Maine

Maine’s first-time homebuyers can’t get a foot in the door

Published

2 years ago

January 15, 2023

Maine’s first-time homebuyers can’t get a foot in the door

Justin Bolinger stands exterior the condo he shares along with his accomplice. Bolinger, a 32-year-old engineer, stated they’ve all however given up on their residence search, which they began in 2020. Brianna Soukup/Workers Photographer

Justin Bolinger has had “home-owner” on the high of his bucket listing since center faculty.

It’s at all times appeared an attainable purpose for the 32-year-old lifelong Mainer, and now particularly for him and his accomplice, an engineer and nurse, respectively, with well-paying jobs and no kids.

However after almost two years of slogging by way of Maine’s hypercompetitive housing market with nothing to indicate for it, Bolinger can’t shake a nagging feeling: Homeownership is probably not within the playing cards, in spite of everything.

Like Bolinger, many different would-be first-time owners in Maine and throughout the nation are being boxed out of the housing market. More and more, they’re unable to compete in opposition to money patrons and skilled owners with fairness, all tackling a market of excessive costs, rising rates of interest and low stock.

The share of first-time homebuyers dropped to a document low final yr, whereas the age of the everyday first-time purchaser hit an all-time excessive, in response to the Nationwide Affiliation of Realtors.

First-timers accounted for 26% of all residence purchases in 2022, down from 34% the yr earlier than, and a peak of fifty% in 2010, the affiliation reported in its annual profile of patrons and sellers. The common first-time purchaser was 36 years previous, up from 33 the yr earlier than and the oldest common age for the reason that profiles had been first printed in 1981.

Actual property professionals say they aren’t stunned.

It’s a tricky panorama for first-time patrons, who sometimes have little belongings, stated Dave Demeo, an actual property agent with Tomazin Goff Realty in Portland.

The result’s a irritating paradox.

“Should you can’t get your foot within the door of your first home, you’re not going to construct fairness,” Demeo stated. “For most individuals, historically it’s how they construct wealth,” he stated.

That is probably dangerous information for Maine, because the nation’s oldest state works to draw younger folks to fill extra job openings and exchange the tens of 1000’s of staff anticipated to retire within the subsequent six years.

PRESSING PAUSE

Sarah Clark saved for a yr to have the ability to afford a down cost on a house.

She’s happy with the $45,000 she has been in a position to put away on her personal, however after a number of months navigating the housing market, that sum “looks like nothing.”

Clark, 32, lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, however she’s been taking a look at properties in each Maine and New Hampshire with the purpose of being inside 45 minutes from town.

Previous to the pandemic and the following housing increase, Clark’s under-$300,000 funds wouldn’t have been a problem. Now she’s struggling to seek out something within the vary that’s liveable.

“I felt shut after which I had all this momentum, however now I feel I want to attend,” she stated. “I’ve the power, however it prices a lot cash … Those I can afford want a lot work.”

The market is irritating for first-time patrons like her who’ve much less leverage than somebody who has already owned a house, she stated.

“It’s simply nonetheless so loopy to me that I’ve by no means not paid hire … and that counts for nothing. Why would that not routinely qualify me for not less than $1,300 in mortgage (funds)? My credit score is nice,” she stated. “It’s simply foolish the best way it counts for nothing.”

Bolinger and his accomplice don’t have a very demanding want listing for his or her future residence. Their funds is between $330,000 and $400,000 and so they’re taking a look at a large stretch from Biddeford to Auburn.

They need a home round 1,400 sq. toes away from a busy road, and so they’d like a yard area that’s stage sufficient to at some point have an in-ground pool.

Nonetheless, Bolinger hasn’t been in a position to land a house. After weighing whether or not he wants to attend or alter his expectations for what his funds will purchase, urgent pause made probably the most sense.

“Folks ask, ‘Are you guys nonetheless home looking?’ and I say, ‘Nominally, yeah. Virtually, no.’ I really feel like I’m going to attend till I get a basic sense that competitors has died a bit and costs have calmed down,” he stated.

Their condo is clear and cozy and the hire is affordable, so he’s keen to take a seat tight for some time, though it’s not by selection.

“It sucks as a result of I hear buddies that speak about a starter home, a primary home. I desire a home. I wish to reside in a spot I purchase for my entire life,” he stated. “Millennials grew up with this idyllic, romanticized notion of what a home might be and I feel we’re discovering that actuality is just not matching our goals.”

That “I’ll simply preserve renting for now” mindset is no surprise to Melanie Crane, a Portland-based actual property agent with Keller Williams.

“Quite a lot of first-time homebuyers have simply been priced out of the market and pushed out of the areas that individuals are drawn to residing in,” she stated.

Crane estimates that 30% to 40% of her shoppers within the final two years have been first-time homebuyers. She stated it is sensible that their share of the market has dropped and that the profitable patrons are the oldest they’ve ever been.

It’s almost unimaginable to compete in opposition to out-of-state traders who can waive inspection necessities and supply money over asking. Crane now principally exhibits houses priced beneath patrons’ preapproved financing, simply to allow them to stand an opportunity.

If a purchaser is preapproved for $350,000, she received’t present something above $300,000, as a result of that buffer is required to be able to compete, she stated.

YOUNG BUYERS WANTED

Maine has been seeking to appeal to extra younger residents for years.

The state is bracing for the lack of 65,000 staff by 2029 as child boomers retire, in response to a latest estimate. There aren’t sufficient youthful staff prepared to exchange them. On the identical time, plenty of corporations have both moved to Maine or grown throughout the state and are desperately searching for extra staff.

“If our financial system goes to proceed to thrive sooner or later, we have to appeal to youthful individuals who can construct their careers long run,” stated Katie Shorey, director of engagement for Dwell + Work in Maine, a bunch that promotes employee relocations to the state. “If we had extra housing proper now, I might say it might be simpler for us to draw extra folks to the state, particularly youthful folks.”

Hannah Somers and her accomplice had been fortunate to shut on a “actually cute three-bedroom” residence in Bar Harbor final month, however the highway to homeownership was not a straightforward one.

Somers, 27, stated the whole lot of their $300,000-or-under value vary was “abysmal” and wanted substantial renovations. Something newer or that didn’t want as a lot work was manner above what they might afford.

Justin Bolinger, who rents an condo along with his accomplice, goals of changing into a home-owner. However for now, he has to attend. Brianna Soukup/Workers Photographer

The house they wound up buying fell into the previous class. Constructed within the Fifties, it had some points that different patrons probably couldn’t overlook, Somers stated. However the couple felt that with some TLC, it might be a superb funding.

The pair, each scientists, are fortunate to have some financial savings. And with no kids and no canine, they don’t want to maneuver instantly. They’re within the midst of some renovations with a goal move-in date in February.

Somers stated their state of affairs is just not typical of many Mainers in her age group. Her accomplice, who’s from Europe, doesn’t have any scholar mortgage debt.

“That’s actually the most important issue that I see with folks my age … Having scholar mortgage debt makes it virtually unimaginable to purchase a home,” she stated. “I’m actually fortunate. If I wasn’t partnered with a very nice particular person, there’s completely no manner that I might be capable to afford a home by myself.”

Lots of her faculty classmates have left Maine in favor of states with extra job alternatives and a decrease price of residing.

Lawmakers have been attempting to stop that “mind drain” for years, partially with packages designed to ease the burden of scholar mortgage debt. They embody the lately expanded Scholar Mortgage Compensation Tax Credit score program designed to incentivize faculty college students to remain in Maine after commencement.

Legislators final yr additionally thought of a program that may forgive as much as $40,000 in scholar mortgage debt for some first-time homebuyers, so long as they stayed within the residence for 5 years. The invoice handed within the Maine Senate however later died on adjournment.

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE OR COMPETITIVE HINDRANCE?

Whereas first-time homebuyers hit a document low final yr, MaineHousing’s First Residence Mortgage Program set a brand new document for the worth of loans the company bought.

MaineHousing bought over $178 million in residence loans in 2022, a rise from the earlier document of $160 million set in 2018. However regardless of the elevated worth, a direct results of the elevated home costs, the company continues to be doling out fewer loans than it was when the earlier document was set.

Efficiently buying a house, just like the Portland property proven on this file picture, looks like an unreachable purpose for a lot of first-time patrons. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

In 2018 the company financed 1,189 mortgages. For the reason that pandemic, numbers have been comparatively decrease. Final yr, the company financed 918 loans.

Craig Reynolds, director of homeownership for the housing authority, stated the market has not dampened the curiosity in homeownership.

“The demand is there. For youthful folks, particularly these beginning households or who wish to be in a house once they do, that isn’t going away,” Reynolds stated. “However the market situations have stored these numbers decrease than they in any other case could be.”

The MaineHousing First Residence Mortgage Program touts little or no down funds, lower-than-average rates of interest and a $5,000 grant (raised from $3,500 final yr) to assist with both a down cost or closing prices for individuals who meet earnings and home-price eligibility necessities.

Whereas this system is a assist for a lot of who won’t in any other case be capable to afford a home, some actual property professionals say such loans make homebuyers much less aggressive.

“It’s laborious as a result of an FHA mortgage comes with one other set of standards that the home wants to fulfill,” Demeo stated. “Should you’re competing in opposition to somebody utilizing standard financing … Effectively, if the presents are just about the identical (the sellers are) going to go together with what doesn’t have a extra stringent set of appraisal necessities.”

‘IT’S BRUTAL’

Breaking into the housing market is difficult for folks with conventional financing, too.

Wilson Adams and his spouse noticed 30 homes and put in presents on 9 or 10 earlier than closing on their three-bedroom Cape in Portland’s North Deering neighborhood final June. And the couple did all of it remotely.

On the time, the household lived in Tennessee and relied on a Realtor and members of the family to assist scope out properties.

Touchdown their home was pure happenstance, Adams stated. An identical home on the market down the highway supplied virtually the identical format however with trendy upgrades.

Their home, however, had some “fairly superior design selections,” like inexperienced (and moldy) carpets, pink partitions and glittery wallpaper, brown outlet covers and wooden paneling galore, Adams stated.

He thinks the opposite home most likely drew extra curiosity, serving to their probabilities.

The home was listed between $430,000 and $450,000 and the appraisal got here out to be $490,000. They paid $505,000.

Adams, an optical engineer with a Ph.D. in biomedical neuroscience, is now studying the trades as he chips away on the renovations that may most likely take a decade.

The acquisition of their residence got here at simply the precise time. Adams stated he and his household had been about three months from resorting to renting. They additionally secured financing quickly after the primary of the latest financial institution rate of interest hikes, and locked in at 3.7%.

A number of months later charges had almost doubled.

“If we had the identical down cost now after we purchased our home, with the identical charge construction, we may afford a home slightly greater than half (as costly) as what we ended up spending,” Adams stated. “Just about anyone that doesn’t have that a lot financial savings, (like many) first-time owners, are mainly out to pasture in that kind of market. It’s brutal.”

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Maine

Boothbay's botanical garden wants to collect samples of every native Maine plant

Published

3 hours ago

January 17, 2025

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Boothbay's botanical garden wants to collect samples of every native Maine plant

This story first appeared in the Midcoast Update, a newsletter published every Tuesday and Friday morning. Sign up here to receive stories about the midcoast delivered to your inbox each week, along with our other newsletters.

The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay has big goals for its plants.

The gardens are now looking to build several new facilities that would total 42,000 square feet and eventually include a collection of all native Maine plant life.

Since opening in 2007, the gardens have drawn growing numbers of visitors to the midcoast — now more than 200,000 per year — with 300 acres of plants and grounds, as well as popular holiday light displays. But after that immense growth, the organization is now looking to focus more on its research capabilities.

The expansion, which still requires local approval, would include a 10,770-square-foot administrative and laboratory building, a head house, two greenhouses, a storage building, three hoop houses and several outdoor planting areas. The project would likely cost between $20 million and $25 million, with private grants helping to fund it. Construction could begin as soon as this spring.

Gretchen Ostherr, president and CEO of the gardens, said the expansion would help to pursue the gardens’ larger goal of inspiring connections between people and nature.

“A part of that design is really about teaching people about plants and about plant conservation, and just really trying to inspire a love of plants, especially in young people, but really kids of all ages,” Ostherr said.

While the organization currently does field research on plants, it does not have any labs where its scientists can work. Introducing a lab would allow the gardens to take more student researchers, use molecular biology and bring more educational value for visitors, according to Ostherr.

It would also allow the organization to begin storing more plants in a variety of ways. That would include a collection of seeds from native Maine plants that have been dried and frozen — or “cryo-preserved.” The researchers would also be able to expand their herbarium — which stores plants that have been pressed onto paper — from 20,000 to 100,000 specimens. Ostherr said DNA can be extracted from these specimens.

Ostherr said the goal is to prevent any Maine plants from going extinct. The herbarium would initially gather specimens of all native plants in the state. Eventually, the organization hopes to gather specimens for all of them in northern New England.

“At the end of the day, we’re all reliant on the plants for life,” Ostherr said. “You know that we will at least have the DNA material, either in seeds or in the herbarium or in cryo-preservation, so that if something happens to a plant, we would have the ability to still study it and potentially even restore it.”

The new facilities would be located behind the back parking lot of the gardens and wouldn’t be open to the public, Ostherr said. However, guests would be updated on the ongoing research by educational signs and classes.

Ostherr noted that the new facilities would be carbon neutral, using solar panels and electric heat pumps, as well as cisterns to collect and reuse rainwater.

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Maine

How Donald Trump’s ‘day 1’ agenda would hit Maine

Published

11 hours ago

January 17, 2025

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How Donald Trump’s ‘day 1’ agenda would hit Maine

President-elect Donald Trump will return to the Oval Office Monday and has vowed to carry out various “day one” priorities that could affect Maine.

Although the specifics of various pledges are still unclear or subject to changes from the mercurial Republican, the promises that could come to fruition as soon as Trump’s inauguration concludes Monday touch on everything from offshore wind to Jan. 6 rioters, among other issues.

His offshore wind ban is in the works.

Maine has failed to win a massive federal grant for a contentious offshore wind port that Gov. Janet Mills is proposing on Sears Island in Searsport, but that all may not matter if Trump carries through on his vows to halt offshore wind development.

Trump reportedly told U.S. Jeff Van Drew, R-New Jersey, to draft an executive order to halt wind projects. Van Drew told the Associated Press on Wednesday his draft order would halt offshore wind development from Rhode Island to Virginia for six months.

That could allow Trump’s interior secretary nominee, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, to review how leases and permits were issued. Under questioning from U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, he would not commit Thursday to honoring existing leases but generally said projects that “make sense” and are currently in law would continue.

Time will tell if Maine is included. Outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration already started selling leases for areas in the Gulf of Maine that could power more than 4.5 million homes.

Pardons may be on the table for Jan. 6 rioters from Maine.

Trump has vowed to pardon as soon as next week rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and disrupted Congress as it certified Biden’s 2020 election victory, but he has not been clear on whether he will seek to pardon all of the more than 1,500 people who have been charged, with more than 1,000 sentenced so far, or only pardon non-violent offenders.

Roughly a dozen Mainers have been charged in connection with the deadly riot that featured attacks on law enforcement officers. Four Mainers have been charged with violent offenses, and not every case is resolved.

The most prominent defendant, Matthew Brackley, a former Maine Senate candidate from Waldoboro, is serving a 15-month prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to assaulting police. Kyle Fitzsimmons, of Lebanon, received a seven-year prison sentence in July 2023.

His Canada tariff plan already has Maine’s attention.

Trump has threatened to immediately slap 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and higher rates on China. A delegation from Prince Edward Island is in Maine and other New England states this week to make the case for free trade.

Neighboring Canada is the state’s top trade partner, with wood products, seafood and mineral fuels among the key products that cross the border. Tariffs have previously played well politically in Maine but have hurt heritage industries at times, including during Trump’s first term.

U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from the rural 2nd District, reintroduced his measure Thursday to create a universal 10 percent tariff. Golden pointed to a Congressional Budget Office analysis that found it would raise $2.2 trillion through 2032. But economists have also warned of higher prices for consumers and slower global growth under Trump’s plan.

“Tariffs can be very complicated, but at the end of the day, this is what it means: If it costs our goods and services 25 percent more to come across the border, they’re going to be costing Americans 25 percent more to consume them,” Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King said.

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Maine

Golden proposes universal 10% tariff, saying it will protect Maine workers

Published

19 hours ago

January 16, 2025

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Golden proposes universal 10% tariff, saying it will protect Maine workers

Rep. Jared Golden, D-2nd District, at his home in Lewiston in October. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald file

President-elect Donald Trump promised to impose sweeping tariffs. Days before Trump is set to take office, Maine’s 2nd District Rep. Jared Golden has introduced similar legislation — a 10% tariff on all imported goods.

It’s intended to protect Maine industries and workers against unfair competition, Golden said.

The Democrat from Lewiston, fresh off a narrow reelection win in November, said in an interview that his proposal would put the U.S. on more equal footing with trading partners that for years have protected their industries and workers. In contrast, Maine has lost jobs in manufacturing, lumber and other industries because the U.S. has failed to shield its workers and markets from unbalanced trade, he says.

“It’s a lie that we allowed ourselves to believe, that our allies around the world don’t pursue protectionist measures,” he said.

Golden pushed back against two arguments against tariffs: that the levies are inflationary because producers will pass added costs to consumers and that governments will retaliate against the U.S. with tariffs of their own.

He said an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office shows that a 10% “universal tariff” could spur a short-term increase in prices of some foreign goods and services, but would likely reduce the cost of other goods and services, drive up the incomes of American workers and have no long-term effect on inflation. Addressing the possibility of protectionist retaliation, Golden said U.S. markets are among the largest in the world widely sought by trading partners and other countries.

“For the time being, dollar for dollar, we’ll out-compete them. They need us,” Golden said.

Although the CBO report acknowledged no long-term inflationary impact, it predicts that cost increases would “put upward pressure on inflation over the first few years in which the tariffs were in place.” The analysis said increases in tariffs on U.S. imports and retaliation from trading partners over the next decade would reduce the size of the economy and increase businesses’ uncertainty about barriers to trade, cutting returns on new investments.

Golden told the Washington Post that no House Republican or Democrat has agreed to co-sponsor his bill.

Representatives of Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st district, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, did not respond to emails Thursday seeking their opinions of Golden’s legislation. A spokesman for Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said King is withholding comment on the issue of tariffs until more details emerge about policies developed by the Trump administration and Congress.

Kristin Vekasi, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Maine, argues that tariffs are inflationary and would likely lead to a cascade of policies and responses that could ultimately undermine Golden’s intent to protect jobs.

“There’s broad consensus about some aspects of tariffs,” she said. “The thing that we generally see with tariffs is they increase prices for consumers.”

That could prompt the Federal Reserve to again raise interest rates to fend off inflation, in turn prodding investors to shift money to bonds, increasing the value of the dollar that would make goods less competitive in global markets and hurting production and jeopardizing jobs, Vekasi said.

In addition, if retaliatory tariffs are imposed on hydropower from Canada and oil from other nations, higher energy costs would affect most industries, she said.

Stefano Tijerina, who teaches international business at the University of Maine Business School, said more than 50% of Maine’s trade is with Canada and tariffs “would affect us tremendously.” Lumber and tourists “mostly come from Canada” and lobsters fished off Maine typically end up in Canadian canneries, he said.

Many companies have moved to Canada and other nations to sell goods back to U.S. consumers, he said. “We’d be putting tariffs on our own products,” Tijerina said.

While Golden’s legislation can be interpreted as bolstering President-elect Donald Trump’s push for tariffs after he takes office Monday, Golden introduced similar legislation in September and said tariffs were established by President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, both Democrats. A softwood lumber tariff dates to the Obama administration, he said, and Biden raised tariffs against China.

The 10% percent tariff would apply to all imported goods and services, and would increase or decrease by 5%, depending on whether the U.S. maintains a trade deficit or surplus.

Golden said job losses accelerated in the 1990s due to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has become a magnet of anti-free trade animus that crosses political lines from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on the left to Trump on the right.

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