We are deep in the part of the year when the market moves fast and the days feel long enough to finally do something about it. This week I went down a rabbit hole on ice houses — yes, ice houses — and came out with a weird respect for the guy who turned pond ice into a global empire. Also: Woodstock, Vermont made me want to cancel all my plans and drive north. I am not saying you should. I am just saying you should.
Quirky Facts You Want to Know
Before refrigerators, New England ponds were a commodity.
In 1805, a young Boston man named Frederick Tudor watched a pond freeze and had an idea that everyone around him found embarrassing: ship the ice to the Caribbean and sell it. He was not from a poor family — he was a Brahmin, the kind of person with something to lose. He lost it, repeatedly, before the thing worked.
His first shipment sailed in 1806: 130 tons of ice cut from local ponds and loaded onto a ship bound for Martinique. It arrived. Nobody bought it, because there was no ice house to store it once it got there. He had shipped a product to a place with no infrastructure to receive it. He went back and built the infrastructure.
That single adjustment — solve the receiving end first — is what turned a joke into an empire. By 1847, 353 ice ships left Boston Harbor in a single year. At its peak, the Tudor Ice Company shipped 146,000 tons annually to destinations including India, Hong Kong, Australia, Barbados, and Havana. American ships carried more ice by tonnage than any commodity except cotton in the years before the Civil War.
The genius was in the logistics. Ice from Fresh Pond, Walden Pond, and Lake Wenham cost nothing to harvest except labor. Sawdust — the free byproduct of local sawmills — turned out to be better insulation than anything Tudor could have purchased. Double-walled ice houses, built into hillsides where possible for natural cooling, kept losses to a fraction of what anyone expected.
Those ice houses are still out there. If you own an old New England property with a small outbuilding that has unusually thick walls and a drain in the floor, you may be standing in one. Take a closer look at the full history of the New England ice trade.
Town of the Week: Woodstock, Vermont
Woodstock is about two and a half hours from Boston, and it looks like someone sketched the perfect New England village and then forgot to let time touch it. The town green has a bandstand. There are covered bridges. The Federal and Greek Revival architecture along Central Street is intact in a way that feels cared for, not curated.
Start your morning at Dreamscape Coffee — family-owned, specialty beans, house-made syrups, and a maple latte that people apparently drive hours for. From there, walk to Billings Farm, a working farm established in 1871 that is still open to visitors and doing what farms are supposed to do. If you want a view, the Mt. Tom trails at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park will get you above the village in under an hour.
For dinner, Simon Pearce is the move — a glassblowing studio and restaurant on the Ottauquechee River, where you can watch glass being made and then eat a good meal next to it. Worthy Kitchen is the casual option: farm-to-table comfort food that does not require a reservation and does not make you feel like you need one.
The housing market in Woodstock is small and not easy to generalize. Listings in May 2026 were sitting at a median around $783,000 (Zillow), with Boston buyers showing up consistently as remote work changes what a two-and-a-half-hour commute actually means. More on what it is actually like to live in Woodstock.
New England Market Pulse
Spring 2026 is delivering a market that is more balanced than we have seen in years — which does not mean it is easy, but it means the rules are starting to apply again.
Massachusetts had 15,697 homes for sale in March 2026, up 4.9% year over year. New listings were up 5.7%. The single-family median grew 4.4% year over year while the condo median dropped 1.5% — the best conditions for condo buyers in several years. If you have been waiting for more inventory before making a move, you have more to work with than you did a year ago. Source: MAR via Boston Agent Magazine.
Mortgage rates in Massachusetts are running between 6.4% and 6.74% on a 30-year fixed as of late May 2026, with refinance rates around 6.88%. Rates have stayed sticky in the mid-6s. If you have been waiting for a significant drop before buying or refinancing, the data suggests the mid-6s may be where we live for a while. Source: Money.com.
Southern New Hampshire inventory is up nearly 20% from a year ago, but months of supply is still just 1.4 months — well below the 4-6 months that defines a balanced market. The median single-family price was $530,000 in Q1 2026. More listings to look at, but sellers are still getting strong offers on well-priced homes. Source: NH Public Radio.
Full market data and context for North Shore MA and Southern NH.
The best clients I have ever worked with came from people exactly like you. If someone you know is even just thinking about a move, I am always happy to be a resource.
tarad@kw.com | tarashomes.com