Investing in Boscawen, NH — Market Analysis
Boscawen is one of the lower-basis entry points in New Hampshire, with a median home price around $350,000. Boscawen is a smaller New Hampshire market. Entry prices are low and gross rent-to-price ratios are among the best in the state, but appraisers have fewer rent comps to work with, and a single vacancy is a much larger share of annual income than it would be in a metro.
Buying a rental property in Boscawen on a DSCR loan means putting a minimum of $70,000 down (20% of purchase price), leaving a loan amount of $280,000 at 80% LTV. At current DSCR investor pricing near 7.50%, principal and interest on that loan runs about $1,958 per month. Add Merrimack County property taxes of roughly $522/month and landlord insurance of about $140/month, and your all-in PITIA lands near $2,620/month. That PITIA figure — not the P&I — is what the lender divides your rent into.
A long-term lease in Boscawen should generate roughly $2,525/month in gross rent. Against a PITIA of $2,620, that produces an estimated DSCR ratio of 0.96x. That falls just short of the 1.0 minimum. This is a very common outcome in Boscawen and it does not kill the deal: moving to 25% down ($87,500) cuts the payment enough to close most of the gap, and several shelves will fund down to 0.75 with a rate add-on.
Two New Hampshire-specific items to build into your model: New Hampshire has no income or sales tax and funds towns almost entirely through property tax, so effective rates near 1.8% are normal and the town-set rate matters more than any other input on a New Hampshire rental. Lakes Region and White Mountains towns have also added short-term rental registration and occupancy rules that vary town by town. In Boscawen specifically, effective property tax on investment property runs around 1.79% of value annually — about $6,265 a year at the median price — and landlord insurance near $1,680 a year.
On return metrics, Boscawen pencils to an estimated cap rate of 5.37% using a 62% NOI margin, and a gross rent multiplier of 11.6. Monthly cash flow on a long-term lease at 20% down is estimated at $95 negative. Negative cash flow at 20% down is common in appreciation-led markets; investors here typically increase the down payment, buy below median, add a unit, or run the property short-term to close the gap.

