I'm Tom DeMatteo. I own Owl's Nest Real Estate in Campton, and from my office I can be standing on the shore of a half-dozen of New Hampshire's best lakes inside forty minutes. I sell around several of them every year, I manage vacation rentals near others, and the most common phone call I get from out-of-state buyers starts the same way — "we know we want a lake, we just don't know which one."
There are plenty of best-lakes-in-New-Hampshire lists online, and nearly all of them are written for tourists: prettiest beach, best kayak launch, where to get ice cream. Fine, but useless if your actual question is where to put half a million — or five million — dollars. So this is a different kind of list. I've ranked these lakes the way I rank them across a desk from a buyer: what living there is actually like, who buys on each one, what the entry point really is, how tight the inventory runs, and where the public access is honest versus theoretical. New Hampshire has hundreds of lakes and ponds; these are the ten that generate real buyer calls, ranked by a guy who takes those calls every week.
The size question first
Half the people who find this article are really asking about the biggest lakes in NH, so let's settle it up front. Lake Winnipesaukee is the largest lake in the state by a landslide — around 44,500 acres depending on who's measuring — more than five times the size of anything else that touches the state, and nearly seven times anything wholly inside it. Umbagog is next by raw surface area at 7,850 acres, though it splits itself with Maine. Among lakes wholly inside New Hampshire, Squam is the runner-up at 6,791 acres, and then comes a near three-way tie in the 4,100-to-4,250-acre range — Winnisquam, Sunapee, and Newfound.
Size matters less than you'd think for ownership, though. Big water means big boats and big wakes; small, deep, spring-fed water means clarity. Which lake is "best" depends entirely on which of those you're buying.
The short version, if you're in a hurry:
- Lake Winnipesaukee — the only lake that works as a whole life: liquidity, services, choice of towns.
- Squam Lake — the most beautiful, and the hardest to buy into.
- Newfound Lake — the best water for the money.
- Lake Winnisquam — Winnipesaukee's location at a real discount.
- Lake Sunapee — the only true ski-and-lake property in one driveway.
The other five below — Ossipee, Merrymeeting, Mascoma, Umbagog, First Connecticut — each solve a narrower problem well, ranked in order after the top five.
1. Lake Winnipesaukee
The big lake is number one, and not because it's the prettiest — a couple of lakes below it beat it on pure water. It's number one because it's the only lake in New Hampshire that works as a whole life.
The facts first. Winnipesaukee is about 21 miles long and 180 feet deep at its deepest, with somewhere north of 250 islands and a shoreline that measures about 180 miles along the mainland — closer to 290 if you trace every island. Eight communities share most of the shore — Alton, Center Harbor, Gilford, Laconia, Meredith, Moultonborough, Tuftonboro, and Wolfeboro — and they are genuinely different markets, which is why "Winnipesaukee real estate" is almost a meaningless phrase until you pick a town. Wolfeboro calls itself the oldest summer resort in America and prices like it. Meredith has the best downtown-on-the-water in the state. Moultonborough carries famously low property taxes and long, quiet shoreline. Gilford has Ellacoya State Park and the marina scene. Laconia has Weirs Beach, city services, and the most attainable entry points on the entire lake.
Here's the broker's case for Winnipesaukee: it's the only lake with real market depth. Restaurants you can reach by boat, marinas that will valet your bowrider, hospitals and groceries within fifteen minutes of almost any shore, and enough transactions every year that you can actually study comps instead of guessing. When something changes in your life and you need to sell, Winnipesaukee is the most liquid waterfront market in northern New England. That liquidity is worth real money, and buyers consistently underprice it.
The honest cons — summer boat traffic that locals plan their weekends around, and a top end that runs well into eight figures on the prime points. But the spread is wider than people assume. As I write this, Moultonborough's true waterfront starts around a million dollars, while Laconia carries more active waterfront and water-access listings than any other lake town I track — dozens at a time — with condo entry points starting around $200,000. Nowhere else on this list offers both of those sentences at once.
If Winnipesaukee is your lake, I've written a full guide to buying a home on Lake Winnipesaukee that goes town by town.
2. Squam Lake
If this list ranked pure desirability, Squam might be first. It's second because you mostly can't buy it.
Squam — the On Golden Pond lake — is 6,791 acres of coves, narrows, and some 67 islands spread across five towns: Holderness, Ashland, Center Harbor, Sandwich, and Moultonborough. It has no commercial strip, no boat-up bars, a conservation culture that dates to 1904, and the quietest boating of any big lake in the state. It is twenty-five minutes from my office, and no other water in New Hampshire produces the phone calls this lake does.
It also produces almost no inventory. Squam shorefront was assembled generations ago into large family holdings, a huge share of the watershed is under permanent conservation easement, and in a typical year the number of true waterfront sales fits on one hand — some of them never touching the open market at all. Waterfront here trades at a clear premium to comparable Winnipesaukee frontage, and the buyers are patient, private, and thinking in decades. Who actually buys on Squam? People who already know the lake — renters of twenty summers, family friends of owners, buyers who gave a broker a specific brief and waited.
The realistic play for most budgets is water-access or near-lake property in Holderness or Ashland, which delivers most of the Squam life at a fraction of frontage cost. I wrote the whole story — the three tiers of ownership, the shoreland rules, how buyers actually land here — in my Squam Lake guide, and the Squam Lake area page has the live inventory.
3. Newfound Lake
Newfound is the answer to a question I hear weekly — which lake has the best water for the money.
It's about 4,100 acres and one of the deepest lakes in the state, spring-fed and cold, with around 22 miles of shoreline shared by Bristol, Bridgewater, Hebron, and Alexandria. And since "cleanest lake in NH" is one of the things people actually type into Google — there's no official trophy for that, but Newfound has as strong a claim as any lake in the state. A widely circulated analysis ranked it the 8th clearest lake in the entire United States, and the Newfound Lake Region Association's weekly monitoring backs the reputation with decades of numbers — low phosphorus, no invasive milfoil. On a calm morning you can drift over twelve feet of water and count the pebbles.
The buyer profile here is distinct: people who shopped Winnipesaukee, flinched at the traffic or the price, and wanted quieter water without giving up a real lake. Wellington State Park in Bristol has the largest freshwater swimming beach in the state park system and free boat launching next door, so the public access is honest, not theoretical. The market is small and family-held — a handful of true waterfront sales a year — but it's meaningfully more attainable than the two lakes above it. As I write this, the average asking price on waterfront listings in Wolfeboro on Winnipesaukee is knocking on five million dollars; on Newfound's Bristol shore it's roughly a quarter of that. Same state, same summer, very different check.
Bristol is the value entry with a real downtown, Bridgewater is the low-tax east shore, Hebron is the postcard, Alexandria is acreage with deeded beach rights. The full town-by-town breakdown, and the live Newfound Lake inventory, is in my Newfound Lake guide.
4. Lake Winnisquam
Winnisquam is the practical pick on this list, and I mean that as a compliment.
At about 4,200 acres it's the fourth-largest lake in the state by the usual count, sitting immediately southwest of Winnipesaukee with shoreline in Laconia, Belmont, Sanbornton, Tilton, and Meredith. It connects to the big lake's watershed, it's ten minutes from the same restaurants, marinas, and hospital — and it has historically traded at a real discount to equivalent Winnipesaukee frontage. That's the whole pitch, and it's a good one: Winnipesaukee's location without Winnipesaukee's premium or its weekend armada.
Who buys here? Two groups, in my experience. Year-round buyers who work in the Laconia–Concord corridor and want the lake life on a commuting budget, and second-home buyers who did the math. Winnisquam waterfront skews more modest and more year-round than the trophy lakes — ranches and capes with docks rather than compounds — and because Laconia and Tilton wrap the southern end, you're never far from a grocery run. The Winnisquam Watershed Network keeps an eye on water quality, which is good and improving-to-stable rather than Newfound-pristine; this is a lived-on lake, not a wilderness one.
If I'm advising a first-time lake buyer with a real-world budget who wants to keep Lakes Region resale strength, Winnisquam is usually the first lake I say out loud — see what's currently on the Winnisquam shore.
5. Lake Sunapee
Sunapee is the one great New Hampshire lake that isn't in the Lakes Region, and I'll be straight with you — it's west of my daily patch, and buyers weighing it against Winnipesaukee ask me about it constantly anyway. It earns its spot.
The lake is 4,136 acres and about 105 feet deep, with clean, cold water shared by Sunapee, New London, and Newbury. Its trump card is one no other lake here holds: Mount Sunapee Resort sits practically across the road, which makes this the only place in the state where a single house can honestly be a ski house and a lake house. Add the harbor village, New London's college-town services, a state park beach at the mountain's base, and an easy shot up I-89 from Boston or down from the Upper Valley, and you get a market with two overlapping buyer pools — Boston second-home money and Dartmouth–Hitchcock professionals — which keeps demand steady in all four seasons.
Priced accordingly, I'm afraid. Sunapee-area waterfront starts in the mid six figures for modest frontage and climbs fast — New London's waterfront listings currently start north of a million — and the inventory is thin the way all good-water lakes are thin. But if the brief is "one property, skiing and boating, no compromises," this is the lake, and it isn't close.
6. Ossipee Lake
Ossipee is the most underrated buy on this list, and the reason is simple: it's where big-lake waterfront stays attainable.
The lake is 3,257 acres with a sandy bottom and a maximum depth of about 73 feet, fed by clean rivers out of the Sandwich Range foothills, with bays and adjoining ponds that give it far more usable shoreline than the acreage suggests. The Ossipee Lake Alliance watches the water, the swimming is some of the warmest and sandiest in the state, and the towns — Ossipee and Freedom, mostly — are genuine, unfussy New Hampshire, closer to North Conway's shopping and skiing than to the Lakes Region scene.
Here's the market reality that surprises people: as I write this, waterfront asks around Ossipee commonly sit in the $500,000-to-$700,000 range — a fraction of what a dock costs on the marquee lakes an hour west. The stock runs to camps and modest year-round homes rather than estates, the restaurant-by-boat scene doesn't exist, and Route 16 traffic in summer is its own conversation. But if the actual goal is your own frontage, your own dock, and August afternoons in warm water — without seven figures — Ossipee is where I point people, and most of them thank me later.
7. Merrymeeting Lake
Merrymeeting is the sleeper, the lake serious water people whisper about.
It's small — 1,233 acres in New Durham, but 120 feet deep, spring-fed, oligotrophic, with clarity that rivals anything in the state including Newfound. No commercial development, one tight-knit shoreline community, and a lake association that guards water quality like a family heirloom. Anglers know it for cold-water fishing; owners know it for the kind of quiet Squam charges triple for.
The catch is supply, as always with clean water. New Durham's waterfront and water-access market amounts to a dozen-odd listings in a good moment, spanning modest camps up through seven-figure rebuilds, and the best frontage tends to trade quietly. This is a lake you buy when you've decided clarity and calm outrank restaurants and marinas — and when you're willing to watch new listings with some patience until the right camp surfaces.
8. Mascoma Lake
Mascoma makes this list for one specific buyer, and if that buyer is you, it might be your best lake in the state.
The lake is 1,165 acres in Enfield and Lebanon, and its whole value proposition is location: fifteen-odd minutes from Dartmouth College and the Dartmouth Hitchcock medical complex, which anchor the strongest year-round employment market in this half of the state. The Northern Rail Trail runs its shore, the Shaker museum sits at its head, and the water is honest, swimmable New England lake water — good, not Newfound-clear.
Who buys here is no mystery: physicians, professors, and Upper Valley professionals who want to live on water and still make morning rounds. That employment base makes Mascoma one of the most defensible year-round waterfront markets in New Hampshire — this is primary-home lake living, not a twelve-week summer economy. Entry runs from the low-$300s for water-access and modest frontage up past a million for the rebuilt year-round houses, which by trophy-lake standards is a bargain for what the location does for resale.
9. Umbagog Lake
Now for the honest wilderness entry. Umbagog, up in Errol on the Maine line, is 7,850 acres but averages only about 10 feet deep — a vast, shallow, moody sheet of water wrapped by the Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge, with nesting loons and bald eagles and more moose than people on a given morning. It is one of the most beautiful places in New England, full stop.
As a real estate market, it barely exists, and you should hear that as information rather than criticism. Nearly all the shoreline is protected or remote; what trades in Errol is a thin file of camps and cabins, and as I write this you can still find waterfront camps listed under $200,000 — numbers that don't exist anywhere else on this list. There's no commuting economy, winter is serious, services are a real drive, and rental demand is niche (paddlers, hunters, snowmobilers). Buy on Umbagog because you want the wildest water in the state at the lowest buy-in on this page — not because a spreadsheet told you to.
10. First Connecticut Lake
Last on the list, farthest up the map. First Connecticut is the largest of the Connecticut Lakes chain in Pittsburg — about 3,071 acres and over 160 feet deep — cold, blue trout-and-salmon water in a town famous for having more moose than year-round residents and some of the best snowmobiling in the eastern U.S.
The ownership story is the Umbagog story, concentrated further: Pittsburg's market is mostly camps and acreage, and true frontage on the big lakes almost never lists — in the current market the town's whole residential file shows exactly one waterfront listing. People who buy in Pittsburg are buying a base camp for fishing, sledding, and getting genuinely away, often held in a family for generations afterward. It's four hours from Boston and it feels like eight, which is precisely the product.
The lake towns, if you're choosing by town first
Some buyers pick the town before the water, and that's a legitimate way to do it. The lake towns in New Hampshire I'd shortlist, in one breath each: Wolfeboro for the classic resort-town package at the top of the market. Meredith for the best walkable downtown that touches water. Laconia for services, inventory, and the lowest entry points on big water. Moultonborough for low taxes and quiet shoreline. Holderness for Squam, if Squam will have you. Bristol for Newfound value with a real main street. New London for Sunapee polish and college-town amenities. Freedom for Ossipee charm. Most of those sit inside the broader Lakes Region market I work every week, and the ones that don't are worth the drive to compare.
How to actually use this ranking
A ranking is a starting point, not a verdict, so here's the desk-side version of how I'd apply it. If you want one property that does everything and holds its value with the most liquidity in the region, start at Winnipesaukee. If you want the quietest prestigious water and you can be patient for years, Squam. Best water per dollar, Newfound. Real-world budget near the action, Winnisquam. Ski-and-lake in one driveway, Sunapee. Warm, sandy, attainable frontage, Ossipee. Clarity above all on a small lake, Merrymeeting. Year-round living near real jobs, Mascoma. Wilderness, Umbagog or Pittsburg — and calibrate your expectations about resale accordingly.
Two pieces of homework apply to every lake on this list. First, learn the difference between waterfront and water-access before you fall in love with a listing — they're different products at wildly different prices, and I covered that distinction and the whole shoreland rulebook in my Lakes Region waterfront guide. Second, understand that on every one of these lakes, the best properties trade fast and sometimes quietly. Browse the current New Hampshire lake homes inventory to calibrate, set alerts on our newest listings page for the towns you're serious about, and check where the public gets on the water in my guides to New Hampshire's boat launches and public beaches.
A few quick answers. The cleanest lake in NH, by the closest thing to an official measure, is Newfound — the 8th-clearest-in-the-US analysis above is the best data anyone's published. The deepest is technically Newfound too, at up to 183 feet in its central basin, edging out Winnipesaukee's 180. Best swimming beaches for families: Wellington State Park on Newfound, Ellacoya State Park on Winnipesaukee, and Mount Sunapee State Park's beach — all three are public, sandy, and easy to find, no local secret required.
And then come see the water. I've never once sold a lake off a screen. Pick two or three lakes from this list, give me a Saturday, and I'll drive you shore to shore until one of them makes you go quiet — that's usually how buyers find out which lake was theirs all along. Call the office in Campton. I still answer my own phone.