ConVal School District v. State, New Hampshire Supreme Court (June 2025) and subsequent proceedings (2025–2026); Statewide Education Property Tax and base-adequacy figures.
  26. New Hampshire SB 180 (2025), distressed place-based economy designation for Coös County; New Hampshire Liquor Commission FY2024 Annual Report via the Josiah Bartlett Center (December 2025).
  27. U.S. Small Business Administration, combined 7(a) and 504 loan-cap increase to $10 million effective July 4, 2026.