“I started building in the speculative market in 1987. My grandparents owned some property up here and decided that they wanted to sell it,” says home builder Joe Skiffington. “And I was doing renovations and construction in the Boston area. I came up to the lake and I said, you know, I wonder what selling vacation homes would be like? So I built a couple of them on spec. These were $79,900, so a far cry from what we’re doing today. But the process was fun.”
“It’s definitely gotten expensive. When we started lakefront construction–the first lakefront home I built was in 1991 or ’92–the lot was about $100,000, and construction cost was about $175,000, and we sold it for, I think, $309,000,” Skiffington says. “That was 20 years ago. Today, an entry-level product is going to be somewhere in the range of $1.8 million to $2 million to buy a new home, or have a home built on Lake Winnipesaukee.”
“I think it was a bubble in 2006 and 2007. I mean, it was just so busy, we were building seven of these $3 million to $4 million houses a year, and they were selling faster than we could build them,” Skiffington says. “People ask me, ‘When do you think it will be like it was in 2006 and 2007 again?’ And I say, ‘I really hope it doesn’t.'”
“A lot of people got into the business because they felt they just couldn’t lose,” Skiffington says. “When non-builders start building spec houses, it becomes a problem. There were too many realtors, too many builders, and then what happens is the bubble bursts and nobody makes money and everybody gets hurt. I’d like to see us maintain some sort of normalcy in a trend where price escalation is at a minimum.”
As part of our weekly “Getting By, Getting Ahead” series, StateImpact is traveling across New Hampshire, gathering personal stories from the people behind the economy. In our sixth installment, we talk with a Lakes Region home builder.
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Summer is boom time on the banks of Lake Winnipesaukee. These are the months when the region’s tourist towns double or even triple in size as wealthy vacation home owners settle in for the season. But at the moment, one of these homes — a 7,000 square foot mini-mansion on Governor’s Island — remains empty.
Joe Skiffington’s company built this home back in 2008. Skiffington, 48, is a big man with a dark goatee and an easy smile. He’s part of a small community of Lakes Region developers who build high-end vacation houses — places with 22-foot high vaulted ceilings, exposed pine beams, basement saunas and amazing guest bedrooms. Upstairs, Skiffington shows off one of these guest rooms. Continue Reading →
The slowing high-end second home market didn't only affect home builders and realtors
Tomorrow on Morning Edition on NHPR, you can catch the sixth installment of our seven-part series “Getting By, Getting Ahead.” This summer, StateImpact is looking at the personal stories behind New Hampshire’s economic recovery, and how they vary by industry and region. This evening on All Things Considered, host Brady Carlson spoke with reporter Amanda Loder about how the Lakes Region‘s high-end vacation home bubble affected not only developers and wealthy tourists, but also year-round residents.
If you’d like to find out more about the area’s intricate tourism and high-end real estate markets, check out our Lakes Region Economic Snapshot.
On Wednesday the Affordable Care Act will require insurance companies to cover eight new preventive health services for women, with no copays. These provisions supplement a series of preventive care requirements already instituted when the ACA passed two years ago. And while some states already require insurance plans to cover some preventive services, these requirements will be new for insurance providers in New Hampshire.
The female-specific services are based on guidelines recommended by the independent Institute of Medicine, at the request of Health and Human Services. Here’s what’s covered: Continue Reading →
After months of wondering about her future as an educator, Jillian Corey got some good news.
This summer, we’ve been looking at how individual Granite Staters are faring in the recovering economy with our series, “Getting By, Getting Ahead.” Last week, we delved into some of the issues facing the Manchester school district, and shared the story of an area teacher who was part of the district’s mass lay-offs in the spring. Thirty-two year old Jillian Corey had taught English at Memorial High School, and was wrestling with the possibility of leaving teaching so that she could make her house payment.
Now, however, things are starting to turn around for Corey. Continue Reading →
The market for high-end lakefront properties has slowed down along Lake Winnipesaukee.
Tomorrow morning on NHPR, we’ll hear more from Joe Skiffington, a builder of high-end vacation homes in the Lakes Region. Joe’s story is Part Six of our series “Getting By, Getting Ahead,” examining how people across New Hampshire’s seven regions are navigating a recovering economy.
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Driving through New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, it’s not uncommon to stumble onto networks of private roads. They lead to waterfront mansions — summer getaways for wealthy executives from places like Boston and New York. One of them, on Lake Winnipesaukee, belongs to Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, whose family gathered here for an annual vacation earlier this month.
Wealthy tourists like the Romneys are crucial to the region’s economy, pumping much needed cash into local businesses for three months a year. For year-long residents, however, this dynamic creates high fiscal peaks and deep valleys. After the summer boom, restaurants don’t need as many waiters, there isn’t as much demand for household goods and construction projects slow down. For a New Hampshire region known nationally as a playground of the rich, the Lakes Region has the state’s second highest poverty rate — 6.5 percent — according to a StateImpact analysis of U.S. Census data.
Rich vacationers and year-rounders were affected differently by the housing bust, too.
Sixteen New Hampshire organizations are receiving a total of $5.4 million in tax credits from the Community Development Finance Authority for this coming fiscal year. The winning projects were announced Wednesday. Awards include funding for upgrades to Portsmouth’s Prescott Park Pavillion; the conversion of an abandoned Nashua mill into affordable housing units; the rebuilding of Concord’s burned-down soup kitchen; and community theater projects in Peterborough, Lincoln and Manchester. Continue Reading →
This map traces the last year of venture capital deals across the country. In New Hampshire, a collaborative venture fund -- managed by Borealis Ventures with money from the state -- will soon be moving local capital into the hands of local innovators. Continue reading →
“We were notified during the day. It was on a Friday,” says English teacher Jillian Corey about her layoff notice last May. “Many of us still had to teach class. And the kids were very aware that there was something going on. I was honest with them. I didn’t get into the politics of the situation or the money. I wanted them to understand that it was not a personal situation, because they become very protective of the teachers. It was not for them to be concerned about.”
“At Memorial, we had the [most] reduction in force notices given. We lost 29 of our staff. In the English department, it was six alone,” says Corey.
Teaching at Memorial High School is Corey’s first job as an educator. “I certainly thought I was perfectly safe from any sort of harm of this nature. You know, five years is a long time to be in a position,” Corey says. “So I was sad that the investment that I made in this community was being taken away from me.”
Corey says she still hopes to be one of the 62 teachers the school district calls back for this year. But, “I’ve certainly been looking for jobs in other districts. But when you have 29 English teachers let go alone in Manchester, there are certainly not 29 English teaching jobs in the state of New Hampshire right now.”
“I don’t pretend to have any sort of plan whatsoever about what’s going to fix this. I know we need more money. I know the kids need more money,” Corey says. “There’s hardly a person in this building that could tell you they have not lost their job, in this district, before. So this is an ongoing issue.”
As part of our weekly “Getting By, Getting Ahead” series, StateImpact is traveling across New Hampshire, gathering personal stories from the people behind the economy. In our fifth installment, we talk with a recently laid-off teacher in the Merrimack Valley.
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Jillian Corey seems to belong at Memorial High School in Manchester. A teacher here for five years, she easily navigates the school’s network of dimly lit hallways, decorated with computer printouts and hand-written signs.
But Corey, a 32-year old English teacher, doesn’t work here anymore. She was one of dozens of teachers and staff laid off from the school district last spring. As she gives me a tour of the school, making her way past open lockers waiting for their final summer wash-down, the maintenance staffers and occasional educator aren’t bothered. Even if Corey doesn’t officially work here anymore, no one finds it strange that she would pop in.
When we arrive at her old classroom, however, a locked door shatters the illusion. “Um…unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll be able to get into this particular classroom of mine,” Corey says, as we try to track down another classroom where we can sit down and talk.
The Manchester school district layoffs last spring were a result of both local and national forces
Tomorrow on Morning Edition on NHPR, you can catch the latest installment of our series, “Getting By, Getting Ahead.” This summer, StateImpact is looking at the personal stories behind New Hampshire’s recovering economy. Tomorrow’s piece will focus on one of the dozens of teachers laid-off from the Manchester school district. Reporter Amanda Loder recently discussed the district’s funding issues with All Things Considered host Brady Carlson. If you would like to know more about the local and national forces that helped shape the layoff decision, you can also check out our Merrimack Valley Economic Snapshot.
And we invite you to visit our new web feature, which includes an interactive map, more economic perspectives from the people we’re spotlighting this summer, and links to more “Getting By, Getting Ahead” coverage. It also includes ways to share your story of life during the economic recovery.
The Manchester School District's funding struggles this year are indicative of troubles schools around the country are facing.
Tomorrow morning on NHPR, we’ll hear from Jillian Corey, ahigh school English teacher recently laid off from the Manchester school district. Jillian’s story is Part Five of our series “Getting By, Getting Ahead,” examining how people across New Hampshire’s seven regions are navigating a recovering economy.
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As unemployment across the country has slowly abated, one sector has been a consistent drag: state and local government. Unlike the federal government, states and cities can’t borrow their way out of a fiscal crisis. So when the recession battered state and local revenues, many agencies had no choice but to lay off workers.
It’s a familiar story in New Hampshire, nowhere more so than in the Merrimack Valley. The region is home to Concord, the seat of state government, as well as Manchester and Nashua, the state’s largest cities. When the recession hit and the legislature began cutting the state budget, dozens of state workers at agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Corrections received pink slips. Municipalities saw state contributions to their coffers shrink. And these communities, in turn, found themselves having to trim their budgets and cut public jobs.
StateImpact seeks to inform and engage local communities with broadcast and online news focused on how state government decisions affect your lives. Learn More »
