Why the Seacoast Board Named Tim Cheney REALTOR® of the Year | Portsmouth NH Real Estate

In brief: On May 21, 2026, the Seacoast Board of REALTORS® named Tim Cheney its 2026 REALTOR® of the Year, citing his affordable-housing advocacy. The award arrives in a market where Rockingham County's median single-family price tops $600,000, where comfortably buying a median New Hampshire home now takes roughly $157,500 in income against a median household income near $99,782, and where active listings sit around 1,400 — far below the roughly 7,100 that historically signaled a healthy market.

There is a quiet irony in the timing. In a year when the Portsmouth NH real estate market and the wider Rockingham County region carry a median single-family price north of $600,000 — and when buying a typical New Hampshire house comfortably requires an income well above $150,000, far more than most local households earn — the region's REALTORS® chose to honor the person who has spent the past year arguing that this cannot continue.

On May 21, 2026, the Seacoast Board of REALTORS® named Tim Cheney its REALTOR® of the Year. The recognition, announced at the Board's annual awards ceremony, did not go to the agent with the flashiest sales numbers or the biggest billboard. It went to someone who has built much of his reputation around a less glamorous question: who, exactly, still gets to live here?

That choice says something about where the conversation around Portsmouth NH real estate — and the broader Seacoast — has landed in 2026.

An honor earned in a difficult market

The Seacoast Board of REALTORS® has been around since 1958 and today represents roughly 1,400 REALTOR® and Affiliate members across the New Hampshire Seacoast, working alongside the New Hampshire Association of REALTORS® and the National Association of REALTORS®. Its REALTOR® of the Year award is not a popularity contest. The Board's judges reviewed the records of four finalists before settling on Tim Cheney of RE/MAX Shoreline.

Board President Ryan Kaplan framed the decision around mission rather than metrics. The selection, he explained, rested largely on Cheney's commitment to homeownership itself — a commitment that has taken on new weight as costs along the Seacoast keep climbing. In other words, the Board did not reward someone for thriving in an expensive market. It rewarded someone for refusing to accept that the market has to stay closed to so many people.

The credentials behind the award are straightforward: Tim Cheney is an MBA-holding RE/MAX Shoreline REALTOR® who serves buyers, sellers, and investors across the New Hampshire Seacoast and southern Maine, and who currently serves as President-Elect of the very Board that just honored him, as well as chair of its affordable housing advocacy task force. But the more interesting story is what the award reveals about the region he works in.

The affordable housing reality on the Seacoast

To understand why an advocacy record carried so much weight this year, it helps to look honestly at the numbers shaping affordable housing on the NH Seacoast.

New Hampshire has not seen a balanced housing market since 2016. In early 2026, only about 1,400 homes were listed statewide in a typical month — less than half of pre-pandemic levels and a fraction of the roughly 7,100 active listings that once signaled a healthy market.

Inventory has improved modestly from its lowest point, but it remains far below what the state needs. That scarcity is the engine driving everything else in the local market.

Prices reflect that pressure directly. Rockingham County — which includes Portsmouth, Exeter, and the coastal towns — posted the highest median in the state in early 2026, topping $600,000. Portsmouth itself sits higher still, with local figures pointing toward median prices in the mid-to-high six figures.

The gap between what homes cost and what people earn has become the defining feature of the region. By recent estimates, qualifying comfortably for a median-priced New Hampshire home requires an income around $157,500, while the statewide median household income sits closer to $99,782.

The figures below summarize how far apart cost and income have drifted. You can track the latest local numbers on our Portsmouth market report page.

The result is a region that remains deeply desirable and increasingly out of reach at the same time. The Seacoast continues to attract relocating buyers from Boston, remote workers, and retirees drawn by the coastline, the walkable downtowns, and the absence of state income and sales taxes.

That demand is exactly what keeps prices firm even as the broader market cools. For the nurses, teachers, restaurant workers, tradespeople, and young families who already call the Seacoast home, the math has grown harder every year — and that is the reality Cheney's advocacy speaks to directly.

Turning concern into organized action

Plenty of people in real estate acknowledge the affordability problem. Fewer build the infrastructure to do something about it.

Over the past year, Cheney spearheaded an affordable housing advocacy task force within the Seacoast Board of REALTORS®, with a deliberately practical goal: get working REALTORS® off the sidelines and into the housing-policy conversation, and give them the education to participate credibly. That meant treating agents not just as transaction facilitators but as informed local voices.

In January, Cheney organized a zoning education event that brought together panelists from New Hampshire Housing, the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, GSD Communities, and a Portsmouth City Councilor.

Zoning is where housing affordability is quietly decided — minimum lot sizes, parking requirements, what can be built where — and it is also where most members of the public tune out. Putting those experts in a room with REALTORS® was an attempt to close that knowledge gap.

He carried the same approach into the community at large. When Home for All hosted the Seacoast's inaugural Affordable Housing Week, May 11–17, 2026 — a regional series of events spanning communities in New Hampshire and southern Maine, with Portsmouth, Dover, Hampton, Exeter, and Kittery all formally recognizing the week — Cheney coordinated a public panel examining how policy decisions have driven up housing costs and how ordinary residents can get involved.

The timing is worth noting: he was named REALTOR® of the Year barely a week after that event wrapped.

This is the throughline of his work. Rather than treating affordability as someone else's problem, he has tried to make it legible — to fellow agents, to clients, and to the public — so that more people understand how the system actually produces, or fails to produce, homes.

A pivotal moment for Seacoast housing policy

Cheney's advocacy also lands at a genuine inflection point. New Hampshire has spent the last two legislative cycles wrestling with some of the most significant zoning changes in years. New state laws have expanded accessory dwelling units, capped certain parking requirements, and pushed municipalities toward allowing multifamily and mixed-use housing in commercially zoned areas — with a major provision requiring that as-of-right multifamily and mixed-use development take effect on commercial parcels in mid-2026, with no formal way for a community to opt out and, at most, a narrow ability to slow it through growth-management measures.

These reforms have not been smooth. New Hampshire is not a home-rule state, and local governments have pushed back hard against what some see as state overreach into zoning authority. Lawmakers have spent 2026 refining and clarifying the earlier wave of legislation rather than expanding it, and funding for incentive programs designed to reward pro-housing communities has been uneven. Portsmouth, meanwhile, is in the middle of a long-range master plan process and tracking well over 1,000 housing units across dozens of projects in its pipeline — though only a small share of those are permanently affordable.

In that environment, having REALTORS® who actually understand the difference between workforce housing, market-rate development, and subsidized affordable units is not a nicety; it is a prerequisite for useful participation. Cheney's task force was designed to produce exactly those voices. It is a recognition that the people who help families buy and sell homes every day have practical, ground-level knowledge that belongs in the policy debate — and that they lose credibility fast if they show up uninformed.

Service that extends past the closing table

What rounds out the picture is that Cheney's commitment does not stop at housing policy. He serves on the Board of Directors of the New Hampshire LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, an organization focused on fair and equal access to homeownership. He volunteers with St. Vincent de Paul, helping run its Community Kitchen. And he is a member of the Greater Seacoast Workforce Housing Coalition, tying his professional advocacy back to the concrete need for homes that the region's workers can actually afford.

Taken together, these commitments sketch a consistent worldview: that a healthy housing market is also an inclusive one, and that a REALTOR®'s role can reasonably extend beyond individual deals to the conditions that make those deals possible in the first place.

He was not the only one recognized at the ceremony. Kaila Coffey of Jennifer Halteman Insurance was named Affiliate of the Year for her work co-chairing the Board's Affiliate Committee, and Donna Harvey of Absolute Title received the Good Neighbor Award for her volunteer work with My Breast Cancer Support, raising funds through 5Ks and fashion shows to help patients during treatment. The evening, in that sense, celebrated a community of professionals who see their work as bound up with the well-being of the region.

What this means for Seacoast buyers and sellers

For homebuyers and sellers trying to navigate the Seacoast, the practical takeaway is less about one award and more about what the market increasingly rewards: understanding the forces underneath the numbers. In a region where inventory is tight, prices are high, and the policy ground is genuinely shifting, reading those forces — not just comparable sales, but zoning, supply, and where new housing is or isn't coming online — has become essential to making sense of any transaction.

That broader literacy matters whether someone is a first-time buyer browsing Portsmouth homes for sale and stretching to enter the market, a longtime owner weighing when to sell, or an investor figuring out where the next wave of development will land. In each case, the deciding factor is the same: how clearly someone reads the forces shaping supply, price, and policy.

The Seacoast Board of REALTORS® plans to submit Cheney's name and record to the New Hampshire Association of REALTORS® for the statewide REALTOR® of the Year competition, putting a regional honor on a state stage. However that contest turns out, the local message is already clear: on the Seacoast in 2026, expertise and advocacy are increasingly seen as two sides of the same coin.

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Thinking about buying or selling on the New Hampshire Seacoast — or simply trying to make sense of where this market is heading? Learn more about Tim Cheney's approach and reach out for a conversation at timcheneyrealtor.com.