All of the single-family homes that changed hands last year in Yarmouth and North Yarmouth were sold at prices way beyond the reach of local residents.

That’s according to conventional wisdom that asserts homeowners shouldn’t allocate more than roughly 30% of their income toward housing costs, including a mortgage. Data provided by MaineHousing shows that 100% of sales in those places were considered “unaffordable” to those making the median income in Yarmouth and North Yarmouth, which was $103,150 and $102,744, respectively.

They’re in good company. In Falmouth, the 2023 median household income was $134,650, while the income needed to afford the median single-family home price that year was $320,377.

Sky-high home prices mean existing homeowners in those areas are sitting on a good chunk of change, but low supply means there aren’t many opportunities to upsize or downsize. And if you’re a first-time homebuyer or trying to enter the market without a lot of cash on hand – good luck trying to find something in your price range. 

Longtime educator Cassiopeia Turcotte experienced this when she spent much of the summer looking for housing after she accepted a position teaching health at Falmouth High School.

Health educator Cassiopeia Turcotte is excited to start teaching at Falmouth High School this year, but she had a hard time finding housing this summer. Eloise Goldsmith / The Forecaster

Originally from Maine, Turcotte lived in New Hampshire for 23 years and was a homeowner there. She owned a Victorian mansion in Lancaster, north of the White Mountain National Forest.

But in 2021 she decided to sell because the assessed value of her home increased, making it difficult for her to afford the taxes on the property, she said. She was able to sell the house for more than she bought it for, but she had to use part of that money to pay off some credit card debt. Since then, she has been a renter in Merrimack, New Hampshire. She has about $20,000 available for a down payment on a new house.

When a friend let her know that a teaching position had opened up in Falmouth, she jumped on it.

“I’m so excited,” she said during an interview in August. “Getting this job at Falmouth has been a 20-year dream of coming back home.” 

The excitement was tempered by a grueling housing search. She put down offers on a home in Buxton and Alfred but was outbid both times. She ended up finding a rental in Old Orchard Beach that she can move into the first week of September, after the start of the school year. For her first teaching week she stayed with her aunt in Hartford and commuted roughly an hour and 15 minutes both ways.

Turcotte is in a better position than some.

She describes her salary with Falmouth Public Schools as generous (she’ll be making roughly $98,000 this year). She said the community has been very supportive of her finding housing. A Facebook post generated a number of leads, including one that helped her find her rental. This November, it will have been three years since the sale of her house in Lancaster, meaning she would be considered a first-time homebuyer in the eyes of MaineHousing’s First Home Loan Program.

“If someone’s buying or selling in the same market, the prices don’t matter as much (because) it’s an even playing field … that allows for movement in the market,” said Dava Davin, the founder of Portside Real Estate Group, a brokerage in Maine and New Hampshire. “When we look at first-time homebuyers, we have to be very creative.”

Communities becoming exclusive

Families have long chosen the towns of Falmouth, Cumberland, North Yarmouth and Yarmouth for their coastal location, proximity to Portland and good school systems. But these days, they’re communities that very few people can access.

The current selling price for homes in Falmouth means “that many of us who moved to Falmouth 20 or 30 years ago would be precluded from doing so today,” Town Councilor Sean Mahoney said via email. “That just doesn’t feel right to me.”

Former Cumberland Town Manager Bill Shane was frank during an interview with The Forecaster in May: “We have essentially no (available) housing stock right now in the community.”

Falmouth, according to data from MaineHousing, was the fourth most expensive place to buy a home in Maine in 2023, beat out only by Kennebunkport at No. 1, Ogunquit at No. 2 and Castine at No. 3. The median home price in Falmouth last year was $925,000, up from $605,000 in 2020.

Among the other three municipalities just north of Portland, Yarmouth was the second most expensive place to buy a house in 2023, according to MaineHousing. The median home price was $872,500, up from $555,000 in 2020. Cumberland came in third, with a median home price of $825,000 in 2023, where the median home price in 2020 was $493,000. In North Yarmouth, the median home was $640,000 in 2023, up from $432,973 three years prior.

“Right now the market is kind of broken in terms of … our workforce being able to afford a place to live,” said Laura Mitchell, the executive director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition.

“The flow of the market, people being able to downsize or upsize, is just clogged,” she said. “And it’s having real economic consequences in our state. We’re seeing that in terms of the number of people experiencing homelessness, the struggles families are having being able to afford child care and food and medicine, and the same for seniors.”

In Cumberland County and statewide, median sales prices are still edging up, according to data released in August, but there are some encouraging signs in Cumberland, Yarmouth and North Yarmouth.

Prices for the month of July 2024 were down from the same month a year ago, according to data from Maine Real Estate Information System. That month, Cumberland’s median price for a single-family home was $809,750, Yarmouth was $715,000 and North Yarmouth was $601,500 – down from the median sales prices from the previous July. The median price in Falmouth was $880,000, up 6.6% percent from July 2023, but still lower than MaineHousing’s 12-month median for 2023.

Choked supply

One indicator that the market is “clogged” is that the number of total homes sold in Maine has declined in recent years, but there are signs of easing.

Echoing state and national trends, the number of houses sold in Falmouth, Yarmouth and Cumberland declined between 2021 and 2023. (In North Yarmouth, home sales increased very slightly between 2021 and 2022, from 48 to 57 homes.)

In Falmouth, the number of homes sold dropped by nearly 100 units from 2020 to 2023, from 225 down to 134, according to MaineHousing. In Cumberland, 145 homes were sold in 2020 and 99 in 2023. In Yarmouth, 123 were sold in 2020 and 79 in 2023.

However, sales data is improving statewide and in Cumberland County, which is good news for buyers.

“One-hundred percent we are seeing easing up (of supply),” Davin said. “In Cumberland County, we have more active inventory” and as a result, “I don’t think prices are going down by any stretch, but they aren’t going to be as escalating in the double digits as they have been the last several years.”

Statewide, sales have ticked up this year. The number of units sold increased by 1.2% between the beginning of May through the end of July 2023 and the same period this year, for a total of 3,953. In Cumberland County, the number of units sold increased by 6.39% when comparing those same two periods.

“During 2024, Maine’s statewide real estate market continues to see inventory grow gradually,” Paul McKee, president of the Maine Association of Realtors, said in a press release that went out in August. “The 4,705 homes for sale in July was the highest number in 45 months, since October of 2020.”

A proposed affordable housing development failed at the ballot box in Cumberland this spring. Shawn Patrick Ouellette / Portland Press Herald

Searching for solutions

Municipal officials can’t influence larger market forces, but they can influence how much is built in their respective locations. Faced with housing unaffordability, some town leaders have advocated for creating housing to help ease supply issues – with mixed success.

In March, a plan to build a 107-unit affordable housing complex in Cumberland failed at the ballot box.

Thirty-six of those units would have been earmarked for seniors, and apartments would have been offered to households making less than 60% of the area’s median income, which would be $68,880 for a household of three. The same developer now plans to build a similar project in Biddeford.

A sizable residential development recently got the green light from the Cumberland Planning Board – the last affordable housing project did not make it to the Planning Board stage – that includes 72 units in West Cumberland, 36 of which will have an affordability requirement. The Town Council may soon consider extending one of its Tax Increment Financing districts to provide a funding mechanism for affordable housing, transit and infrastructure improvements, according to Town Manager Matt Sturgis.

Yarmouth recently amended eligible uses for its three TIF districts to include affordable housing, according to Planning Director Erin Zwirko. And earlier this year, the Town Council adopted an affordable housing production goal and an incentive program for affordable housing development, based on the recommendation of the town’s Affordable Housing Committee, she said.

Last year, the North Yarmouth Planning Board signed off on a residential development called Deacon Hayes Commons, which includes 12 three-bedroom units, five of which are earmarked for households making up to 150% of area median income, according to Heather Mayer, the listing agent for the project. The complex is slated to be fully completed by the end of the year.

In Falmouth, the Town Council recently moved forward with a controversial joint development agreement for a workforce housing complex on Marshall Drive, which would add 49 townhomes on land owned by the town near the police station.

The units would be available to households making up to 120% of area median income and would sell for $425,000 each. The project is now before the Planning Board. There have been talks of building affordable housing at this location for roughly three decades, according to Town Manager Nathan Poore.

Cassiopeia Turcotte, the Falmouth teacher, dreams of finding a home that has a yard for her dogs and a garage. It doesn’t have to be big. One of the houses she put an offer on was only 768 square feet – “perfect for just me,” she said. Having those offers fall through was a heartbreak, but she’s not giving up on her search. Her long-term plan is to find something to buy.

She’s exactly the sort of professional that the state hopes to attract as it contends with an aging workforce and where teachers are in short supply.

“I think the biggest hurdle we have in front of us, though, is people understanding that housing is needed in every town, in every neighborhood,” said Mitchell, speaking of the community pushback that reliably rears its head when new builds are proposed.

Mitchell said there is both a moral and an economic imperative to embrace more housing in Maine.

“We want our firefighters, our child care workers, our teachers, to be able to live in the communities that we do,” she said.