You dream about relocating, moving to a small town in Maine.
Because living where you do now in a populated area is exhaustive. The pace is expensive and hectic. One of the biggest perks of rural areas of the country is the lower priced property in small Maine towns. When you have a low monthly housing payment on the mortgage you pay on your house, the need to work more than one job to pay for it goes away.
When you are relocating, moving to a small town in Maine the the cost to insure the house is less too.
The home mortgage gets retired earlier for the “coast is clear” living debt free. No mortgage is a wonderful feeling that few get to experience who are living a nip and tuck existence in large populated areas. Where life is a blur and good luck catching your breath. To create quiet space to hear yourself think.
There is a buyer advantage obtaining affordable housing in small rural towns in Maine. Property buyers and apartment renters also enjoy a greater selection. You can own a second home or camp on the waterfront.
Here are some more benefits of living in a small Maine town.
Low crime, less traffic means a safer and quieter place to raise a family. Retirement to stretch that monthly fixed income check is easier when the cost of living is low to the ground too. You can run home for lunch. See loved ones during the day. Getting across town to pick up a part and then return again to replace it for another that’s the right size is easy with the small town life setting.
Folks are friendly, the pace is not so stressed or impersonal when you live in a small Maine community. You get involved, you are part of the local happenings when the population around you is smaller. Folks step up and pitch in and feel more a part of social fabric. You don’t have to feel tense worried about personal safety when you feel surrounded by friendly folks you connect with and enjoy.
The locals are cross trained. They share their skill sets. One week working on your garage. The next helping the other cut, split, stack firewood or other chores to lighten their load. You know your neighbors in small Maine towns. Land around the next door neighbor is plentiful and space does not come at a premium. You support the local businesses and feel good about keeping whatever you buy for goods or pay for services circulating in the small hometown economy. The owner IS in the store or on the other end of the service phone line. You are not put on hold and kept on life support muzak waiting for help from a stranger at a far away call center.
Lots of local traditions happen in small towns and as a community member you don’t just sign up to work one event.
You pace yourself and find the local activities each season that you enjoy and stay working on the boards pitching in to keep them happening. Your help is appreciated because only so many workers to plan and pull off an event. You pitch in like everyone else is doing.
You can use your affordable land in Maine for farming, growing food. Try doing that in a city setting where privacy fences work hard to protect the few feet surrounding the way way too many houses. Remember the song Up “On The Roof”? In a city that is often the only default location for space to get up up and away from the crowds in your face and eating up your personal space. 
There are not long lines or waiting around to attend local movies, to get into a home town restaurant or diner.
Less people means smaller parking lots, less distance to get in and out of whatever you are after. You can hit and run walk to your shopping stops on errands. Park in front of a business or the post office.
Tasks get done quicker when there are not crowds of slow moving people to work around getting from point A to B. You are happy where you live when space, natural beauty and less spin, commercial activity is the way things rock and roll.
You feel invested like others who together make the communiity shine. Money is not the end all and not going head over heels in debt just improves the experience you have living in a small town in Maine. Trying to help with a local need is where your time and money is channeled behind the scenes… not used to impress or call attention to yourself.
You feel more invested, more involved in the community you want to preserve and protect.
Nothing is just surface or glossed over and everyone is like a big family. For the most part on the same page on the direction the small town is heading to keep it on course with the needed changes to stay viable. There are challenges to the local economy in small town living.
You know your children’s teachers outside the classroom and often they were in your or a family member’s class. When you are stopping into grab a coffee or pick up a pizza, other folks in the store or coming, leaving it are familiar to you. You sense the connection in a small Maine town that is stronger when everyone around you feels close and not treated like a stranger.
In small town living in Maine, you find yourself outdoors any of the four seasons.
All this wide open space with fresh air, clean water and miles of recreational trails call your name. And the best part is we get to enjoy year round what vacationers to Maine only get to sample for a long weekend, maybe a greater stretch of days in a row. As a local you get to the best areas, how to avoid the expensive tourist traps. Cross country ski, ice fish, water ski, hunt, fish, hike and bike. You can get to places where cars and trucks can not to enjoy the wildlife, the season’s beauty in Maine.
Pollution, in the relocating, moving to a small town in Maine you find less of it. Because less people, less waste. No miles of tall smoke stacks in Maine. No strip mining. And when talking pollution, we are not just thinking the plumes of contaminants spilled from those factories with the pollution scrubbers. 
Light pollution in populated areas unlike rural Maine towns and plantations mean you don’t see the twinkle twinkle little star at night.
You miss the light show. The haze of the lighting combined with pollution in an urban area create a dense curtain. That does not allow folks who live there to experience what Mainers do… one brilliant pure black velvet backdrop with a million, zillion stars of all sizes, densities and everywhere you look overhead.
Sound pollution is the steady drone of emergency responder vehicles that are heard round the clock in city settings.
In small rural maine, the sounds are birds singing, the wind in the trees wrestling with leaves and pine needles. The water lapping at a river camp, outfront a Maine lake cottage of home. You can hear yourself think and it is easy to find the space to do in in low population Maine.
Real, geniune and not commercialized makes the experience more memborable and a lot less expensive to enjoy. Hike a mountain, kayak a lake, paint a sunset, read a book curled up before a wood fire in your log cabin in the woods. Cook and entertain and share the joy of living in a small Maine town together happens in Vacationland.
Artisans, craft shows, local musicians, the entertainment and dining for fund raising is all done with folks you know first hand. Up close and personal enriches the experience and makes it home grown tasty to the senses. You don’t have to travel long distances to attend live entertainment venues and find our place to offer your talents. Because every single person in the small Maine town is needed, special, appreciated and never turned away when they step up to be part of local events or to serve on social, civic, school, governmental boards.
Attend a local community theatre production or a high school musical and you will see the swell of pride as local talent is demonstrated for all in the audience that enjoys the entertainment more.
Because the patrons don’t just attend the performance, they underwrite it and in many ways have a hand in the behind the curtain planning. Local small town businesses help underwrite the cost to put the show on. Watch a community video on say the Houlton School of Dance as one example of what you find in a small town relocation move. Here are more community video examples of what happens in this part of the World called Maine.
Because folks serve together on boards and spend time at local church, sporting, civic groups, they are much more aware of community member news.
In small Maine towns folks worry about each other and are aware of what is happening in the life of the population around you. You know when there are financial, health set backs or a loss of a family member and do what you can without being noticed or calling attention to yourself to help them.
Teenagers have a role in the local happenings and gain skills that will help them for a lifetime. We learn from watching our parents volunteer to do the same. I was lucky to work at a local radio station with live programing and providing community news and taking requests, finding lost animals, whatever the call in audience needed. Providing results from local high school sports teams is big stuff when you follow the players, are related to some of them.
Hopefully this year your team will make it to the eastern or western finals for the state championship title is on the minds of everyone in the bleaches and standing along the side lines of sporting events from basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey.
I think small local community members have better manners too. Each and everyone of us is taught respect for others, for authority members in the community. If your child does get into trouble, news travels fast because the circles we travel are smaller and friends care about each other. 
Families are important and spend time together around the holidays, to work collectively to help members needing it.
The elderly grandparents get their house banked for the winter to keep them warm.
You call and check in on the older folks who might need something or to go along with you to the grocery or hardware store.
We stop out and about driving around the community when a car is parked to see if they needed help.
To make sure no one is stranded or needing assistance because of a break down.
Maybe just hooking up the jumper cables will help fix the problem. Or making a cell phone call to link up the stranded motorist with the help they really need. The neat thing is you are not the only one who stopped. Others quickly respond to make sure they could be a help if needed. What if it was them is how folks in a small town in Maine think and respond accordingly to be of service. Is it like that where you live now? Is fear of personal safety or just too busy keeping you from lending a helping hand? That’s not Maine, that’s not living fully.
We get off the couch, put down the devices.
Kids get the fresh air outside, they use their imagainations. Folks walk more in small towns because it is healthy, often quicker to hoof it from place to place. No crime, less traffic makes worries go away when your children bike or walk to a friends house or to the movies, to the parks and recreation facilities. Is getting a job the only stopper to the moving, relocating to Maine? Maybe starting a small mom and pop job is the plan. Make what you are woth, be the boss, invest your time and energy into a small business enterprise.
MOOERS REALTY can help you get the wheels in motion and point out what is needed in this area for a business that would prosper.
One that you would be proud to own and enjoy living, working, playing as a big part of a small community in Maine.
Small Maine town living for quality of life. Every thought of being part of that? Low cost affordable housing and being a home owner not renting in a community where you are needed is a rewarding combination to serious consider.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Real Estate Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730 USA
