PORTLAND (AP) – Maine home sales are tumbling but the state has avoided declining prices that have accompanied the gloomy housing market across the country.

Over the past year, median prices continued to edge up – or remain flat – even as the number of homes sold has declined by double digits nearly every month.

“I always ask myself if this is going to be the month that I see values take a nose dive,” said Lou Demers from Maine Coast Properties in Scarborough, who uses the Maine Real Estate Information System to track price changes for Portland.

Nationally, home prices peaked nationally in the second quarter of 2005 and the rate of appreciation began slowly dropping, until it turned negative last summer for the first time in 13 years, according to government data.

That downturn didn’t register much in Maine. Statewide, Maine homes appreciated by 2.9 percent during the period, according to the data.

In fact, home prices in the state’s largest urban areas continued to rise during the first nine months of 2007. Lewiston-Auburn and Bangor prices rose more than 5 percent. Portland-region prices were up more than 2 percent.

In Portland, the number of homes sold was down 50 percent in December, but the median sale price was up nearly 6 percent, to $242,000, according to Demers, who tallies the listing and selling prices of single-family homes and condos.

“Two big questions emerge from this,” he said. “Why haven’t prices fallen, when the activity has fallen so drastically? And how much longer will we be able to sustain values, when there are far fewer buyers in the market?”

Part of the reason Maine seems to be dodging the national trend is that the state wasn’t as prone to the speculative building and boom-and-bust economic growth of some other states.

Furthermore, the national real estate trend is being driven by a relatively small number of metropolitan areas that experienced the greatest appreciation. Of the 287 cities tracked by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, only 83 saw prices decline in the third quarter of 2007. Seventeen of the 20 cities with the most depreciation were in Florida and California.

Trying to guess the direction of Maine home prices has become more complicated in recent weeks, as the national economy continues to slow.

Charles Colgan, a former state economist who leads Maine’s economic forecasting committee, believes the national decline appears to be bottoming out. Unless the country enters a deep recession, Maine home values may not have much further to slide, he said.

But others remain concerned.

In 2006, experts including the Realtors’ group and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan anticipated a housing recovery in 2007. Their optimism was soon dashed by the subprime mortgage crisis with rising foreclosures and tighter credit.

All of those troubling factors are carrying into the new year. And that concerns Valarie Lamont, executive director of the Center for Real Estate Education at the University of Southern Maine. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she said.

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, https://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-01-17-08 1129EST