Both sides
Buyers and sellers, across central and southern Maine, with Fontaine Family - The Real Estate Leader.
Buying your first home in Maine means buying into housing stock that is older than almost anywhere else in the country, often on a private well and septic.
None of that is a reason not to buy. It is a reason to have someone who tells you what you are looking at before you fall in love with it.
Pre-approved rather than pre-qualified. The difference is whether a lender has actually reviewed your income, credit and debts or simply taken your word for it.
Ask specifically about MaineHousing first home programmes. They exist, they help with down payment and closing costs for eligible buyers, and plenty of people assume they do not qualify without ever asking.
Separate from what a lender says you can borrow. One is arithmetic about your past, the other is a decision about your life.
Write it down before you start looking, because the moment to decide is not while you are standing in a kitchen you love.
In this state that means the age-related list. Wiring, lead paint, the heating system and its tank, roof, insulation. If it is rural, the well and the septic.
Every one of those is knowable in advance, and knowing changes what you should offer.
Price is one lever. Timeline, deposit, contingencies and the settlement date all move sellers and several of them cost you nothing.
What Emma will not do is tell you to waive the inspection to win. In Maine's housing stock that is a genuinely bad trade.
Inspection and the response to it, appraisal, underwriting, the final walkthrough and settlement. Each stage explained as it arrives rather than as a document dump on day one.
Buyers and sellers, across central and southern Maine, with Fontaine Family - The Real Estate Leader.
Wells, septic, oil tanks, lead and shoreland zoning. The questions Maine actually asks.
Including when the answer is that a house is not worth it, or that you should wait.
Less than most people assume. Conventional loans can start near three percent down and FHA at 3.5 percent. MaineHousing runs first home programmes that can help with the down payment and closing costs for eligible buyers, and it is worth asking a lender about specifically rather than assuming you do not qualify.
Get pre-approved rather than pre-qualified. A pre-qualification is an estimate based on what you tell a lender. A pre-approval means they have looked at your income, credit and debts. Sellers here will not treat an offer seriously without one.
Plenty of first buyers in Maine do, because that is what the inventory is. The important part is going in with a real number for what it needs rather than hoping. Wiring, heat, roof and insulation are the four that cost money.
Expect lender fees, title and settlement costs, prepaid taxes and insurance, and Maine's real estate transfer tax, which is customarily split between buyer and seller. Your lender produces a written estimate early, and it is worth reading line by line rather than glancing at the total.
Tell Emma what you are trying to do and when. If the answer is that you should wait, she will say so.