LEWISTON – Up off Ferry Road is a five-lot subdivision with killer views of the White Mountains. The homes – some built, some still just lot lines – sell in the $325,000-and-up range.
Over in Auburn, condominiums on the site of the former Mid-State College are fetching $259,000 for starters. Owners get a fitness center, indoor pool, tennis courts and easy access to the turnpike. Three of the 22 units expected to be built this year were sold before the first open house.
Not too far away, lovely new homes at Vista Heights off Park Avenue in Auburn are commanding $369,000 and more.
And just over the Longley Bridge, developer Travis Soule is planning 30 condominiums in what had been Lewiston’s Cowan Mill. Prices range from $275,000 to $525,000.
Even more surprising: Soule has a list of 11 people waiting for the documents to reserve a condo.
“Yes, there’s been an incredible amount of interest,” he said. Inquiries have come from all over Maine, as well as Boston.
What the heck is going on here?
Long regarded as blue-collar communities, Lewiston and Auburn are seeing new, high-end residential developments springing up like dandelions, what one official calls “a new era” for the Twin Cities. The projects – single-family homes or condominiums – are the result of several factors coming together to create an upscale housing boom.
Among them:
• A burgeoning class of executives who’ve arrived to take jobs at Central Maine Medical Center’s heart center, Tambrands, Poland Spring bottling, Oxford Networks, the Wal-Mart Distribution Center, Bates College and the many companies that fill L-A industrial parks.
• Sustained low-interest rates, for both developers and buyers.
• Shifting demographics that prompt empty-nesters to trade the family homestead for a new condo, or, conversely, trade up to a nicer home with plenty of room for the grandkids.
But the single biggest factor is the one that’s been making its mark on the L-A real estate market for the past several years: Portland’s high prices are sending home buyers up the pike to where they can get a lot more home for the buck.
“We first saw them inquiring about five years ago, but now that’s really growing,” said Sharon Millett, president of Millett Realty/Coldwell Banker, who’s been selling real estate locally for 35 years.
“People are priced out of the southern Maine market. … The 25-minute commute isn’t such a bad thing when you compare what you get for the money,” she said.
For example, Millett showed a woman from Scarborough one of the condos at Colonial Ridge, the complex being built on the former Mid-State College site in Auburn. The woman told her a similar unit anywhere in southern Maine would get twice the $259,000 selling price.
Jan Jacques, a colleague of Millett’s who specializes in selling upscale properties, said a couple from Yarmouth decided to sell their condo there because of the hot market in southern Maine. They turned around and bought a condo in Auburn’s Granite Mills in the $200,000 range that was much nicer than the Yarmouth home, and had money to spare. Two years ago, condos at Granite Mills were selling for $129,000; now they’re at $239,000.
According to the State Planning Office, the median home price in Maine in 2004 was $168,00. The median selling price for a home in Androscoggin County in March of 2005 was $152,000; in Cumberland County, it was $239,000.
That disparity is part of the reason about 20 new housing developments are under way just in L-A, with condos running in the $250,000-and-up range and single-family homes going for $300,000 and more.
Sue Meservier, an agent with Meservier Group/ERA Worden who’s been selling real estate locally since 1988, said the rising costs of properties in southern Maine “will keep our prices strong.” She doesn’t know how long that pressure will keep building, but she’s not seeing any signs of it tapering off.
When upscale homes in Auburn’s Vista Drive development became available, 90 percent sold within a year, despite the $75,000 building lot price tag. At Lewiston’s Chestnut Hill project, about half of the 15 home lots are now sold, with lots going for $50,000 to $55,000. The homes will be another $225,000 and more.
Some of the home buyers are southern Mainers, but many are local folks, said Meservier.
“People so often underestimate our community when they think about high-end professionals,” she said.
Executive class
Greg Mitchell had been worrying about that very thing. When CMMC’s heart center opened two years ago, the Lewiston assistant city administrator was painfully aware of the gap in the area’s executive-class housing stock. While there are many beautiful older homes scattered throughout Lewiston and Auburn, there were few upscale neighborhoods offering new homes that would appeal to doctors and administrative staff.
“We needed more diversity, especially in the high-end residences, and that’s what we’re seeing now,” he said. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”
Mitchell said part of the phenomena is attributable to market forces like low-interest rates and growing demand, but he thinks the cities’ improving image is playing a role, too.
“Houses selling for half-a-million dollars and more is a new thing for L-A,” he said. “It’s a new era for this community, and it’s a good thing.”
It’s also helping the cities’ coffers. In Auburn, there have been 94 permits for single-family homes issued so far this year – more than twice a normal year, according to Cheryl Dubois, city assessor. The average building permit is for construction valued at $150,000. Dubois said building lots for new subdivisions are now selling for $70,000 to $80,000.
Lewiston is similarly busy, said Assessor Joe Groube. He said the growth is welcome, not only because of the additional tax revenue, but also because it’s reversing the exodus of people from the cities that the area experienced in the mid-’90s.
“It’s very positive,” he said. “It’s a vote of people’s confidence when they select L-A.”
Hot property
The growing market has some people wondering whether Lewiston-Auburn is being swept up in the real estate bubble that other parts of the country are experiencing, where housing prices skyrocket past the point of sustainability and then the market collapses.
Millett pooh-poohs the notion.
“What we’re seeing here has been slow and steady growth over a prolonged period of time,” she said. “It’s not an artificial market.”
Perhaps an even stronger indication of the strength of the local market is the number of developers who are now acting on plans after waiting years, in some cases, for the right conditions before launching their projects.
Among them is Fortin Construction, which is developing the Pond Ridge Acres and Brookside View Estates subdivisions in Lewiston. Plans were approved for both projects back in the late ’80s.
Emile Clavet, who is building the $25 million Colonial Ridge condo project in Auburn, has another development in the works off Broad Street in Auburn, which was also approved back in the late 1980s.
Clavet noted that Portland was ranked as the No. 1 housing market for property appreciation in a national survey last year – ahead of other cities like San Francisco. That prompted developers to draw a circle around the coastal city indicating a half-hour commute and consider investments there.
“You know it’s faster to get to Auburn from Portland than it is to get to Gorham,” said Clavet, who has developments all over the state.
He and his partner Kevin Dean bought the Mid-State College property at auction, then thought about what to do with it. They considered commercial and industrial uses, but were struck by the niceness of the surrounding residential neighborhoods and the easy access to the turnpike. As they studied the residential market, they realized there was a dearth of upscale housing.
“We saw a void in that high-end, quality lifestyle project,” said Clavet. “You had to go out of town to get that kind of project with those amenities.”
Two years later, the first units of Colonial Ridge are under construction. Standing in front of the field-stone fireplace in the complex’s clubhouse, Clavet is confident of his investment.
“The city is transitioning out of being a blue-collar community into a service-based economy and bringing about a calling for executive people,” said Clavet, waving to the adjacent fitness center.
“This is what they need for homes,” he said.
The ‘burbs
The momentum for upscale homes isn’t contained by the borders of the two cities. For well-heeled home buyers who don’t need easy access to the turnpike, there are several developments in Turner and Minot that are getting top dollar.
Bear Pond Village condominiums in Turner start at $225,000 and are being built by KRY Inc., the same developer who built Granite Mill Estates off Hotel Road in Auburn.
Dan Fortin, of Fortin Construction and ERA Today, has a new subdivision in New Gloucester that is already half sold and the roads haven’t even been built yet. He said he has two or three homes under contract in Minot and Turner subdivisions as well. The homes in Turner’s Pleasant View are priced at $250,000 and up; at Minot’s Scenic View, they’re over $300,000.
Fortin says many of his buyers work in Lewiston or Auburn and want nice homes without the big-city tax bills. And the escalating costs of existing houses make new homes more attractive.
“The existing home prices are right up there with ours,” said Fortin. “People are saying, Hey, if we wait six months, we can get exactly what we want.'”
And for those who are ready to buy now, the model home on Prospect Hill in Minot’s Scenic View development is available for $399,000.
With killer views of the White Mountains.
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