Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
Hampden has topped the list of Maine’s hottest towns for real estate in 2024, according to a southern Maine agency that analyzed last year’s sales.
The Penobscot County town is the first to top that list twice since the annual ranking launched in 2017, Maine Life Real Estate owner Rob Edgerley told Mainebiz. The rest of the list consisted of southern Maine cities, mostly along the coast. While those places are still desirable, their unaffordable prices and low inventory have pushed homebuyers further north to places like Hampden, realtors say.
“Hampden is always a hot market,” Craig Lane, a Belfast-based real estate agent with RE/MAX Jaret & Cohn, said. “We’ve got high inventory out here too, so … the more houses that you get available to sell, the better your market’s going to be.”
Lane also attributes the market to the town’s well-regarded school district and its being a suburb of Bangor, a major job center with plenty of amenities. Another real estate agent active in the area, Meredith Tupper of NextHome Experience, agreed, saying that though it’s close to the city, there’s a tight-knit community feel in Hampden that draws homebuyers in.
It’s an especially attractive town to young millennial families trying to break into homeownership, who might come up short for options further south.
“I know people move from Belfast to get up that way to the school district,” Lane said. “Education is a big thing for the younger generation.”
Maine Life Real Estate ranked Maine’s “hot” towns for real estate by the number of units sold. Hampden saw a 50 percent spike in that figure last year, according to MaineBiz. Home prices in town were up around 19 percent in December 2024 compared to the previous year, with a median price of $390,000, according to Redfin.
The second “hottest” Maine town for real estate on Maine Life Real Estate’s page was Kennebunkport. Though the town saw a 42 percent increase in units sold last year, according to MaineBiz, home prices were down by nearly 73 percent in December 2024 compared to 2023, according to Redfin.
Nearly all the other towns ranked saw a slight increase in prices or a decline in them, reflecting the overall cooling of Maine’s real estate market down south as high interest rates and low inventory have put buyers off.
In Hampden, business is good. Tupper has listed a 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom home for sale there on 32.5 acres at $950,000, and she is confident it’ll sell soon. She has had a mix of interest from Maine homebuyers looking to relocate somewhere with more land while staying near a city, as well as out-of-staters trying to break into the market here.
“There’s been a lot of interest,” she said. “No one’s pulled the trigger quite yet, but I don’t think it’ll last much, much longer.”
