Bangor Daily News file photo/Troy Bennett
Maine home sales rise again, showing no signs of subsiding Contributed • April 22, 2021
By Lori Valigra, Bangor Daily News Staff
Single-family home sales in Maine rose by double-digits in March, continuing a hot streak during the coronavirus pandemic and driven by strong sales in rural counties, according to data released Thursday by the Maine Association of Realtors.
Buyers snapped up homes quickly, with the average home being on the market for 11 days this March compared to 48 days last March.
By Lori Valigra, Bangor Daily News Staff
Single-family home sales in Maine rose by double-digits in March, continuing a hot streak during the coronavirus pandemic and driven by strong sales in rural counties, according to data released Thursday by the Maine Association of Realtors.
Laurel LaBauve has been renovating and selling houses in South Portland for more than a decade. Her latest project is a century-old home that she plans to reimagine from the inside out, adding an upstairs master bedroom, bathroom and new windows to start. Even a relatively small project such as this takes a haul of raw materials to finish. LaBauve and builders across the country are feeling the squeeze from historically high costs on everything from lumber to lighting fixtures. Every delivery of lumber I m getting right now is like $1,000 a delivery, which would have never been the case just over a year ago, she said. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the price of framing lumber has increased more than 200% since the spring of 2020. That expense can trigger up to a $24,000 increase in building costs for a single-family home. According to LaBauve, the COVID-19 pandemic is only part of the problem, pointing to last year s wildfires in California and recent
By Staff
Strong home buying demand continued across Maine in March, with Realtors reporting 1,313 single-family existing home sales a sales jump of 16.81% over March 2020.
According to statistics released this week by Maine Listings, the statewide median sales price reached $268,500, an increase of 17.79% compared to March 2020.
The median sales price indicates that half of the homes were sold for more and half sold for less.
“Maine residential real estate sales volume and median sold values showed continued strength during March 2021,” Aaron Bolster, broker and owner of Allied Realty in Skowhegan and president of the Maine Association of Realtors, said in a news release. “The pace in the residential real estate market continues to be rapid.”
Record lumber costs frustrating suppliers, builders, buyers in Maine msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
March showed no signs of slowdown for Maine housing market
Sales prices and the number of homes sold soared across the state in the first three months of the year, which one housing market leader called astounding.
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Maine’s housing market continued its red-hot streak last month, with sales of existing homes and prices showing double-digit increases compared with a year earlier.
Soaring prices and huge numbers of transactions in the first three months of the year in Maine are flipping conventional wisdom on its head, and sales trends as well.
More than 1,300 homes were sold statewide in March, a nearly 17 percent sales bump compared with the year before. The statewide median sales price increased by almost 18 percent compared with a year prior to reach $268,500, the Maine Association of Realtors reported Thursday. The median indicates that half of homes sold for more money and half sold for less.