Spring is doing what spring is supposed to do this year. Rates are inching down, more inventory is hitting the market, and buyers who quietly gave up six months ago are circling back. If you have been watching and waiting, the math is starting to change.
Quirky Facts You Want to Know: Spite Houses
A spite house is exactly what it sounds like: a building put up not to shelter anyone comfortably, but to make a point. The point is usually aimed at one specific person. A neighbor who refused to sell a strip of land. A sibling who took too much. A city that would not negotiate. The builder constructs something on their legal property, often deliberately awkward, narrow, or positioned to block light or access, and the whole project is less about shelter than about saying the last word without actually speaking.
The most famous American example sits in Boston’s own North End. The Skinny House is four stories tall and at points about ten feet wide. Family lore holds that one brother built a comfortable home on a shared plot while the other was away fighting in the Civil War. The returning soldier, furious about the sliver he had been left, built a tower directly in front of his brother’s house to block the sunlight. The details of that story are imprecise in the historical record, but the house is very much there and has sold for over a million dollars in recent transactions.
Maine has its own version: the McCobb Spite House in Phippsburg, built in 1806 after Thomas McCobb returned from sea to find his stepmother had inherited the family estate. He built his house directly across the road from hers. Proximity as protest.
Courts have generally not been sympathetic to the spite builder. Judges tend to side with aggrieved neighbors when disputes reach litigation, especially when the structure causes measurable harm like blocking light or access. This puts spite houses in an odd legal gray zone: technically built within the rules, plainly retaliatory, and historically fascinating.
What makes them stranger still is that they sell well now. The Hollensbury Spite House in Alexandria, Virginia, seven and a half feet wide and built in 1830 by a city councilman who wanted the alley alongside his house to stop filling with loiterers, is today a functioning residence and a minor tourist destination. Revenge, it turns out, has good bones. Full spite house history here.
Town of the Week: Kennebunkport, ME
Kennebunkport is the kind of town that could tip into parody, and during the height of summer it occasionally does. But time it right and it is one of the genuinely beautiful places in New England. Presidential summer cottage. Working lobster boats. A harbor that looks like someone painted it on purpose.
Dock Square Coffee House is where you start the morning, using beans from Portland’s Coffee by Design. For seafood, skip the tourist row and drive out to Cape Pier Chowder House in Cape Porpoise, a working fishing village ten minutes away that most visitors never find. For a real dinner, Earth at Hidden Pond is worth the drive and the price.
Weekends here center on the water. Gooch’s Beach is the main beach; Parsons Beach is quieter if you are willing to walk for it. Kayaking the Kennebunk River is a genuine local activity. The residential neighborhoods between the beach and Dock Square are worth a walk on their own, shingled houses and hydrangeas and almost no foot traffic before 9am.
Housing-wise, Kennebunkport sits firmly in the upper tier. The median home price is around $1.1 million as of early 2026, driven by waterfront properties and steady demand from buyers in Boston, New York, and Washington, DC treating this as their primary second-home market. Homes are averaging about 83 days on market, longer than the Maine state average, which is typical for a high-end market where buyers are selective. If the Kennebunks are on your radar but $1.1 million is not the starting point, Kennebunk proper runs more affordable and has a stronger year-round infrastructure. Full Kennebunkport profile here.
New England Market Pulse
Mortgage rates are at their lowest since last fall. The 30-year fixed averaged 6.30% as of April 30, 2026, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, down from near 7% in January. Purchase applications are running more than 20% above last year’s pace. If you have a pre-approval letter from the fall or winter, it was written at a higher rate and the monthly payment math has changed. A five-minute call to your lender is worth it. Freddie Mac PMMS.
Massachusetts homeowners are quietly dropping their insurance. The Boston Globe reported in early April that nearly 13,500 Massachusetts properties were added to the uninsured list in a single year, with about 10,000 of those in the Boston metro area. Homeowners without mortgages are making the calculation that self-insuring is cheaper than premiums. For North Shore properties near the coast, that math is more dangerous than it looks. Flooding and wind damage are real exposures, and this is worth a real conversation with your insurance agent at renewal. Boston.com, April 2026.
New Hampshire buyers have a little more room. NH homes are averaging 44 days on market in 2026, up from 32 days in 2024, and the share selling above list has dropped to 36.6%, down 6.5 points year over year. Prices are still up year over year but the pace of gains is the slowest since May 2023. If you or someone you know stepped back from Southern NH because of relentless competition, this is the first real window to revisit it. Redfin, New Hampshire market. Full spring 2026 market breakdown 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 tarad@kw.com tarashomes.com