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.
Home values in Maine’s southern and coastal counties rose more than the rest of the state — and the nation — in the years during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cumberland County saw the steepest rise in home values from 2015-19 to 2020-24, according to recently released data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Before the pandemic, median home values in Cumberland County hovered around $342,200, but that spiked by nearly a third to reach $451,200 following the pandemic.
That county — home to Portland, Maine’s largest city — still has the highest median home value in the state.
While home values across the state have risen in recent years, Franklin County saw the smallest change of roughly 13%. Median home values there were roughly $172,000 in 2015-19, then increased to nearly $195,000 in the following five-year span, according to Census data.
The data, which was gathered through the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, reveals how the real estate frenzy Maine experienced in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced home values across the state. That period saw high demand coupled with low inventory, which drove prices up.
While home values across the state have risen everywhere, in part due to the “exorbitant” cost to build a home, Judy Oberg, the 2026 president of the Maine Association of Realtors, said it’s unsurprising that coastal and southern Maine counties saw the largest increase over the past decade.
That’s, in part, because many people from out of state moved to Maine during the pandemic, as the state was seen as affordable, beautiful and offered plenty of space for buyers seeking to escape crowded cities.
Those buyers usually wanted to be near an economic center and needed their new home to have strong internet access, as many worked remotely, Oberg said. Because of this, out-of-state buyers often wanted their new home to be in southern Maine and near the coast.
“The coast is part of the appeal of Maine, whether people want to have a second home here or move here permanently,” said Oberg, who’s also an associate broker at Bridgton-based Oberg Insurance & Real Estate. “We’re a vacation state, and people look to us as a safe place to come and have a good time.”
Statewide, home values rose by slightly more than a quarter from 2015-19 to 2020-24, and four counties surpassed that mark in addition to Cumberland, most of which are in southern and coastal Maine.
That’s more than the 24% increase median home values nationwide saw during the same time period, Census data shows.
In Androscoggin County, which holds Lewiston, home values surged nearly 30% — the second highest increase in the state — to reach $252,800, according to the U.S. Census.
Waldo County came in third, as median home values there jumped more than 28%, from $200,000 to nearly $258,000.
Home values in both York and Sagadahoc counties also rose by roughly 27% in the same timeframe. By 2020-24, median home values in York County hovered around $395,700 while an average home in Sagadahoc County is worth more than $333,000, Census data show.
While the real estate market has returned to the slower pace real estate agents expect to see in Maine during the winter, home prices haven’t returned to where they were before the pandemic, Oberg said. However, the market has become more balanced, which creates a better environment for buyers to negotiate.
“This is the way real estate in Maine has been for decades,” Oberg said. “We’re back to what you’d expect in the winter.”
