Maine’s housing market cooled off in 2025, as the inventory of available homes grew.
Compared to recent years, 2025 proved to be a slightly better one for buyers, said Jeff Harris, a Farmington-based realtor and the outgoing president of the Maine Association of Realtors.
More homes stayed on the market for longer, he said. Even so, many first-time homebuyers in Maine are still priced out of the market due to high interest rates. Harris said before the pandemic, the average age of a first-time buyer in Maine was 27. Now it’s 40.
Financing is also a challenge for older Mainers who want to make a change.
“There’s a lot of sellers out there that would like to downsize,” Harris said. “But the smaller homes are hard to find.”
The market has cooled in more rural parts of the state, but Harris said it remains strong along the interstate corridor from York County up to Waterville.
Harris doesn’t predict much change in the Maine market in the coming year, unless interest rates go down. If they do, Harris said he’s hopeful that older Mainers will downsize, which could open up more options for first-time homebuyers.