NH Seacoast · Rockingham County
Exeter
A New England town that reads like a novel.
A point of view
Exeter is what people picture when they picture New Hampshire. A working downtown organized around a bandstand and a bookshop. A river running through it. Phillips Exeter Academy at one end and quiet residential neighborhoods radiating out from the other. And unlike the postcard version of small-town New England, this one has real inventory and real range — nearly fifty single-family homes on the market at any given time, priced from starter to substantial. Homes close at about asking, sell in under a month, and the market has moved 2% higher on HouseCanary's one-year forecast. If Portsmouth is the Seacoast's public square, Exeter is its living room.
What people love
- Downtown Exeter — genuinely walkable, with a bookstore, cafés, restaurants, and one of the country's oldest independent bandstands
- Phillips Exeter Academy: the campus is a public asset — museums, athletic facilities, and evening programming open to residents
- SAU 16 public schools consistently rank near the top of the state
- The Squamscott River and easy reach to Great Bay
- Enough inventory across enough neighborhoods that most buyers actually find their home here, rather than losing it
What to consider
- The town covers more ground than newcomers expect — Route 88, Route 101, and the outer neighborhoods are all Exeter, and they don't all feel like the downtown you visited
- Downtown-adjacent homes carry a premium; the Route 88 corridor and outer subdivisions often offer more house per dollar
- Property taxes in Exeter run above the Seacoast median — worth understanding at the underwriting stage
Market Temperature · July 2026
Exeter at a glance
- Median list price
- $869,900
- Price per sq ft
- $377
- Close-to-list ratio
- 102% of asking, 12-week average
- Days on market
- 29 days
- Months of supply
- 3.2 months — a seller's market
HouseCanary's one-year price forecast for 03833 is +2.5%. Exeter's inventory is broader than most Seacoast towns — the median masks a real range from town-edge starters to downtown-adjacent estates.
Source: HouseCanary market data · Updated monthly · Contact Julie for a current-day figure.
About these numbers
The market data on this page comes from HouseCanary and reflects the ZIP code for this town — which usually matches the town's borders, but occasionally includes a small adjoining area. Weekly figures can move a lot on small-inventory towns, so I lean on 12-week averages where it helps tell the truer story. And I always talk with clients about what the numbers actually mean for their specific street, price range, and timeline. Numbers are useful. Context is more useful. Ask me.
Julie's take
"Exeter is the town where I most often show a client six or seven houses before we find the one. That's not a market problem — it's the opposite. There's real range here, and figuring out which Exeter is your Exeter takes a couple of Saturdays. Downtown, Route 88, the newer subdivisions, the old farms on the edge — those are four different towns wearing the same name."
Considering Exeter?