Spring in New England does what it always does: shows up three weeks late and somehow still catches you off guard. This issue has a town worth adding to your weekend list, a piece of house trivia that will change how you look at every old colonial, and a market check for anyone trying to figure out whether now is the moment to move. Rates aren’t where anyone hoped by now. But the market is moving.

Quirky Facts You Want to Know

You’ve been told that widow’s walks were where sea captains’ wives stood watching for ships to return. It’s a good story. It also doesn’t hold up.

The structures predate the name by decades. The original term was “scuttle,” borrowed from shipbuilding, meaning a small opening in the deck. On colonial homes, a scuttle was nothing more than a hatch and a ladder that gave you access to your roof. The reason you needed roof access was not sentiment. It was chimney fires.

In the 1700s and 1800s, most cooking happened over open hearths. Grease accumulated in the flue. In cold-weather climates with multiple fireplaces running most of the year, chimney fires were common and dangerous. A homeowner with quick access to the roof and a bucket of sand at the bottom of the ladder had a real chance of saving their house. The scuttle was a rooftop fire station.

The romantic “waiting wives” story started showing up in print in the late 19th century, long after the structures were already built. Historians have found no contemporary accounts of wives actually using rooftop platforms to watch for ships. What makes the story especially hard to sustain: widow’s walks appear on plenty of inland homes, well away from navigable water. There were no ships coming in those neighborhoods.

The name itself seems to have several possible origins — possibly from the deaths of firefighters who fell from rooftop scaffolding, possibly from a general cultural association of maritime life with loss — but no one has traced it cleanly. It stuck because it sounded better than “fire access hatch.”

If you want the full story on how the scuttle became a myth, it’s all here.

Town of the Week: Portsmouth, NH

Portsmouth is a seacoast city of about 22,000 people at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, roughly 55 miles north of Boston and an hour from most of Essex County. It has the walkable downtown, the independent food scene, and the working-harbor character that people spend years looking for without finding. It doesn’t have the summertime parking situation that makes Rockport and Gloucester hard to love in July.

Start at Port City Coffee Roasters, a local roaster with a neighborhood following built over years. From there, the walk down to Prescott Park takes about ten minutes. Free outdoor concerts run all summer on a manicured waterfront lawn right along the Piscataqua. For dinner, Flatbread Company on the water does wood-fired pizza in a no-reservations, no-fuss setting that works every time. If you want a proper meal, Black Trumpet on Ceres Street has been working with local and foraged ingredients for longer than that became a selling point.

Peirce Island, a short walk from downtown, has a swimming area in summer and a loop trail year-round with views of the working harbor and the bridges into Maine. The South End, around Strawbery Banke, is one of the best-preserved neighborhoods of 18th and 19th century homes in New England. It rewards a slow walk.

Portsmouth’s median home price sits at approximately $875,000, which reflects what a city of its quality commands. Condominiums make up about 28% of the housing stock, ranging from under $300,000 for entry-level units to well over $2 million for premium waterfront or new construction. For buyers priced out of Boston’s closer suburbs, and especially for anyone considering the New Hampshire tax advantage, Portsmouth comes up repeatedly as the answer.

Everything you actually need to know about living in Portsmouth is here.

New England Market Pulse

Three things worth knowing as we head into spring:

Essex County’s median listing price hit $719,000 in February 2026, and homes are still moving in about 22 days on average. If you’re a seller on the North Shore who has been waiting for some kind of softening before listing, it hasn’t arrived. The buyers are there.

New Hampshire Seacoast inventory is actually improving. Active listings across the state jumped nearly 20% year-over-year, from 2,705 to 3,235 homes. Rockingham County’s median single-family price is around $689,000, up 7.7% from the year prior. More options for buyers, but prices are not coming down. They’re just rising more slowly.

Rates are sitting in the mid-to-upper 6s. If your pre-approval letter is more than a few months old, it’s worth a five-minute call to your lender before your next offer. Your purchasing power may have shifted, in either direction, and your paperwork may not reflect it.

The full data breakdown is here.

When you were out last weekend, who did you run into that might be making a move? Connect me with them. I would love to work with more people like you.

Tara Donahue-Scott Keller Williams tarad@kw.com | tarashomes.com