Maine’s Property Market is Booming

For most, Maine is a location that you whole-heatedly choose to live in. With its beautiful coastline, fresh mountain air, stunning landscapes, lakes and kind people, it provides its residents with a truly magical quality of life. So, it’s no wonder that, despite the pandemic, Maine’s property market has continued to flourish as it welcomes buyers looking for a change.

City dwellers and those with work-from-home options have been fleeing from their pokey apartments to the suburbs and beyond. With the quality of lifestyle it offers, added to its relatively low incidence of COVID-19 compared with nation-wide statistics, Maine has been drawing buyers in from far and wide. 

Thanks in part to increased interest from out-of-state buyers, Maine’s residential real estate market soared through 2020 amidst the chaos and uncertainty of COVID-19 and is showing no signs of slowing down.

According to a report released by Maine Listings, a subsidiary of the Maine Association of Realtors, in the first nine months of 2020, single family home sales were running 2.6 percent ahead of the record pace set the year before.

In September 2020, the median price of Maine homes was sitting at $273,500 – a staggering 19.5 percent higher from the previous year. Additionally, sales volumes saw an increase of 22.8 percent from the previous September, going up by 425 homes in September 2020 alone. 

According to Tom Cole, president of the Maine Association of Realtors, demand has been driven by the combination of Maine’s lifestyle appeal, the country’s COVID-19 response, and the historically low interest rate of mortgages and listings in the area.

Cole says, ‘’with more buyers than sellers in most markets, we are seeing strong competition, faster sales and increasing pricing.’’ 

And it certainly seems to ring true that Americans are looking for a lifestyle change in the wake of a pandemic that has caused so many to rethink their priorities. Out-of-town buyers have typically accounted for approximately one in four property purchases in Maine, but that ratio has risen to almost a third of late. Out-of-towners purchased 445 homes in September 2019, with this figure rising to 735 in September 2020. 

According to a recent study published by Redfin, Portland, Maine, has been named one of the most competitive areas to purchase a home – the only New England city included in the top ten list.

Portland and surrounding areas offer an appealing mix of big city culture and New England charm. Homes in Portland are receiving an average of 5 offers and are selling within 9 days. Last month, Portland’s average home sale price was $408K, up 21.8 percent from the year before.

Maine’s largest town of Brunswick is also performing very competitively. Average home sale prices reached $318K last month, up over 7 percent year-on-year.

Despite Maine’s overall property market stability thus far, the forecast for 2021 nation-wide is full of wildcards. The U.S.’s ability to manage the spread of COVID-19 whilst successfully distributing the vaccine will prove the most impactful. Further quarantines and lockdowns would inevitably put a dent in sales and housing inventory, slowing the market and increasing the pressure for buyers. 

Equally, a double-dip recession is still a possibility as we head into 2021. Less consumer spending could more broadly impact economic growth and see housing market ‘would-be’ buyers disappear, lowering demand and consequently driving down property prices. 

As for 2021, industry experts seem to be in firm agreement that prices will continue to rise. Fortunately, however, their rise is likely to slow. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) predict that 2021 home price growth will fall in the range of 2 percent, with CoreLogic expecting a far more conservative growth of just 0.2 percent. Largely, these predictions are the result of delayed listings flooding the market and driving down the imbalance of supply and demand that buyers have endured through the pandemic thus far.

Maine is not immune to the country-wide volatility that could still lay ahead. However, thus far, it has certainly demonstrated itself to be a significantly resilient market, and an attractive option for out-of-state buyers able to facilitate the lifestyle change that the pandemic has caused them to seek.

“Forest Lodge,” Former Home of Maine Author Louise Dickinson Rich, Awaits Next Owner, Next Chapter

For the first time in four decades, historic Rangeley Lakes landmark is for sale

Rapid River location on world-class native brook trout fishery marks property for fly-fishermen

RAPID RIVER, MAINE In 1942, from her home at Forest Lodge on the legendary Rapid River, Louise Dickinson Rich captured the world of log drives, Maine guides, native brook trout, and majestic wild lakes in her national best-seller, We Took to the Woods. The book described a place apart, a place that only a privileged few could experience first-hand. We are proud to offer this once-in-a-lifetime experience in a unique property that includes Rich’s original 1875 two-story lodge, a c.1920 workshop, a newer sport’s cabin, and 300+/- feet fronting one of North America’s premier trophy rivers for brook trout and salmon. Thousands of acres of protected forestland — including the abutting 25,000-acre Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge — surround the compound in a vast, pristine watershed in the storied Rangeley Lakes region of western Maine.

This is not simply a real estate listing — it is a living, disappearing part of Maine history on a river of nationally-recognized ecological and fly-fishing significance. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, “Forest Lodge” and its stunning location have been featured in glossy magazines and in local and regional television programs. Beyond the readers of Louise Dickinson Rich’s books, generations of Maine schoolchildren have made field trips to the site, and serious fly-fishermen from around the world have made pilgrimages here in pursuit of the largest native brook trout south of Quebec and Labrador. Its sale — after nearly a half-century of family ownership, reluctantly put on the market by an owner with health issues — will be of deep interest to many, and in some circles will be national, even historic, news.
Asking price: $1.3 million

The current long-term owner, registered Maine Guide and raconteur Aldro French, is available for interviews. To contact him directly: aldromaine@hotmail.com

For real estate information contact:
Gloria A. Hewey
207-399-8553 (Cellular) | 207-795-9671 (Direct)
gloriahewey@masiello.com
www.gloriahewey.masiello.com

The Masiello Group/Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate
155 Center Street
Auburn, ME 04210

“Between two ranges of mountains, the Boundary Mountains and the Blue Mountains, lies a high, wild valley, the basin that holds the Rangeley Lakes. The country is criss-crossed with ridges, dotted with swamps and logans, and covered with dense forest. I like to think of the lakes coming down from the North of us like a gigantic staircase to the sea. Kennebago to Rangeley to Cupsuptic, down they drop, level to level, through short, snarling rivers; Mooselukmeguntic to the Richardsons to Pond-in-the-River, and through Rapid River to Umbagog, whence they empty into the Androscoggin and begin the long Southeasterly curve back to the ocean. I like to say their names, and I wish I could make you see them…”

— Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods, 1942