2 months ago
CAMDEN (NEWS CENTER) -- Maine's real estate market may be slowly climbing out of the recession. The Maine Association of Realtors released its latest summary of housing sales last week. It shows that for the first six months of 2010, single family home sales increased by 27.6% over the same period last year. There were 5,130 homes sold in Maine between January and June. Real estate brokers and bankers say the increase is a very good sign, and a welcome trend after the very poor sales year in 2009. Selling prices, however, are not going back up. Statewide, the median sale price of homes so far this year is $167,000. That's a slight increase over '09, but some counties actually saw their median selling price go down over the six month period. Brokers say a big factor in the price statistics is that majority buyers are choosing homes costing less than $200,000. More costly homes, brokers say, are not selling as well, and there are a number of them on the market. Motivated sellers, they say, often have to make the difficult choice to lower their price if they want to find a buyer. On the positive side, banker June Parent of Camden National Bank says they are also seeing more new home construction this year, and that means more builders working and more building materials being sold - all of which help the Maine economy.
