Maine Real Estate Information blog

Maine has received $19.6 million in federal funds to help communities buy and resell homes in foreclosure, according to the Portland Press Herald.

The funds are part of an effort to prevent communities and neighborhoods hardest hit by foreclosures from deteriorating. Which communities will benefit from the program is not known yet, but Michael Baran, acting director of Maine’s Office of Community Development, told the newspaper that Sanford will be a likely beneficiary.

The program is expected to help more than 150 moderate-income Maine families buy homes from the municipalities, which in turn will stabilize real estate values by taking properties off the market.

MREIS PRESS RELEASE:  In a press release to the media today, MREIS reports 928 homes were sold statewide in September 2008 statewide compared to September 2007’s statistic of 1,028 homes, a decrease of dipped 9.73 percent.  Maine’s median sales price for a single-family existing home is $177,750 in September 2008, down 6.45% from one year ago. The median sales price indicates that half of the homes were sold for more and half sold for less.  Nationwide, NAR reports single-family existing home sales were up 3.8% in September compared with the prior year; and the national median sales price of $190,600 represents an 8.6% decline. Regionally, sales in the Northeast are 7.7% lower than a year ago.  The regional median sales price was $246,800 - a decrease of 5.4 percent. 

Here’s a look at the year-over-year change in median sales price (MSP) in Maine’s 16 counties during the three month period between July and September.

MaineHousing yesterday closed its sale of tax-exempt bonds to Maine investors, pulling in $38.7 million to finance its homebuyer program.

The agency put the bonds on the market last week exclusively for Maine investors, with a goal of selling $23 million, according to the Kennebec Journal. The bonds are exempt from state and federal income taxes, and the interest rates ranged from 3.5% on a two-year bond to 6.25% on a 15-year bond. MaineHousing plans to put longer-maturing bonds on the national market in about three or four weeks, according to the paper.

The money will fund the agency’s first-time homebuyers program, which provides low fixed-rate mortgages and other assistance to people who qualify.

Lewiston city councilors yesterday voted to pull out of a joint downtown plan with Lewiston’s neighbor, Auburn, ending a months-long effort to write a shared downtown master plan.

A group of volunteers had been meeting for the past two months to write a joint downtown plan, setting planning policies for Lewiston and Auburn that would complement each other, the Sun Journal reported. The cities have been dancing around the idea of sharing resources and departments for several years. 

But Lewiston councilors said the 18 months the volunteer group needed to write up the agreement was too long, and that city staff, rather than committees, would be better at finding cost savings. One councilor was skeptical of the efforts to join the cities. “Twin Cities really is the best name for us,” Councilor Robert Reed said. “From the outside, we look like twins. We really do, to people from around Maine. But from the inside, we’re very different. There is just not the public will to combine services, so efforts to do it will never move forward.”