Maine has the highest percentage of vacant homes in the nation, but most of them aren’t available for someone to move into.
Of the 746,552 homes in Maine, 157,467 of them are vacant, giving the state a 21.1 percent housing vacancy rate, according to a new report by LendingTree that used data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Maine’s vacancy rate has been the highest in the nation for several years, and the state has historically hovered between 20 to 25 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
High vacancy rates can indicate oversupply or declining demand in a region, which could cause property values to fall. For renters, plenty of empty units may boost housing affordability. But despite Maine’s vacancy rate typically hovering close to double the national average, neither of these things are happening here. Instead, Maine is struggling to address a housing crisis created by historic underproduction.
The vast majority of Maine’s vacant houses are seasonal or vacation homes that are only occupied for a few months each year, which skews the state’s data, according to Scott Thistle, MaineHousing’s communications director.
Seasonal vacation properties make up 19 percent of Maine’s housing stock, meaning the state also has the highest number of vacation homes per capita in the country, census data shows.
This means that only about 2 percent of Maine’s homes are vacant for other reasons, making the market “exceptionally tight in most places,” Thistle said. This adds an additional hardship for anyone looking to move into or within the state.
Aside from being a seasonal property, a home could be classified as vacant because it’s merely empty but otherwise ready for someone to move in. This could include situations where a house is in transition but the new owners haven’t moved in yet.
In a healthy housing market, roughly five percent of homes are vacant and available for use at any given time, according to Maine’s housing production needs study, released in October 2023. That margin allows residents to move as their needs and desires change over time.
In Maine, however, the share of homes that are vacant and available sits at slightly more than 2 percent statewide, the housing study found.
Thistle also cautioned that some data sources use construction permits to count how many housing units are in an area, but this isn’t always accurate, since some permitted projects never get built.
