Buyers going to great lengths to land homes in Maine

BANGOR, Maine (WABI) - People from across the country have come to a realization over the past year and a half or so that if you can handle winter, Maine is a pretty good place to live.

That’s driven the housing market to heights most would never have anticipated and has buyers going to great lengths to land a home of their own.

“Yeah, property values have increased for sure. We’re seeing a lot of people that are, it’s almost, it looks to me almost like a desperation where they have to get into a house and they’ll pay anything to get into the house until they are paying above that list value,” said Lisa Caron, NextHome Experience broker.

Caron says she’s never seen anything like this.

“So many of them. I had a house in Hermon, I closed on it just the other day, and it came in 30,000 over,” Caron said.

“Very high, I have to pay above asking price. Every place that we’ve been looking about three to four places. They also above asking price,” said Danai Srisodsai, home buyer.

Srisodsai knew what he wanted for himself and his family.

“We’ve been looking for the house for for a long time. And then we’ve been searching couple area in Veazie and Orono area. It doesn’t have anything coming up on the market that much. We found this how we like it good neighbors and we just decided to buy,” Srisodsai said.

Srisodsai may have gone over asking, but he has been to the home. Which isn’t always the case.

“Winterport and Stockton Springs, we’ve had some that were a sight unseen a lot, and Bangor, sight unseen, Hampden, sight unseen,” Caron said.

“I actually didn’t walk into it until we moved,” said Kate Rogers, home buyer.

Rogers and her family moved to Maine from Pennsylvania.

“Yeah, we, we did a virtual walkthrough with our realtor who was great. She helped us. We walked through it twice, and my husband was able to come for the inspection but essentially we had already. We had already signed the contract at that point in time.

It’s actually the second time they’ve bought a home that way.

“It was okay, but it’s certainly nerve racking and we weren’t first home, first time homebuyers so I think that helped us. Try to relax a little bit but I could certainly see if people are starting out their first time there’s so many things you don’t know about the entire process that can be stressful,” Rogers said.

She says surveying the market, it wasn’t easy to zero in on the right place.

“I think that, I think there is a little bit of disparity in some of the prices but I do, I do think that everywhere is the same thing. I mean that, where we came from, what we sold our house for was more than we would have expected that we could have received for it so I think in general, the inflation is, is a little bit... the market is crazy right now.

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