Marketing real estate during Coronovirus, lucky to be a small rural Maine broker.
In my area, everything is cheaper. The cost of living is lower to in Aroostook County. The locals don’t hire everything done and no one lives high on the hog with cash to burn thinking. We don’t need a lot to be happy and content. The small tightly connected populaton is very grateful for what we do have. Very aware and know it is more than many for which we are humbly thankful. We have all we need for quality of life taking the precautions needed to avoid catching or spreading the coronovirus COVID 19 infection.
Real estate property listings in Northern Maine are low cost.
Not some of them, all of them. With coronovirus pandemic, how has that changed anything in the way things roll? Well as for the effect on the Maine real estate market. Too early to know because the numbers are still being made. When tough times arrive, we do everything we can to help others struggling. We all know our roles and work together to get things done in small Maine towns. Maine is mostly small rural communities, has only a handful of cities. More land and wildlife than people.
Appraisals on properties for a mortgage are based on the market that was, real property sales in Maine.
The decline, rise or more of the same is what happens with Maine property sales. All that gets reflected in each and every Maine real estate market report. Stay tuned as we get deeper into the COVID19 effects of the real estate market stats for Maine. We hammer out regular market reports on the speed, the health of how the properties are moving along. And what all that means sliced, diced, spit out.
Tailor made to reflect Maine, not the nation as a whole.
All the while pointing out it makes a big difference WHERE in Vacationland you are curious about today. Buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, bankers, appraisers, the entire local population should be concerned about and looking for current real estate market nitty gritty details.
You and I read and hear the same reports on China, Italy, how things are developing around the coronovirus pandemic.
But blog post is here in Maine. How are we living with coronovirus in rural Maine? I think much easier than most places where the population is big, slow moving and crowded too tightly together. It is a lot like David and Goliath in how efficient and creatively the day to day gets down in small town rural Maine.
In the span of just twenty days, the Texas or wherever it comes from crude oil tea dropped 54 cents a gallon where I live in Maine. The heating oil delivery just made to my in town home was $1.54 per gallon. My son, daughter in law and first grandchild live just a mile and a half way relying on strictly wood at the farm. There the year’s fire wood for next heating season is in place. As much of the food we do eat is produced locally. Potatoes, squash, cabbage are farm to table.
Canning and preserving happens in small rural areas. Home made bread, muffins, cookies and cakes always rolled out of the kitchen. People have chickens for eggs and meat. There is beef in the freezer, it’s what’s for dinner. Crock pots with veggies, a variety of approaches to keep it new and interested has always been served up to put on the family table. It was not caused because of COVID19 developments. We survive differently and simply living makes a game out of the way we roll. We enjoy year round what most only tap into once a year or less often in Vacationland. This is like a natural Disney Land without the people, without the lines at Space Mountain. Maine outdoors to camp, to fish, hunt is open year round and it is accessible by the common man without even opening the wallet or purse.
Got up early, shopped for two week’s worth and won’t have to darken the local Maine grocery door for two weeks.
Gloves, mask, took all the precautions and playing the way our Maine CDC directed. Are we getting cabin fever and feeling deprived? Not at all. Because we are not houses on the seventh floor of a high rise. Not forced to do the dance on sidewalks loaded with folks to avoid and worry about catching whatever they may have. In a city, your central park is over used and open space is missing. Cold dark shadows of the big tall buildings. Smells not so sweet and some pretty sour. The sounds of emergency personnel in police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and overhead trains, touch and go in and out planes. That’s not what a rural setting in Maine is like.
City crime is another factor and so much different statistics play out than in my 4th lowest state for it Maine.
Maine is full of wildlife, fresh air, clean water and unspoiled scenery. The lack of people and being a tad up the pike just protects and helps keep it that way. The local attitude of tread lightly, pass on what you have in as good or even better shape. That’s the rural Maine way of thinking as we approach each day in life.
Years ago on a trip to the west coast to climb aboard a cruise ship for the Mexican Rivera blue green water and white colored sand.
Staying at a Santa Monica California real estate broker’s home for a few days until running up the boat’s gang plank. Here’s the observation. No lots for building new homes happen in many areas of California. If you a certain zip code or street address location, buy existing and tear it down to start over. In Maine, we have land. All sizes, low priced and pick a slew of locations without limitations holding you back.
Another observation beyond real estate being tight and loaded with zero places around Santa Monica, the windows. The house glass you are mortgaging your soul to create does not really need them on the sides. The lots are so itty bitty eenie weenie that don’t get a view or any light. Zero property lot lines means dark happens. All you see if the siding of your neighbor’s place, their shutters, roof material if you have more stories. The grain of their vinyl siding, the cedar shakes or whatever exterior covering is in your face. Or worse, if lined up right, you are looking directly into their living space. Ouch.
I am not claustrophobic but suddenly felt like I was developing the condition during the stay in Santa Monica California. So not like Maine.
Don’t fence me in homing instincts kicked in. Been spoiled too long with wide open space and not wall to wall people living in rural Northern Maine. Our backyards are not stockade or chain link or made to be more private with man-made material. There are no home owner’s associations. The home owners here do most of their DIY handyman work or family, friends, neighbors way down the road pitch in to make it happen. Money is taken out of the equation in small rural Maine. Being frugal is a survival life sport and every practices the moderation, easy does it. These Maine cows pictured are about the only ones not sheltering in place and praciticing social distancing.
What do we do for fun with coronovirus way up here in Maine?
Climb Katahdin, other hills. Paddle kayaks around bottle like glass surface uncrowded lakes. Head up a woodlot trail and smell the forest, hear the wind in the vibrating needles of the pines and firs. Unplug and recharge looking out at another sunrise or sunset from wherever you escape from people to spend time with yourself. We farm, work in the woods cutting pulp, firewood, tapping trees for Maple syrup like no other.
We are the lucky ones that can get out and about and not make contact with people. There are no people except when we have to prepare to head into a grocery store. And to avoid a hospital, we exercise, Walk, run, job, cross country ski and hike, bike. We are so fortunate to live in Maine. We work hard to avoid needing a hospital, to practice preventative medicine using common sense and because health care is expensive and adds to the risk of exposure to coronovirus or any flu bug, bacteria. Our quality of life is not artificial or store bought but home made real and involved the outdoors all four seasons. We always run into wildlife out in the woods or on the trails.
In our real estate office here in Maine, out lobby is closed but the phone lines, the email and text messages are working round the clock.
Sign in the real estate lobby outside locked door. We always knew the power of video, the by far more efficient and far reaching way to delivery local community and property listing information. With video, look mom, no hands. Nothing touched, no one has to maintain six feet or get jumpy if you hear a sniffle or someone coughs.
Our real estate closings are done through the Fed EX or UPS and Uncle Sam’s Next Day service providers.
Dont Texas two step for buyer and seller and pieced together. Scanning, emailing, docusign makes it ABC simple and hygienic. Advertising done from the computer terminal. We deal with local banking, title work, appraisers, property insurance, house repairs. Here’s a good example of a typical day last week. Real estate closing at a property in Brookton. Everyone wearing gloves, way way more than 6 feet apart and closing held at the Victorian home.
After that fifteen minute tops closing, backed away, headed down the Forest City Road to drive into the Grey Ghost Road to look over a vacant seasonal East Grand Lake cottage.
No one there. Private gravel road needing my jeep’s four wheel for the icy hills and last night’s snow fall on the roadway. Found the key where told it would be hidden, measured off the rooms. Did the same for the exterior of the lake cottage and boathouse. Walked around the lot on one gorgeous cobalt blue sky day and admiring the water of this top ten biggest lakes in Maine location. Shoot the imagery after a little staging. Video camera gets fired up for the snippet loops to edit back at the office. Locked up, drive away.
Hit two more lake properties in Danforth and another in Weston Maine dog and pony.
Same drill. Drive to as far as I can. Hop out of the jeep, tramp in on the snow sled trail without sinking. Measure, photos, video and head slowly back to the office. No people in the three property pre-listing process. I don’t hire someone to take pictures. No one is made to put up real estate signs. There is not a bill for a stager.
Home inspections are not so common either because the buyer for these properties is often from a different part of Maine who just happens to be a carpenter, plumber, electrician, mason, heating technician. Or someone in their family is all of the above. The “inspectors” are the friends and family who help the buyer size it up and will be involved in the renovations. In this case, they will be staying at the lake properties in Maine enjoying any of the four seasons in Vacationland.
The spiky headed coronovirus is not so tough in rural Maine living.
Because the cost to do the living is lower and less people to avoid earning it. More of what we need is provided by me, myself and I in rural Maine. That independence, lack of need for outside help and all the expense of the layers of players makes rural Maine in this insulated location way up North a pretty good place to live. With or without coronovirus, we are going to do more than get through this COVID 19 pandemic.
We come out the other side stronger, more resourceful and definitely more grateful than ever before. Stay safe, wash your hands, smother your cough, make it ten feet apart or more. Shop for two weeks and avoid unnecessary travel or exposure wherever you live in or out of Maine. But stay hopeful, faithful and enjoy the castle you steadily improve and call home sweet home.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730
