Ask A REALTOR-David Shedd, Your Maine Real Estate Resource

05/17/2024

A great house on a spectacular lake...this will be a wonderful home or getaway for someone! Please spread the word; you never know who this might be perfect for.

05/02/2024

Think about this. A large home in Lewiston, tucked into a corner of a dead-end street, with a 1.7 ACRE lot, in immaculate condition, lovely water views/frontage on Stetson Brook, with a fully legal, rentable apartment in the walkout daylight basement. How many properties in the city meet all of those criteria? I've never seen a single one! This is definitely one to pass along to anyone who might possibly want it; they'll likely never get another chance at a similar place. Coming soon...showings start May 8!

Lovely Large Cape With Rentable Apartment!

04/23/2024

Listed at $525,000; closed at $535,000! Advance marketing clustered all the showings into the first 5 days, causing multiple offers...easy transaction, quick close, happy seller!

03/14/2024

A lovely new Gorham listing; so rare to find a nice house in the village that's ready to move into that isn't priced in the stratosphere!

Large Gorham Village Home with SO Many Great Features!

01/29/2024

Listed at $650,000, closed at $665,000 just 24 days later!

09/22/2023

What a beautiful condo, and in a perfect West End location!

Truly Move-In Ready West End Condo, 2000+SF, Great Location!

04/28/2023

Lovely new condo listing in Westbrook!

Lovely 1st Floor Condo, Garage, WATERFRONT Association, Pet Friendly, Move-In Ready!

04/19/2023

Number of listings on the market in Cumberland County this year is down 16.7% from same time last year. If someone is telling you that prices around here are going down...be very careful. Prices are NOT rising as fast as they were, but move-in ready properties are definitely getting a premium due to the intense competition.

04/12/2023

If an agent tells you that you should list your house with them because "we have lots of buyers," listen VERY carefully to everything else they say. Here's the thing. Suppose you're selling a house in Portland, Maine. The local board of Realtors has over 1,000 members, and there are at least 3 other boards who have members who sell regularly in Portland. Let's just say, for grins, that there are 2,000 Realtors selling in the area. While some agents obviously have more clients than others, NOBODY knows who will have the buyer that will make the best offer for your house. If an agent is focused on "their" buyers, they aren't trying to appeal to all of those other buyers.

And then there are all of the hundreds or thousands of potential buyers who aren't working with an agent, but are just watching websites to see what comes on the market, and will contact an agent when they get interested. If an agent is focusing on "their" buyers, they aren't getting to those buyers, either.

What should you look for? An agent whose focus is on getting the information out to as many buyers as possible, through as many venues as possible. That's not as profitable for the agent as selling to "their" buyer, but it's much more profitable for YOU, the seller.

If an agent isn't focused on getting your information out to as many buyers as possible, who are they really representing? At the very least, you should know the answer to that before working with someone who says that the focus is on "their" anything instead of YOUR everything.

03/29/2023

"Overall, buyers moved a median of 50 miles when relocating, the highest ever recorded and up significantly from 15 miles last year."

This is most likely the result of baby boomers retiring and moving to be closer to kids, moving to more friendly retirement areas, moving to where it's warmer. Millennials are staying closer to home because they have good jobs, or are working remotely and don't need to go long distances. This is quite a change from 20 plus years ago when a lot of the long distance moves were caused by people relocating to work with different corporations or being moved to a different corporate location.

Most baby boomers are repeat buyers who have housing equity to propel them into their dream home and who are making housing trades later in life.

03/29/2023

This is a pretty good quick read about one of the significant issues in the housing market.

Homeowners with low locked-in mortgage rates are unwilling to give them up in order to move, leaving just a few homes on the market to choose from.

03/26/2023

Thanks to HGTV, influencers, and a plethora of seminars, we've been being told for a number of years now that investing and flipping is a virtually guaranteed route to quick riches. Hang out at your local Home Depot Pro desk, and you will hear lots of stories from the other side, people who are basically owned by predatory hard money lenders who keep them on the hook with new deals that make the lenders lots of money and slowly help the investors pay off their debts. This is a well-balanced look at the reality.

Veteran investor Mark Ainley said landlords face housing-market conditions that make growing portfolios costly, and difficult. He laid out the risks.