Moving to Maine, because where you hang your hat now is not the right fit.
For lots of reason, relocating to Maine is a good choice and appeals to many in the real estate audience. Maybe you want to buy land in Maine and start fresh with your own dream built house. Could you get the place weather tight and endure the slowly put together home in Maine? Howe do you feel about a table saw parked in your living room after it is lifted up and leaves the kitchen, the dining room, sun room and other areas of your home sweet home in Maine?
The kick in the pants to leave where your mail comes now could be totally financial.
Like last call, you can not afford to stay if your income was cut in half or more. You live in an area where real estate properties have peaked on their value and it is time to sweet in the profit from a house sale. And to slowly, carefully push away from the table. As a retired resident of where you work hard now, could what you have for fixed income keep you afloat and still offer a quality of life? Do you want to run away from traffic, crime, the high cost of living and when is the best time to put the moving gears in motion?
You are not the first living outside of Maine to want to retire in Vacationland.
The fresh air, clean water, four season recreational options and a healthier way of living is pretty appealing. Less stress chasing the dollar is replaced with being skilled at frugal living. You do more yourself, become savvy at using you, yourself and I on the items you squibble with the pencil on the daily to do list. The pace of life changes and what’s important does too.
Early morning kayak rides on a smooth as a glass bottle Maine lake becomes a ritual. So does cross country skiing a woods trails that leads to an opening with spectacular views of the landscape. Not buildings, not people, without artificial noises. Wildlife replace the population you have had to navigate around for far too long in a high population, pretty impersonal urban setting.
In Maine, money is not worshiped or whipped out to solve a problem or fulfill a need.
Resourcefulness, bartering become a tool reached for daily. Sometimes old skills that have become dusty from lack of use get polished and refined. As you swing a hammer or re-load the nail gun to piece together the house that you built. Or the old Victorian, the lake front cottage that has sags and deferred maintenance that you step in to help in the catch up job jar list. No hurry and prioritizing what needs the most attention in a triage order like an ER room approach to the structures on the Maine land you become attached to tightly.
Space, lots of it, no parking issues, just wide open unspoiled room around you is a new sensation. Wrap yourself with forty acres and you feel like you own a kingdom.
Be deprived of it too long and you do feel like an animal in a cage. Like a prison cell that becomes all you expect because that is all there is. Maine is under populated, a tad off the beaten path and that is a good thing. It creates the insulated not isolated setting where so much that you can not achieve in a city without a boatload of money is possible.
Small town Maine living enriches your existence because you are needed. The small Maine community rises and falls with the efforts of the people populating it. There are not bad neighborhoods to avoid like a city infested with gangs, with lack of respect for people’s lives and property and your ideas. Where to locate in Maine is more of a geographical consideration.
The further you trek into the interior, the deep woods and fertile farming areas, the mountains, rivers, lakes, streams as you get away from the coast, the more natural sounds replace the man made ones.
You don’t hear round the clock emergency responder sirens in a six by six rural Maine township of under 200 population. What’s missing is just as important as the perks of living in lower cost Maine where your dollar stretches further.
Better use of the hard earned dollars you have because suddenly a Maine garden is part of your down on your knees exercising.
Taking better care of yourself to reduce health care costs because multi layers of stress are peeled off because your life load is lightened. Maine simple living can free up the got no no no time that Burton Cummings sang about. Sit on a Maine lake dock and stare out, letting go and feeling like someone opened up all the windows, lifted all the shades or turned off all the whining motors.
I think your awareness increases, that living in a safe uncrowded lower cost area like Maine clears the way. Like shaking an Etch-o-sketch and having a brand new clear back drop to lay out your life in Maine. Could you live on minimum wage in Maine? Sure could because what many need money for is gone or seriously reduced in Maine. People help each other and consider how fortunate each and every one of us really is. So take what you need and pass along the extra to someone that reason needs it. Without fanfare or trying to get credit or look good. Because it is the right thing to do.
The elderly house owner down the road or two streets over in a Maine town may have no children living close by.
Asking her if she needs anything at the grocery store or better yet including her in your runs up and down the aisles at the Piggy Wiggly adding items to the wire cart. No one is too busy to be helpful in some way in a small Maine town.
Moving in the right direction from expensive crowded city settings to a rural Maine small community with natural beauty and down to Earth friendly people with manners.
Thought about more than vacations in Maine and picking a small town location in one of the sixteen counties to create a new home experience?
Start with Maine land.
Then easy does it put up a structure with just the right living space for you. Does not have to be a tiny house show box but whatever it is creates the container for living, for hobbies and quality of your life.
Research it online. Watch your you tube videos on the DIY. Call in favors from your buddies in the building trades. Do as much of the work as you can and call in the experts for the big things like a crane lifting and securing into place the roof trusses or the purloins for the cathedral ceiling in your log home.
What starts to shape up has many uses in its design. It’s a cheap vacation destination for now on the land, just Maine land. But like a good book or old black and white movies, it evolves into a full time or half year residence down the road. When you decide that’s it. Like the bell on the micro wave telling you it’s done. Put into motion the process to start drawing those social security checks. It’s Maine, for so many good reasons. Should most of your life feel like a vacation because you are where you need to be?
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730 USA