Scott Van Voorhis

New Hampshire can be tactless and a more than a little cranky, as the state’s tasteless Boston-bashing bid for Amazon demonstrated in spades.

But despite the party line in blue-state Massachusetts, our northern frenemy is not a parasite, living off the largesse of its much larger and wealthier neighbor. And while we may not want to admit it – or more to the point are too arrogant to conceive it – we couldn’t really live without New Hampshire any more than New Hampshire could live without us.

To be sure, our cantankerous neighbors to the north stepped in it when they fired off their bid for Amazon. The New Economy giant could enjoy all the benefits of Boston without the hassles of actually being there by building its new mega headquarters complex in New Hampshire, according to the pitch sent out by state economic development officials. It included trash talk like calling commuting into the city a “congestion nightmare” and slamming the Boston area’s “decaying roads and overcrowded subways.”

Of course, New Hampshire doesn’t have a commuter rail system, let alone subways, but that’s beside the point. The clumsy sales pitch revived the old argument, long popular in Massachusetts, that New Hampshire is essentially one great big free rider.

The state’s “Live free or die” motto, in this view, is simply a fig leaf hiding an ugly truth that New Hampshire enjoys the benefits of essentially living in Greater Boston while not paying any of the taxes. After all, what pays for the all the infrastructure and government services that keep the region’s economic powerhouse humming? Or so goes the argument.

Blessing In Disguise

But here’s the reality: New Hampshire is a safety valve for Massachusetts, providing an outlet for the growing number of working- and middle-class families squeezed out by the Boston area’s crazy home prices.

New Hampshire has consistently built more single-family housing in proportion for its size over the last 37 years than Massachusetts. The Granite State has issued double or more the number of building permits per capita than Massachusetts for most of nearly four decades since 1980, with the ratio only narrowing in the past few years, according to a study commissioned by Home Builders Association of Massachusetts.

Even so, New Hampshire is still building more single-family homes per capita than we are, with the Granite State issuing, on average, 2.9 building permits per thousand residents, compared to 2.5 for Massachusetts, U.S. Census Bureau numbers show.

As a result, while Massachusetts has seen home prices skyrocket after decades of underbuilding, values in New Hampshire remain a relative bargain.

The median single-family home price in New Hampshire weighs in at a reasonable $252,533 through the first nine months of 2017. By contrast, the median single-family home price in Massachusetts rose 6.1 percent year over year to $365,000, according to analysis from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

The price of homes in the suburbs of Southern New Hampshire – some of which are within an hour’s drive or less from Boston – are a bargain compared to their counterparts outside the city in Massachusetts. And many have solid school systems and a strong community feel.

Just take Salem, a town with a big mall – The Mall at Rockingham Park – but with an otherwise small-town feel, roughly comparable to Natick. While the median price in Natick is $565,000, in Salem it’s $330,000.

In nearby Londonderry, the median price is just over $325,000, while in Merrimack, it is $300,000, according to The Warren Group. Towns a short drive from the border are even lower, such as Kingston.

Thanks to its lower home prices and strong school systems, Southern New Hampshire has long been a draw for buyers fleeing higher prices in Massachusetts, with 70,000 moving across the border from 2010-2013 alone, according to one study.

While it may seem counterintuitive to argue that it’s a good thing that Massachusetts is a population donor to New Hampshire, it is a blessing in disguise for the Greater Boston economy.

Many, if not most, of the middle-class families that have found a refuge in the Granite State have continued to commute to work in the Boston area, where most of the jobs are. And while there may be no income tax in New Hampshire, if you work in Massachusetts, you pay the state’s income tax.

But if it weren’t for the alternative of Southern New Hampshire – and increasingly Southern Maine as well – how many of these families would have simply decamped for more affordable – and warmer – parts of the country?

So maybe it’s time to stop deriding our country cousins in New Hampshire as some sort of ungrateful freeloaders. After all, we may need them just about as much as they need us.