Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

New Hampshire Authorized 18,015 New Homes in 1986. In 2025 It Authorized 5,030, Its Most Since 2006.

Federal building permit records trace the 1980s boom, the bust that followed and the long low after 2008. The 2025 total still fell short of the pace the state’s 2023 housing study called for, and nearly one unit in five in that total was a Census Bureau estimate filling in for permit offices that did not report.

In 1986, cities and towns in New Hampshire issued building permits for 18,015 new housing units, by the U.S. Census Bureau’s count. That is the highest total in the bureau’s annual state files from 1980 through 2025. Five years later, in 1991, the total was 3,488. The lowest year in the series was 2009, at 2,287.

In 2025, permits covered 5,030 new units. That was the most in any year since 2006, and a little more than a quarter of the 1986 total.

The figures come from the bureau’s Building Permits Survey, which collects reports from local permit offices on new, privately owned housing. The final 2025 estimates were released on May 14, 2026. A permit is a plan to build, not a finished home, and the count has other limits, set out below.

Forty-six years of permits

The 1980s were the outlier. From 1983 through 1988, New Hampshire authorized more than 7,000 units every year, and more than 14,000 in each of 1985, 1986 and 1987. Over the full decade, permits covered 102,232 units. The 2010s, from 2010 through 2019, produced 33,875, about a third as many.

A second, smaller run came in the early 2000s, with 8,708 units in 2002, 8,641 in 2003 and 8,653 in 2004. Then permits fell five years in a row, to 2,287 in 2009, and stayed below 3,000 through 2013. From 2018 through 2025, they did not fall below 4,300.

What kind of housing

The bureau sorts permits by the number of units in each building: one, two, three or four, and five or more. The mix has swung as much as the totals. In 1991, single-family houses made up 95 percent of the units authorized, and buildings with five or more units accounted for 88 units in the whole state. In 2019, buildings with five or more units made up 37 percent of the total. In 2025, single-family houses were 65 percent and buildings with five or more units 28 percent.

Against the state’s own target

In March 2023, New Hampshire Housing, the state’s housing finance authority, published a statewide housing needs assessment prepared by Root Policy Research. It estimated that the state needed almost 60,000 more housing units between 2020 and 2030, and nearly 90,000 between 2020 and 2040. That included a shortage of 23,670 units as of 2022, the number it said would bring vacancy rates up to 5 percent for rentals and 2 percent for homes for sale.

The assessment said building permits for new housing averaged “about 4,000 per year” from 2017 to 2021, and that permit activity “must increase by 36% statewide through 2030.” Thirty-six percent above 4,000 is 5,440 units a year. The Census Bureau’s annual files, as published in 2026, put the 2017 to 2021 average higher, at 4,405 a year; 36 percent above that would be nearly 6,000.

In the Census Bureau’s files, New Hampshire did not reach either level from 2007 through 2025. The last year above 5,440 was 2006, with 5,677 units, and the last year above 6,000 was 2005, with 7,586. From 2022 through 2025, permits averaged 4,833 a year.

The state keeps a second count. The Office of Planning and Development, part of the Department of Business and Economic Affairs, surveys cities and towns each year and says the survey has a 100 percent response rate. Its January 2026 housing supply report put permits at 5,822 units in 2024, “the highest annual number since 2006,” against 4,965 in the Census Bureau’s file for that year. By the office’s count, 2024 was above the 5,440 level. The office’s figures are net changes in housing units and include manufactured homes, which the Census count leaves out, and the two counts’ figures by building type differ widely: for 2024 the office counted 782 units in two-family buildings, the Census file 178. For 2006, the office counted 7,702 units; the Census file has 5,677.

Assuming every unit permitted from 2020 through 2024 was built, the office estimated that New Hampshire had added 25,688 housing units since 2020, or 78.5 percent of the 32,704 it said the 2023 assessment called for in that period. Granite State Report’s February 2026 article “$182,000 to Buy a Median Home: Inside New Hampshire’s Housing War” drew on the same state report. The Census file’s total for 2020 through 2025, six of the decade’s 10 years, is 28,545 units authorized, a little under half of the assessment’s 60,000 for the decade. Neither is a count of finished homes.

New Hampshire beside its neighbors

Measured against population, New Hampshire’s 2025 permits came to 3.55 units for every 1,000 residents, using the Census Bureau’s July 2025 population estimate of 1,415,342. Maine was highest in New England, at 4.93, and Vermont’s rate was nearly identical to New Hampshire’s. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island were each below 2. Across the United States, the rate was 4.19.

County by county

Within New Hampshire, Rockingham County accounted for 1,876 of the 2025 units, 37 percent of the state total, with 23 percent of the state’s residents. Two Rockingham County municipalities led the state: Portsmouth, with 556 units, almost all of them in buildings with five or more units, and Londonderry, with 554, almost all of them single-family houses.

Per resident, Carroll County ranked first, at 9.57 units for every 1,000 people, and Belknap County second, at 6.49. Hillsborough County, home to Manchester and Nashua and to 31 percent of the state’s residents, ranked last, at 1.46. Its 632 units were 13 percent of the state total.

The Hillsborough figure comes with a large caveat. The bureau’s place file records how many months of 2025 each permit office reported. Manchester, the state’s largest city, reported one month, and in it one single-family unit. The 222 units the file assigns to Manchester for the year, including 168 in buildings with five or more units, are almost entirely the bureau’s estimate. Nashua reported all 12 months, for 62 units. Across Hillsborough County, permit offices reported 315 of the 632 units.

Manchester was not alone. Of the 220 New Hampshire permit offices in the 2025 place file, 168 reported all 12 months and 34 reported none. Statewide, permit offices reported 4,085 of the 5,030 units. The other 945, or 19 percent, were the bureau’s imputations for offices and months with no report. The share was about the same in 2024, also 19 percent, and higher than in any other year from 2017 through 2023. Counting only the units permit offices reported, 2025’s 4,085 was below the reported totals for 2019, 2021 and 2022, so the 2025 high rests on the bureau’s estimates.

What the count does and does not show

The bureau counts housing units “authorized to be built by a building or zoning permit,” the first of five stages it tracks, followed by units authorized but not started, started, under construction and completed. A permit can be issued and a home never built, or built a year or more later. The state files do not show starts or completions for New Hampshire.

Some new homes are left out entirely. The bureau excludes manufactured homes built to the federal HUD code, publicly owned housing, and housing units created inside an existing residential or nonresidential building, such as an apartment carved out of a house or a mill. The count covers new construction only. It does not subtract homes that were torn down or converted to other uses, so it is not a measure of net growth in the housing stock. The bureau’s methodology also notes that areas where no permit is required to build a home fall outside the survey.

The list of places surveyed has also changed. The bureau updated its universe of permit-issuing places in 1984, 1994, 2004 and 2014, and since 2023 it has updated the list every year. The annual totals in each year’s file reflect the universe in use then, which makes long comparisons approximate. The 2023 assessment noted that the Census estimates differ from the Office of Planning and Development survey and said it used the Census series to capture a longer trend. The office, for its part, warns that municipal permit systems often do not tally units added or lost through conversions and demolitions.

Granite State Report’s earlier article “The 60,000-Home Question: Can New Hampshire Build Enough Housing Without Losing What Makes It ‘Live Free’?” looked at the state’s housing laws and programs against the same 2023 assessment. What renters pay, town by town, is the subject of “Lebanon’s Median Two-Bedroom Rent Was $2,923. Coos County’s Was $1,161.” The permit record adds the supply side: how many homes New Hampshire’s cities and towns have cleared for construction each year, and how far the recent pace sits from both the 1980s and the state’s own target.

— Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. Permit counts are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey annual files for states (1980 through 2025), counties and places (2025), using the bureau’s estimates with imputation unless the article says reported data. Population figures are the bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimates for July 1, 2025. Definitions and survey history are from the bureau’s Building Permits Survey methodology, definitions and file documentation. Housing need figures are from the 2023 New Hampshire Statewide Housing Needs Assessment. The state’s own permit counts are from the Office of Planning and Development’s January 2026 housing supply report. Sums, averages, shares and rates the bureau did not state are Granite State Report arithmetic from its figures.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.