Tight housing market in Maine, build your own home.
The Maine real estate housing market only has 1.3 months supply of inventory. This blog post dives into the topic of what to do when the existing houses for sale in Maine supply is super tight. Or what is for sale is too expensive because the demand is way way over the top. Most folks don’t have the option of couch surfing or sleeping in their cars, pitching a tent.
The best scenario building a house in Maine is you don’t have pressure to march to the steps dictated by a mortgage lender.
Construction housing loans have a higher interest rate and a very loud clock ticking in the background.
The other consideration many have is where do the kids hang out and sleep when you buy Maine land and build slowly?
Ship them off to the grandparents is not always an option while framing a house and getting it weather tight.
I know lots of people who get their well drilled, septic system with leach field installed and simply cap over the house foundation.
Because that is as far as the chunk of change saved up will take them. Hunkering down with the temporary roofed over cellar hide out, pretty sparse housing accommodations.
What they would have shelled out for monthly rent is slowly poured into the materials to build the Maine DIY house. Two thirds of any job is the labor and the handyman / home owner wearing the nail pouch belt with the holster hammer may be slower. But the build from the ground up home owner is slowly gaining confidence and increasing their skill set.
Calling in favors from other homesteaders doing the same thing, building from scratch with little money but lots of ambition.
The beauty of growing up in rural Maine is kids get exposed to housing projects. The kind done by the Jack of all trades and maybe not master of any but it’s survival. When you don’t have the money to tap out the phone number of a qualified tradesman and the plumbing is leaking or the the roof has a drip drip drip.
You call in friends and family that have been done the same road and can lend a hand. With the payment not in money but the return the favor when they need an extra set of hands and a strong back.
The area Amish in Smyrna Maine has every Thursday designation “Community Day”.
Everyone takes turns helping out their friends and neighbors whether it’s a barn raising, replacing a roof or banking a place for the winter winds.
Splitting, stacking fire wood, whatever the community members needs. Everyone takes a turn and collectively pitch in for the “many hands make light work.”
So building, from scratch and shopping hard for materials to put together your own home in Maine.
What if the back of your acreage is wooded?
Maine has lots of portable and commercial sawmills that can create the dimensional lumber materials you need to build your own home.
You start looking at simpler, smaller square foot designs.
How building can be done the most efficiently possible. Some new home owners plant a mobile home behind the house site. And instead of staying in the rent rut, they own a modest mobile home.
Pecking away at the house building project in their yard working a few hours here and most weekends.
It can get old having a table saw in your living room and the “all we do is work on this house” routine. But no pain, no gain and the rewards are worth it. Patience, lots of that needed and house building can be a jealous master. But not everyone has the where with all to step out, hire done the building of a house in Maine. Once the foundation, shell is up and secure from the weather elements, sell off the mobile home for the plumbing, heating systems. Careful tight insulation happens when you build from scratch and are hands on as the guy and gas paying the heating bill.
As the family grows, so can how you slowly finish off the living space in your house in Maine.
The cape style home is only used on the first floor.
The Maine home’s second floor one big storage attic for now.
And that closet is over sized to use for storage until the funds are raised for the extra half or full bath.
Lots of thought put into where the plumbing goes to future baths to cut and contain house building costs.
Or if you wanted to add on, mentally how does that addition look for down the road. Slow cook beats fast food and lots of reading happens.
There is a learning curve and most folks who build a house in Maine will share what they did right, what should have happened that went sideways.
Here are some land buying to build a home in Maine mistakes to avoid. The location, slope of the land, how long a driveway, what utilities will cost all factor into your building a Maine home. House building evolves and depends on money management, who you do use to hire out what you have no business trying to do in house construction.
What you build you don’t want to have to sell once your children leave the nest.
So something practical and not a McMansion or showy is what rural Maine simple living is all about to enjoy your home. Not mortgaged to the hilt and head over heels in debt. That’s not the lesson you want to pass on to your children.
The youngest family member can dip the cedar shingles in the stain. The oldest can keep you supplied with squares of roofing shingles.
Or together help you maneuver and secure the metal roof sheets applied overhead on a day that can not be windy. Unless you want to go sailing.
Getting the Maine land and using it for a recreational cheap vacation spot is how many start out.
Before building a full time home in Maine. If there is not a driveway, get that permit from the DOT first.
More on permits for driveway, mailboxes and how to plow snow best.
A soil test for your septic system if the Maine land is not served by a municipal hook up is high up on the list before you start hammering nails into the framing timber boards.
Hope this blog post on building your own Maine home as an option when housing inventory supply is just too darn low is helpful.
You have to do something if nothing is for sale or what is available for existing housing is pretty picked over hard or scarce.
Here to help. Are you thinking of buying, selling, trading Maine real estate?
