Prospective homebuyers may finally be catching a break as more homes come onto the market and the weaker fall and winter sales months set in.
Home prices remain at record highs in Maine, but a seasonal coolness in buying activity could give would-be homeowners frustrated by stiff competition a toehold in the market. November is the best month to buy a home in Maine, according to a new report released Thursday by ATTOM, a real estate data company. The markups on homes will be less that month and the subsequent few months than at the height of the sales season in the spring.
Maine and Vermont differ from other New England states because they will continue to have price premiums on homes, although those markups will be lower in November and December, respectively, according to ATTOM estimates. Maine’s premium is expected to decline to an annual low of 5.2 percent in November, down from the highest price premium of 15.1 percent in June.
Vermont is expected to have an average premium of 3.6 percent on home prices in December, down from a high of 16.7 percent in May. All of the other New England states will have no premiums and lower prices in December and January.
The lowest average premium in the United States is 3.3 percent in October, according to ATTOM, which analyzed more than 39 million single-family home and condominium sales over the past nine years to assess trends. The best day to buy on average nationally is Oct. 17, which has the lowest premium on the list price of 2 percent. Nov. 28 and Dec. 5 also are good days to buy, ATTOM said.
Seasonality has always had an impact on home prices, which tend to weaken in the fall and winter months when there is less buying activity, said Rick Sharga, executive vice president at ATTOM.
That bears out in median sales prices reported by the Maine Association of Realtors for all of 2021 and January through August of this year. The number of active for-sale listings is still historically low, but they have increased almost 25 percent from July to August, according to the Maine Association of Realtors.
That means the median sales price for a single-family home in Maine is still high, although it dips in the colder months. The median sales price rose to an annual high of $320,000 in September 2021 but began easing over the next few months to $303,000 in December. The median sales price was even lower in January 2022 at $292,250 — the lowest so far in 2022 — then crept up to a yearly high of $360,825 in June, the most active sales month to date.
“Apparently the old adage ‘spring forward and fall back’ applies not only to setting your clocks, but to home prices as well,” Sharga said.