Maine
Buying a home in this Maine region? You need a 6-figure income.
The BDN is exploring Maine’s housing disaster from each doable angle, from the way it impacts house costs, to what it means for Mainers throughout the state. Learn our ongoing protection right here and fill out this way to inform us what you wish to know.
It’s no secret that you just want a wad of cash to purchase a house in Maine, with a scarcity of for-sale properties persevering with to drive up costs regardless of indicators the actual property market is cooling.
However simply how excessive are the costs? Within the Portland and South Portland metropolitan space, you want to earn no less than $130,000 yearly to purchase a house with a median value of $472,790, a examine launched this week by the Joint Heart for Housing Research at Harvard College discovered utilizing April information.
That interprets right into a month-to-month cost of almost $3,400, together with the $2,400 mortgage, plus insurance coverage and property tax. For its information, Harvard assumed a 3.5 p.c down cost on a 30-year mounted mortgage with no factors and a 4.98 p.c rate of interest.
That’s the highest earnings required to purchase housing within the state. Whereas it’s decrease than the $181,200 wanted in better Boston, Cambridge and Newton, it nonetheless is far greater than different areas of Maine.
Those that wish to purchase within the Lewiston-Auburn metropolitan space have to make $78,800 to afford the median house priced at $286,609. The month-to-month cost would whole $2,036.
To afford a median-priced house of $266,850 within the Augusta-Waterville micropolitan space, the customer would want to make $73,400, with a month-to-month cost of $1,380.
The Bangor metropolitan space was probably the most reasonably priced, requiring an earnings of $66,160 to purchase a $240,620 median-priced house. The month-to-month cost would whole $1,710.
Housing costs are rising sooner than wages. The imply annual wage for all occupations throughout Maine was $53,230 in 2021, in keeping with state labor information. Nonetheless, administration occupations averaged $102,360 whereas CEOs averaged nearly $150,000.
Common wages for all occupations within the Portland and South Portland metropolitan space had been $57,000, in keeping with state information. These within the Bangor metropolitan space had been $52,920 and within the Lewiston-Auburn space, $50,640.
Dwelling value appreciation nationwide was 20.6 p.c in March 2022, the Harvard examine mentioned, topping the earlier excessive of 20 p.c in August 2021 and marking the biggest bounce in three many years of recordkeeping.
It concluded by saying private and non-private insurance policies have to deal with making reasonably priced housing out there to lower- and middle-class individuals.