Newly built houses in Maine’s largest metropolitan area are getting more than double the online attention than the national average.
That’s what Realtor.com, which displays real estate listings and tracks market data, determined when it ranked the Portland region fifth in a list of top 10 U.S. cities with the hottest markets for new construction in the nation.
The company organized the rankings by evaluating the availability, cost and climate considerations of new construction in various cities across the nation, and how interested prospective buyers are in the properties.
The website used the Census definition of Portland metro area, which encompasses all of Cumberland, York and Sagadahoc counties. This includes suburbs like Standish and Biddeford that have welcomed swaths of new housing in recent years.
Portland is also the only metropolitan area in the Northeast on the list. Nearly all of the other cities on the top 10 list are in the South with a few others, like Spokane, Washington, and Madison, Wisconsin, representing the West and Midwest, respectively.
Southern Maine’s place in the ranking reaffirms what the housing market has long shown — there’s a desire for new housing throughout Maine but especially in the most populous part of the state. New construction may also help ease Maine’s pervasive housing shortage, which has made homeownership unaffordable for many.
Realtor.com used pageviews on property listings as a way to rank how hot the market for new construction is. In that category, southern Maine towered above other cities in the top 10 list.
Joel Berner, a senior economist for Realtor.com, said Portland’s pageview data may appear exceptionally high because the region has a smaller housing market with fewer new homes for sale compared with other parts of the county.
New construction is also less common in the Northeast, so freshly-built homes get a lot of attention from home shoppers when they hit the market, Berner said. But, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re getting scooped up faster than existing properties.
New homes in the greater Portland region sit on the market for an average of 76 days before selling, Realtor.com found. That’s longer than in Cumberland, York and Sagadahoc counties..
Realtor.com data show Sagadahoc County homes are available for an average of 26 days before selling, whereas properties in Cumberland and York counties sit on the market for an average of 41 and 54 days, respectively.
With a median listing price of nearly $665,000, new builds in the Portland region are also more expensive than established homes, which have an average asking price of roughly $610,000, according to Realtor.com.
This differs from other regions in the top 10 rankings, such as Boise City, Idaho, where new builds are often more affordable than established properties, according to Realtor.com.
Realtor.com also noted newly constructed homes in greater Portland are generally less flood-prone than existing properties, which gives the region a strong sustainability score.