When Dolly Perkins was a young real estate agent, Mainers could easily find an affordable home that came with hundreds of acres.
But those kinds of properties, known as “kingdom parcels,” are becoming more and more rare to find in Maine. The ones that are on the market tend to sit for months despite high interest from farmers, developers and hunters, because of their high prices and maintenance needs.
“It takes a huge commitment in order to have a kingdom parcel,” said Perkins, a realtor with Realty of Maine. “People, for the most part, tend to gravitate towards 5 or 2 acres a lot where they can just have a house, and they’re not beholden to the property to maintain it.”
As of Friday, there were 32 homes for sale in Maine that come with at least 100 acres. Most are located in rural central or northern Maine and have sat on the market for over 90 days. Some have sat for over a year. That’s because for most homebuyers, the acquisition and maintenance costs of these lots are too high.
Roughly a third of the homes with that much acreage are priced over $1 million. It also takes skill to manage a property that large, something that’s being lost as part of a large, generational shift away from agriculture. But there are relative bargains out there for those who want them.
“Only a handful of people have the skill set and the money,” Perkins said. “Not everybody can go out and buy a $40,000 tractor, and they don’t have the skill set to go take down trees or maintain a forest.”
Buyers are therefore increasingly interested in acquiring kingdom parcels only to split them up. That’s most likely to happen to properties like a $3.4 million property in Gray with a farmhouse, garage and barn on a mammoth 371 acres. It is likely to attract developers who could subdivide the land to build more housing.
Big plots in rural areas are more likely to remain intact, like Perkins’ 290-acre listing that comes with a cabin in rural Piscataquis County for $750,000, or this 156-acre property with a 5-bedroom home in the Aroostook County town of Woodland that realtor Onyedika Moneke listed for just under $399,000.
“It attracts people that like to hunt; it’s a secluded place full of wildlife,” Moneke said. “There’s not many people who want to split the land up.”
The subdivision trend has particularly taken off in the years following the COVID-era real estate boom that saw a wave of new residents and development interest take root in Maine. That era also saw a wave of out-of-staters moving to Maine and seeking kingdom parcels to escape the hustle and health concerns of the city during lockdown.
“We were having people buy things sight unseen,” Perkins said. “People who wouldn’t normally be buying something like this, if they had a little cash, and they had a little bit of inclination, they would come up and they would buy a chunk of land, preferably with a cabin on it, just so that they had a place where they felt safe.”
The wave of new buyers and burgeoning interest from developers in Maine’s large tracts of lands has left fewer and fewer kingdom parcels to come up for sale. Farmers and homesteaders looking for such a property without breaking the bank have few options outside of the most remote areas of Maine, which is a far cry from the market Perkins first started working in.
“Twenty years ago, you could pick up a big lot for $500 or $600 an acre. It was nothing to see 100 acres for $50,000, even less,” she said. “Today, it’s gone crazy.”
