If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to go on a reality dating show, might I recommend looking for an apartment in Portland?
When I joined the Bangor Daily News to cover housing last year, I lived alone in Waterville. My lease was up in May, so I moved in with my grandmother in York for the summer, saving money and soaking up the salty air. Moving to Maine’s largest city never seemed like an option for me.
That was until a friend from college reached out, saying she wanted to move there from Spain to be closer to family. She asked if I’d want to look for an apartment with her. It kicked off a chaotic 4-week process that ended when we closed a deal. That came after taking a more active role in our search and convincing another 20-something that we would be good roommates.
At first, finding a place seemed like an impossible task. To not spend more than 30 percent of my income on housing, I was limited to $800 per month on rent. I’d paid $1,000 for my place in Waterville, and then eventually $1,150 after the landlord raised it due to “market standards.”
In Portland, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $1,500 this year, and the cheapest rentals I could find online were slightly less but had no utilities included. I was never going to live in Portland alone. With a roommate, I could entertain the idea.
maine rental woes
The friend, Carter Woodruff, and I put out a signal on Instagram and with friends and family, asking them to let us know of suitable rentals. We then turned to this housing reporter’s best friend, Zillow.
The first roadblock was inventory. When I was looking in mid-July, there were only six rentals available in Portland that met our criteria: two bedrooms for no more than $2,000 a month. Two were on Peaks Island, which is only accessible by ferry. Carter was determined to include her dear cat, Simon, in our rooming situation, which took two other apartments off the board.
“My cousins lucked out with a beautiful apartment in the West End during the pandemic, so at first, I thought it would be an affordable city to move to as a young person,” Carter, who is 26 and now acknowledges she was wrong, said. “The market is so competitive.”
After a week or two of doom-scrolling, I got off my couch and toured two apartments early one Tuesday morning. One was a basement unit for just over $1,900 a month, and the other was a 3rd floor walk-up.
The first was grimy, messy and dusty. Carter’s chief concern was that little to no light would reach the unit. Mine was that a clunky network of pipes ran overhead in each room. The walk-up was tiny, something that was exacerbated by the five other women touring it at the same time as me. I spent 10 seconds inside before running back out into the street.
This goes to show that just about any apartment will get scores of desperate applicants. One unit in the West End listed this past Monday already had 110 people contact the property managers about it by Thursday and was off the market by Friday, according to a listing.
We needed to change our tactics. I turned to a ubiquitous resource: Facebook.
I joined groups including “Moving to Portland Maine,” “Room & Apartment Seekers Portland Maine” and “For Rent Southern Maine.” In each group, there’s a mix of people listing studio apartments for $2,300 — often blaring “NOTHING INCLUDED” and “NO PETS ALLOWED” — and renters begging for leads under $1,000 a month and getting made fun of for doing so.
Carter and I had been eyeing Sept. 1 for a move-in date. By the end of July, we had nothing. But one of us must have done something nice in a past life, because the algorithm turned up a post from a woman named Elly, who wanted me to withhold her last name for privacy reasons.
The 28-year-old’s avatar revealed a kind face. She works in health care but is applying for graduate school. She likes hiking, cooking and reading. We do too! Her listing said she wants roommates open to shared activities. We are! Hypoallergenic cats were OK. Simon is one!
She was advertising two rooms in her gorgeous 3-bedroom Parkside apartment for only $760 a month per person. It was spacious and swelling with natural light. The communal spaces were already furnished, as Elly had been living there for three years.
We were desperate to seal the deal. Elly and I arranged to meet the next day so I could tour the apartment. Getting ready to go, I was amused by how much it felt like a weird first date. About an hour into our meeting, I shared that. Elly laughed, saying she felt the same way.
Between the two of us, Elly was the catch. She got more than 40 messages from other prospects. She did eight tours and took a few days to make her choice.
maine rental woes
Elly, who found this apartment herself on Facebook three years ago, cited our similar age to her, being communicative and enthusiastic, connections to Portland, some mutual Facebook friends and seeming “kind” as why we were the most natural fit for her place.
“I wasn’t worried about filling the space, but I wasn’t expecting that many [messages],” she said.
My rental housing search clearly showed what I already knew as a reporter: This market is no joke. There are little to no affordable units. Most don’t include utilities in their prices. Many tack on extra fees for pets and parking. Much of what you see online is too good to be true or oversaturated with tens of other applicants jostling for one spot.
If you want a Portland apartment, shirk the real estate sites and try to find real people to connect with. There are more options than what you might see initially. If you have a trusted roommate, that is often better than going it alone. Of course, your luck exponentially increases in direct proportion to how much money you’re willing to spend.
Most of how we landed this apartment was luck. The rest was the kindness of one woman with a lovely home. That may be disheartening for those desperately searching, but it’s the truth.
“What frustrates me most is the sense of having had to compete against other people for such a basic need,” Carter said. “It shouldn’t feel like such a victory just to find housing.”
