PORTLAND, Maine — A rise in home sales and prices in December helped Maine end the year with more sales but prices flat from the previous year.
Home sales rose 7.9 percent in 2014 from the previous year. The median sale price of a single-family home did not budge.
“After such a long period of instability, sellers were happy to have a sale at a realistic price, and in most cases weren’t pushing the envelope on price,” Marie Flaherty, the newly named president of the Maine Association of Realtors for 2015, said in a news release. “The year ended strongly, which is indicative of an even healthier market ahead for 2015.”
December was the strongest month of the fourth quarter of 2014, with a rise in both sales volume and the biggest year-over-year increase in median sales price since February, which had a 5.6 percent increase in sales price.
For the year, building permits for single-family homes also rose at a rate of about 12 percent, a slower increase than in the previous two years. Building permits also closed out the year higher than in 2013, up to 233 in December from 126 one year before.
Flaherty, a real estate agent based in Westbrook, said there were some positive signs within those numbers to close out the year.
“Some buyers were willing to risk buying their replacement home before selling their existing home — something that few have been comfortable doing in some time,” she said.
Monthly median sales prices of homes increased from one year prior for every month from August 2012 through February 2014, with declines in six months of last year.
The median sales price for a home in Maine was $181,800 in December, up 6.8 percent from the same month in 2013. In the same comparison, sales volume was up 4 percent nationally, with the median sales price up 6.3 percent to $210,200. In New England, the median price rose 3.2 percent to $246,600 and sale volume was up 3.1 percent.
The monthly median sales price for Maine homes was basically unchanged at $173,021 in 2014, compared with the 7.9 percent rise in sales volume, to 14,425 homes that changed hands. Home sales in 2013 were up 13.6 percent from the previous year, to 13,088.