The for the month ending June 30th, 2009, the Portland ME real estate market posted once again solid home sale figures. A total of 64 homes sold in Portland compared with 89 a year prior. A 27% volume drop. For the last 5 months, volume drops year over year have been anywhere from 4% to this months high of 27% but two other months saw 25% and 26% drops, thus the market seems fairly stable all things considered. On a month over month basis, Portland Maine Home sales were up 20%. Median prices for June 2009 clocked in at 205K, compared with 215K a year prior.

Thanks for reading about this Southern Maine real estate community.

    

Just be yourself when making local community and real estate videos.

Talk one on one and be the tour guide whether about the property you have listed and are marketing to real estate buyers or to folks considering relocation, retirement or recreational investment in your area. You are in sales right? And you know your properties inside and out, shot the videos, took the images, tracked down the town information, studied the deed from the local registry right? AND you like where you live, are in the best place on earth correct? So tell them in your own words not announcer guy reading a script or copy you write. Show them the area knowing you are providing a service.

It's no different than you asking a person for directions when you are in a strange unfamiliar area. You are glad for help, looking for information. Be that FAQ provider, or Direction's Guy for others looking in on your home town.

Be yourself and let them get to know you, become familiar with your passion for your area, your professionalism for your job as real estate locator.

     A Maine real estate broker answers questions about the property, about bank financing, about disclosures and the correct way to avoid lawsuits in a sale and be ethical. But with the global reach of the internet and knowing 85% of real estate buyers go on line to hunt down property, help them in the hunt by doing local community videos that capture the hometown, the local turf. It's not a couple pictures and an interchangeable write up written by the office help anymore. You are the Realtor, the local go to guy or gal for real estate, chamber of commerce information and you are the first person they meet, on line. You are the first person to take then thru ten "open houses", on line before they even get here with video. Our office has a FAQ, frequently asked about Maine video series started and here is one video installment or episode. Simple, helpful, three minutes long so way way less difficult to endure than a root canal and everyone comes away with information, video and audio from the town of Houlton Maine / Southern Aroostook County that I serve.

Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers - Maine, Less People, Friendlier People, Wildlife And Scenery 2nd To None.

Picture this.

You are out in a kayak, skimming the water around a pristine, uninhabited lake in Maine. What hits you is no camps dangling on the edge of the water, no lawn right down to the shores edge. natural bushes, trees. But no sign of man, weed and feed, or pressure treated docks.

 Man messes up a lake, and lawns are the number one thing that lakes, if they could talk would gurgle angry excitement about. Many Maine lakes have local boards of folks to be pro-active not reactive to pressures that can kill or spoil a lake. The Drews Lakes Property Owner's Association (DLPOA) is a member of the Congress of Lakes  Organization(Cola) an holds yearly meetings. In the past few years a $60,000 grant from the soil and water conservation district  has helped with erosion of the roadways and undersized or missing culverts.  Another grant has helped with adding vegetation and local soil stablization to protect the lake from silt, phosphorous and other non-source point pollution.

Watersheds, wood cutting operations miles away and water racing to the lake, contaminants being brought in thru streams all mess up the water quality for fish, swimmers, loons, everyone that enjoys a clean, milfoil free Maine lake.

This year's meeting is at the New Limerick town office, July 7th, at 6:30. We are lucky to have Bill Hersey, a well known local Maine soil tester/site evalulator on board to talk about the do's and don'ts and septic regulations in a Maine  shoreland zone.

Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers - Protecting Maine's Resources, Being Good Steward to Our 6000 Lakes!

    

Twenty years from  now we will all look back and think how simple paperwork, the home buying real estate process was back in 2009.

Consider one local yesteryear appraiser named Sam Sylvester in Houlton Maine.. Sam gets a call from the local bank, if the bank manager himself did not make the determination of value on a place to consider, to evaluate. Sam cruised thru the property, scoped out where the owner thought the bounds were, did not do a CMA, did not sketch out the floor plan, did not take pictures. Did not hit the town office or registry deeds. He remembers when the home was built, who built it and how it was maintained over the years. He used to deliver papers to the Fergusons. The mom made the best date filled cookies. The dad worked for the Bangor and Aroostook railroad. After the tour of the property, he would move the valuation to his mental back burner and go on with his other tasks. A few days later, he would shut the door to his office, ponder the value and type out a one sentence appraisal like ....

     "Have inspected, studied and evaluated the home on 17 Maple Street and its current value as of the above date is Forty Seven Hundred Dollars ($4700).

Respectfully submitted, Samuel Sylvester"

     He would walk it into the bank. Done and on to other real estate appraisal missions. He kept a carbon copy to recall the lengthy, voluminous detailed home value analysis. The buyer of 17 Maple Street had saved up his 20 to 25% down payment. The loan was done locally.  No secondary mortgage market hoops to jump thru, no Lending Tree banks competing for his loan. Local in every way and the bank making the loan with the hefty down payment in today's standards did not have many foreclosures or non-performing mortgage notes.

Today three trees need to be killed to produce the paperwork and documentation to get the closing over with. The usual skyscraper thick loan folder from the "loan a-Ranger" was skinny, malnourished compared to today with just a few sheets of paper. And the fellow with the combination to the vault did not hand out pens, note pads, important document folders branded with his logo or try to sell them life or home owner's insurance. No flood insurance certification. No standardized HUD 1. No appraisal with pictures of comps, competing listings and all the appraiser's credentials printed out in a 40 page propaganda spin.

Simple, quick real estate closing. And the owner of the home financed all the furniture to the new buyer too right down to the cooking pots, pans, high chair in the attic, Maine coon cat, African violet plants and the Christmas cactus in the front room.

     When you think about wouldn't it be nice if the bank making the loan was your neighbor? Helped on the Rotary float this 4th of July and your wife was the cub scout den mother for one of his kids? And you coached his daughter in basketball, sponsored her in a local soap box derby race? The defaults would be nil unless a giant factory was the only local employer and went to its knees from foreign competition. A banker at the front of the line with no sale of the mortgage each week to another financial enterprise in some other country or planet. The banker that made the loan held responsible. He who would be left holding a bad, risky loan and who could have his head on the chopping block if too many mistakes were made. Wouldn't that make the success percentage with a loan based on the buyer's character..not just his fica score or job history or debt ratios? How retro-real estate huh?

Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers - Maine, Simple, Down to Earth, The Way Life Should Be And Was Before.

    

    

Located 18 miles northwest of Portland and two hours from Boston is the small liberal arts school called St. Joseph's College of Maine. St. Joe's, as we Mainers fondly refer to it, is situated on 350 acres with magnificent lakefrontage on beautiful Sebago Lake in Standish.

Not only is the setting unique, but the food served in the dining hall is, as well.

Bon Appetit is the food service vendor for St. Joseph's College. Their company motto is "Services for a Sustainable Future." Stuart Leckie, general manager of the school's restaurant, has made it the mission of the dining hall to serve local, homegrown food.

In the spirit of Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in which she describes how her family was changed by making a conscious effort to eat food produced locally, St. Joe's is attempting to do the same. Leckie tries to order most ingredients from within 150 miles of the campus. He's also strives to purchase free-range eggs and chickens that have been feed grain which is antibiotic and hormone-free.

Milk comes from Smiling Hill Farm located just a few miles away. He purchases produce from local growers. And now, thanks to the Pearson Town Farming Project located on college property, students and community volunteers will grow fresh produce including zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets and salad greens. Greenhouses will extend this growing project into the winter months.

In the true spirit of this Catholic college, some of the produce will be donated to Catherine's Cupboard Food Pantry in Standish.

If you're in the Standish area, stop by St. Joe's and have a look. If your thinking about lakefront property on Big Sebago just click on the box below to see what's currently available:

Search for properties on Sebago Lake