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.
This harborfront home for sale on a remote Maine island comes with its own wharf, ready to be used to launch or advance a career in lobstering.
With more than 1,400 square feet of living space, this single-family home sits on East Shore Road in Frenchboro, a village on Long Island at the entrance of Blue Hill Bay roughly 8 miles south of Mount Desert Island.
Built in 1960, the home has five bedrooms, one bathroom and sits on more than an acre. The property includes a 32-by-80-foot wharf, with a boathouse on it, and deep water float capable of docking a boat.
“It’s perfect for a lobster fisherman, maybe with a young family, who wants to break into a big market,” said Steven Shelton of Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate The Masiello Group, the listing agent for the property. “Out there has really good fishing, being an isolated outer island.”
The property hit the market nearly a year ago for $895,000, but the asking price has been cut several times to reach $495,000 as of Monday.
“That wharf would be way more than the asking price if you were just trying to buy the wharf alone,” Shelton said. “You’d never have this opportunity anywhere else for that price range.”
The property has been on the market since last June, but showing it to prospective buyers has been difficult, Shelton said, as the ferry to the island runs sporadically, especially during the winter.
The home and wharf have been passed down through two generations of lobstermen and the sellers are parting with the property because they’re moving off the island, Shelton said.
The community’s population swells slightly in the summer, but the town has historically been the home of a few dozen year-round residents. Because of its small population and remote location, the island has a one-room schoolhouse, a museum and a library, but no grocery store.
While commercial lobstering is “a tough industry,” it makes up the majority of the region’s economy, according to Shelton.
Aside from a rich fishing industry, Frenchboro is known for the many hiking trails it offers, which are overseen by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. This makes the location perfect for someone who loves the outdoors and “wants to hike every day and joy Maine at its best,” Shelton said.
While the year-round home is “a little dated,” the Cape Cod-style is in good shape with wood and vinyl flooring, both a boiler and wood stove for heat, and a large front porch that faces the waterfront, Shelton said.
“You can watch the inner harbor activities right from the house,” Shelton said. “You can sit out on the deck and watch the fishermen come in, or go be one of them.”
The home was one of two properties on the market in Frenchboro as of Monday. The other location, a nearly 16-acre undeveloped oceanfront lot, was for sale for $449,000.
Aside from using the home and wharf for year-round living and work, a future buyer could sell the home and wharf separately later, Shelton said. Both the home and boathouse space could be remodeled and offered as seasonal rentals as well.
