Both sides
Buyers and sellers, across central and southern Maine, with Fontaine Family - The Real Estate Leader.
Selling in a small Maine town is a different job from selling in a city, because the comparable sales barely exist.
In a town with twenty transactions a year, pricing is judgement rather than arithmetic, and getting it wrong in either direction is expensive.
An automated estimate needs volume to work. Most of the towns Emma sells in do not have it.
So the price comes from recent sales in your actual area, adjusted for condition and improvements, with judgement filling the gaps that the data leaves. Priced too high in a thin market and you sit, and sitting is visible. Priced too low and you never find out what you left behind.
Specific items in priority order, and an explicit note on what to skip. Emma does not price the work, she tells you what is worth getting priced.
Most of what moves a buyer here is cheap and visible: paint, a fixture, clearing, the approach to the front door. A full kitchen rarely returns what it costs.
A new listing gets its peak attention in the first fortnight. That window sets the showings, the offers and ultimately the price.
Which is why the work happens before the launch rather than after a quiet first weekend.
The inspection response. In housing stock this old, an inspection report is long by definition and the length frightens buyers more than the contents warrant.
Knowing which findings are genuinely expensive, which are cosmetic and which a buyer will drop if the rest is handled calmly is worth more to a seller than a slightly higher list price.
Well and septic records, permit history and the bedroom count the system is actually permitted for are worth assembling before you list rather than scrambling for them under contract.
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.
By hand, from recent comparable sales in your specific area, adjusted for condition and improvements. In small Maine towns there may be only a handful of relevant sales in a year, which is exactly where automated estimates fall apart and where local judgement earns its keep.
Usually the cheap and visible things rather than a remodel. Emma walks the house and gives you a specific list with costs and a clear note on what to skip. Spending twenty thousand on a kitchen rarely returns twenty thousand.
The first two weeks on market matter more than everything after them, because that is when a new listing gets peak attention. Correctly priced homes generally move inside that window. Inventory is thin in most of these towns, which works in a seller's favour.
That is where a sale is usually won or lost rather than at the offer. In Maine's older housing stock an inspection report is long by definition. Knowing which findings are genuinely expensive and which are cosmetic is most of the negotiation.
Yes. Rates are agreed between you and your broker, and compensation to a buyer's broker is now negotiated explicitly rather than assumed.
Tell Emma what you are trying to do and when. If the answer is that you should wait, she will say so.