House Hunting

We arrived in Maine with the purpose of buying our latest house. That goal seemed simple: look for a house, view the house, buy the house. 

Not so simple. 

The Maine market had changed drastically since we last owned a house in this beautiful state. Covid changed the value of houses and land and not for the better. People want ridiculous amounts for structures that need to be torn down. One place we looked at needed to be razed to the foundation as a tree fell on the house 20 years ago. You could see through the walls into the sky, out to the woods, and thru to the basement. The septic tank was eroded, and the driveway had been reclaimed by nature. The house sold for over asking price. A complete shock to me. Not only do you need to rebuild the house you also had to pay for the demolition and disposal of the debris.

We looked at places within our budget that were turnkey. We were excited because they were reasonably priced and would just need cosmetic updates: cleaning, paint, removal of carpets. We went to the open houses for these places and were overwhelmed with the amount of people looking. There were waiting lines at some of them. Cars parked down the street and around the block. Wow! So, they lured you in with a reasonable price knowing that there would be bidding wars. We did not engage and left these properties to others. I would check back to see how much they sold for, and it was often $100,000 to 200,000 over asking.

We looked at land as well. Land values have also increased exponentially over the past 5 years. We thought we might like to build. Researched the cost to build a house and it was $295 a square foot. That would be $442,500 for a 1,500 sq. ft. house in addition to the land value, septic, well, driveway, electric, garage, etc... We left this idea to others as well.

We decided to open our search to other states and did not fair any better.

Plan B...