Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
What was once the Buck’s Harbor Inn in Brooksville has been transformed into a sprawling single-family home and is on the market for $865,000.
Built in 1901, the eight-bedroom, five-bathroom house sits on nearly an acre on Steamboat Wharf Road, perched near the shoreline of Buck’s Harbor. With more than 5,200 square feet of living space, the home offers a formal dining room, two parlors, a large kitchen with commercial upgrades and an enclosed sun porch.
The house sits a short walk from several well-loved local businesses, but the village is perhaps most widely known for being the setting of Robert McCloskey’s famous book, “One Morning in Maine.”
“There has been a revitalization of the town in the past 10 years,” said Sandie Silver of Compass Point Real Estate in Blue Hill, the listing agent for the property. “Brooksville is very fortunate to have some patrons who generously have committed both their time and financial resources to help revitalize and strengthen the community.”
Ann and Peter Ebeling bought the property around 1976 and ran it as an inn from around 1981 to 2000 when they retired from innkeeping. The couple then converted the building into a single-family home for themselves and lived there year-round, according to Silver.
After Peter Ebeling died in 2015, Ann Ebeling offered to sell the home to the nearby Bucks Harbor Yacht Club in 2018. The organization accepted and gave Ann Ebeling a lifetime tenancy until she died in May, just a few months shy of her 101st birthday, Silver said.
“Once she passed away, [the yacht club] is not in the business of being landlords, so they decided that they would sell the property,” Silver said.
The home hit the market in mid-July with an asking price of nearly $950,000. That has since been cut twice and now rests at $865,000, the online listing shows.
Several interested buyers have toured the property so far, but the home’s large size poses a challenge for many families who might not need or want that much space, Silver said.
“They have to get their heads wrapped around what they would like to do with it, how they want to use it,” Silver said. “The perfect buyer would be somebody who has some sort of a connection to the town of Brooksville and loves being in the center of things.”
Aside from the main living area, the home has an attached one-bedroom apartment with its own kitchen, bathroom, living area and entrance, Silver said.
The building could easily remain a single-family home or be reopened as an owner-occupied inn, Silver said. The home could also host a multigenerational family or even two families, if that better suited the buyers’ needs.
A spacious workshop space and two-car garage are located at the back of the house, and another multipurpose room with its own entrance that was once an office is tucked beneath the home.
Outside, the home features a spacious back deck as well as a large front porch, which Silver said is her favorite part of the property.
“A gathering place to rock in a chair, a place to linger over coffee, and watch the everyday rhythm of the village — conversations, dogs, kids, bicycles and people stopping to chat,” Silver said. “Every Maine house needs a porch.”