This Maine City is #10 in the Country Where Homes are Actually Selling Faster Than Last Year
If you have been following the real estate market, you're probably aware that it's one like we haven't seen in a very long time. There have been some shifting in trends over the last year or so, but one thing that remains is low inventory.
With the current mortgage interest rates hovering around 8.5%, a lot of buyers have either been knocked out of the game or have chosen to wait. With less buyers, homes are not selling as quickly as they were a year ago. However, that is not the case everywhere.
Maine has become one of the more desirable places to live. One of the main attributing factors is that when Covid hit, everyone started working from home. Once employees were made aware that this would likely be the new way of life for a lot of employers, a lot of them threw their big-city homes on the market, uprooted, and migrated elsewhere.
Maine has and continues to be a very popular place for people to relocate to. If you were in the market to buy a home over the last few years, it's likely you became frustrated. Not only that you were getting outbid on all the homes that you were putting offers in on, but that the higher, out-of-state bidders were coming into your state, making it sometimes nearly impossible to get yourself into a new home.
With that said, recent numbers have surfaced showing that Maine, and one city in particular, do not fall in line with the somewhat slowing market, as there are still plenty of eager buyers. According to realtor.com, Portland, Maine, is the #10 city in the country where homes are actually selling faster than last year.
If you're sitting on the sidelines and wondering what's next, it's tough to say. I've been a real estate agent for over three years, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's to not pay too much attention to future predictions. Although crystal balls would be ideal for most people looking to buy or sell, they simply don't exist. For example, many real estate sources predicted last year that home prices would go down in 2023. That turned out to not be the case. In fact, they went up in most markets.
If there is thing that I can make potential buyers aware of, it would be this. Waiting for interest rates to drop is what most everyone else is looking to do as well. What do you think is going to happen when the time comes? It's likely that everyone will flock back into the game, putting us right back where we already were with multiple offers of insane amounts over asking price. If you decide to wait, just be aware that you could find yourself in this situation. On the flip side, if you were to buy before the rates go down, you could be refinancing your home to a lower interest rate while everyone else is battling to get into one.
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