Business quarterly: Region’s market seeing resurgence

As the warm glow of the holiday season, family gatherings and celebrations recede into memory and the clear air and snow crested landscape of winter in New England lies ahead, we enter a new year and decade full of bright opportunity and promise.

After the long recession in our region following the 2008 financial crisis, the last few years have brought a welcome resurgence in buying and selling activity to our region. Last year was particularly strong as many new businesses, including So Clean, established themselves here and experienced rapid employment growth. The expansion of RiverMead, improvements at Monadnock Community Hospital, the Scott-Farrar development and new construction of homes including the Church Street development all served to grow the tax base in Peterborough and augment job gains regionally.

We now enter an election year which brings much excitement and public engagement to our region as a direct result of New Hampshire’s first in the nation primary status. Although presidential election years tend to dampen investment interest due to a greater level of uncertainty about the future direction of governmental policy and the early years of decades are traditionally slow years in the business cycle, our early experience suggests a robust economy will persist into the coming year.

Our own business has been thriving, once again leading in Peterborough and Contoocook Valley district towns, with more than $50 million dollars in transactions regionally in 2019. The region is poised to take advantage of a tremendous new surge of interest in homeownership by a coming generation of buyers. In addition to those seeking a more favorable lifestyle for a far more attractive value than can be found in more urban areas of the northeast, young families are regularly entering the market, encouraged by low interest rates and a variety of helpful homebuyer programs.

This large group, sometimes referred to as Millennials, Generation X and Y or by other designations, are larger in number than the baby boom generation and are now in greater numbers than ever making personal commitments to career, community, marriage, family, business formation and home ownership. The potential for these changes to create economic and cultural benefits for our “quiet corner” of New Hampshire is tremendous and most exciting. As we embrace change and welcome the participation of new residents, we recommit ourselves to the values that make our communities wonderful places to live, work and raise our families.

With the coming of 2020 our company has also undergone a transformation, joining with Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty, truly one the most distinguished companies in our profession. I want to thank the many friends who have contacted me personally to congratulate us and offer their best wishes for the future. As we enter our seventy-second year of operation, we feel deeply that our generational enterprise is not merely a business that provides us with a livelihood but a regional asset. Our office was one of the six original exclusive Sotheby’s affiliates from the inception of the real estate company in 1976, and the first office to join in the State of New Hampshire.

As a result of that experience and the associations formed thereby with the finest brokerage firms in New Hampshire and Vermont, we are acutely aware of the advantages the Sotheby’s brand can deliver for our local clients. Heather and I and all the people of the Petersons will still be here running our local office and are available to serve your real estate needs now and in the future. Like the towns we love, here in the shadow of Grand Monadnock, we honor our past by embracing change and progress. By so doing, we strengthen our ability to enhance our services and sustain our commitment to this special region.

In the fast-paced world of today, to predict the outcomes a year hence for our local market would be speculative and unreliable, as events far beyond our ken can significantly affect the value of local investments. However, our market is currently is ‘burning out of the snowbanks’ which portends an active spring season for early 2020 and beyond.

Andy Peterson is a realtor with Four Seasons Sotheby’s in Peterborough.