This 1 chart shows how unaffordable Maine homes have become
By Kathleen O’Brien, Bangor Daily News Staff
Median home sale prices in every Maine county have more than doubled in the last decade, housing data show.
The median price for a single family home rose to $425,000 last month, the Maine Association of Realtors recently reported. That marks a more than 135 percent increase since 2015, when the average home in Maine sold for slightly more than $180,000.
Piscataquis County stood out as the Maine county with the sharpest spike in home prices since 2010. The average cost of a home there now sits at $255,000 compared with $75,000 in 2010 — a 240 percent increase in 15 years.
Androscoggin, Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc, Somerset and York counties also saw home price increases from 2010 to 2025 that outpaced the statewide average of 152 percent, data gathered from Maine Listings show.
The numbers illustrate how quickly home prices in Maine have risen to be out of reach for many homebuyers, even in the state’s more rural areas.
Jeff Harris, 2025 President of the Maine Association of Realtors, credited the rising prices to high demand for housing coupled with low inventory, though the number of properties available is slowly improving.
When homebuyers have more choices, buyers and sellers can take more time to negotiate prices and terms, rather than simply offering to buy a home for more than the asking price in the hopes of winning it, Harris wrote in a statement. This could be a factor in home sale prices leveling off after a sharp increase during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Penobscot County, home prices rose nearly 67 percent from $170,000 to $283,700 between 2020 and 2025, versus a 28 percent bump in the five years before 2020.
In the decade before the pandemic, home prices in Cumberland County rose from $225,300 to $365,000 — a 62 percent increase. Since 2020, however, median home prices in Maine’s most populated county have nearly doubled, from $365,000 to $600,000, making it the most costly in the state.