July was the busiest month of the year for Maine’s housing market
Maine’s housing market is hitting its summer stride. Inventory is up, prices are (mostly) level, and demand remains high.
That has made for a busy month for Maine real estate agents, with a steady stream of homes hitting and leaving the housing market.
July was the busiest month of the year so far, according to preliminary data from the Maine Association of Realtors and Maine Listings.
Here are three takeaways from July’s housing report.
1. More homes = more sales
Last month, 1,705 homes changed hands, according to Maine Listings. That’s an almost 10% increase from June and an 8% increase over July 2025.
It also marks a whopping 146% increase from February, one of the slowest months on record, when fewer than 700 Maine houses were bought and sold.
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Spring and summer are typically the busiest and priciest months for Maine’s seasonally driven housing market.
On average, 77 families bought or sold a home each business day in July, said Judy Oberg, president of the Maine Association of Realtors.
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Inventory has also continued to rise this year, reaching 5,886 active listings last month, which has given prospective buyers more options than they’ve had since January 2020, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
“The July statistics show us that more homes for sale results in the sale of more homes,” said Oberg, who is also an associate broker at Oberg Insurance and Real Estate Agency in Bridgton.
It’s the largest pool of inventory the state has seen since before the pandemic, but inventory is still far from robust. A decade ago, in July 2016, there were almost 14,000 homes for sale in Maine.
Meanwhile, prices remained mostly level.
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The median home sale price last month was $425,000, just a 1% increase over July 2025 and a roughly 2% decline from June, when prices hit a new record of $435,000, according to updated numbers from Maine Listings.
The median means that half the homes sold for more while half the homes sold for less.
2. Mortgage rates tempering sales
Nationally, home sales decreased just shy of 2% from June, but increased almost 1% from July 2025. The median home price of $440,300 is roughly 2% higher than it was last July, according to the National Association of Realtors.
In the Northeast, year-over-year sales were flat, while prices increased about 5% to a median of $563,800.
These relatively small percentage changes show that home sales have been “remarkably stable,” despite rising mortgage rates, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the national group.
According to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage was 6.54% in July. It has since risen to a year-to-date high of 6.69% as of Aug. 5.
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“There’s no doubt that the housing market would be thriving if average mortgage rates were to return near 6%,” Yun said.
Mortgage rates dipped below 6% briefly in late February, but have otherwise been above 6% since September 2022.
3. Markets vary across state
The Maine Association of Realtors also looks at three months of data in county-by-county comparisons to get a larger sample size of sale transactions.
The data tells of disparate market conditions across the state.
Oberg cautioned sellers to price their homes with the knowledge that increased inventory and impending cooler weather means that buyers “can be more discerning and have additional negotiating leverage.”
Prices decreased in just five of Maine’s 16 counties in the three-month span from May 1 through July 31.
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Hancock County saw a median sale price of $466,000, a roughly 10% increase compared to the same rolling quarter the year before, and the largest jump in the state. Piscataquis County, meanwhile, saw the largest price decrease, with the median sale price dipping almost 7% to $250,000.
Cumberland and Aroostook counties remained the most and least expensive counties for homebuyers, respectively, with median sale prices of $618,000 and $169,900.
While it was the least expensive, Aroostook County was also popular, recording an almost 17% increase in year-over-year sales during the three-month period, the highest in the state.
Piscataquis and Sagadahoc counties were the only two to see a decrease in the number of sales, dropping about 10% and 13%, respectively.
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Tagged: home sales, housing, Maine Association of Realtors, real estate
Hannah is the housing reporter at the Portland Press Herald, covering all aspects of Maine’s housing crisis - real estate and development, home ownership and rental issues and the lack of both affordability. More by Hannah LaClaire
