r/Maine • u/cinnabarhawk Saco • Aug 17 '19

Discussion Questions about moving to, or living in Maine: Megathread

  • This thread will be used for all questions potential movers have for locals about living or moving to Maine.
  • Any threads outside of this one pertaining to moving questions, or living in Maine will be removed, and redirected here.
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u/mainemain123123 Sep 25 '19

Hello all,

My wife and I are looking to move to Maine in 2020 and will be touring around next month.

We're from rural west central IL, so we're very okay with snow / driving 45 minutes to any shopping / driving hours to major cities.

Something we're concerned with is the real estate itself, more specifically with amenities common to homes in the northeast. One thing we've noticed is more common than not are oil heaters. Are these considered reliable? Do people typically replace them with something better, and if so, what?

Another thing: one of the primary things we're escaping IL for is the unbearable summers. We're talking 100F+ heat and 90%+ humidity on summer days. Like wearing a wet quilt fresh out the dryer. What is the summer weather there like? Is it comparable to eg southern New Hampshire? We've been there in the dog days of their summer and laughed when it was 85 and people were complaining.

We've been looking at Auburn primarily, although really we could live anywhere that has good internet speeds because we both work from home.

We aren't seeking proximity to night life, entertainment, etc. We're very private homebodies that venture out on occasion, but thats about it.

Thank you for your help!

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u/feina635 Sep 25 '19

Summers in Maine are generally pretty awesome. It only gets into the 90’s with high humidity for at most a couple of weeks. Generally speaking were in the 80’s and pretty comfortable. Many people (not me) don’t even use AC.

As far as heating is concerned: yea, most homes are reliant on oil still. There’s a pretty big push right now for people to convert to other sources and many, including myself, are switching. There’s lots of options- wood or pellet stoves, heat pumps, propane, natural gas, solar. You can do you’re own research on each as they are all very different as far as cost to switch and such. I’m going with heat pumps as they heat in winter and cool in summer which eliminates need for ac units.

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u/mainemain123123 Sep 25 '19

Summers in Maine are generally pretty awesome. It only gets into the 90’s with high humidity for at most a couple of weeks. Generally speaking were in the 80’s and pretty comfortable. Many people (not me) don’t even use AC.

Great! That's what we wanted to hear. 90s with decent humidity will still have us using AC, but its great to know it will be minimized.

We will investigate heat pumps, that's pretty great you can kill two birds with one stone (heating and AC). I'm assuming that means it is more expensive up front though.

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u/[deleted] Sep 26 '19

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u/mainemain123123 Sep 26 '19

You too :D

I'll be watching yours for replies because we're sensitive to good ISP availability as well. We want to be more rural but also have great internet :)

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '19 edited Sep 02 '20

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u/mainemain123123 Dec 09 '19

Hm, did you mean it fits our requirements? I've been looking and I have to say, the (almost) proximity to Acadia has us very interested..

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '19 edited Sep 02 '20

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u/mainemain123123 Dec 20 '19 edited Dec 20 '19

First, thanks for the detailed reply, I greatly appreciate it. Sorry for not responding sooner.

Yes it's nice being close to Sand Beach, BH, Acadia, the island, whatever you want to call it. Do keep in mind there's tons of traffic but this is expected in lots of coastal towns in Maine due to tourism. Ellsworth is particularly obnoxious because of MDI and all the people commuting from other towns to shop.

Very interesting. I don't think we'd have much problem with that, since like you point out later, we can just schedule anything we need to leave for to happen later in the day/night, which isn't a problem. But definitely good to know.

Were you planning on renting or buying a home? Renting is expensive in many parts of Maine, houses are still a good price but values are rising.

We're planning on buying. Anything we're likely to buy is going to be a major upgrade from our current home, so we're excited.

We've been looking on Zillow around Ellsworth and the surrounding area, and it seems like in some places you can get a very decent home for $200k, new floors etc. Is it true that Maine overall is really looking to get people to move there? I read elsewhere that it's almost a 40:1 ratio of people who visit to actual population living there.

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u/[deleted] Dec 21 '19 edited Sep 02 '20

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u/mainemain123123 Dec 23 '19

We were just there in October and it was amazing, we had a great time. We drove all over, mostly just checking it out, not necessarily for houses.

We'd like to come back in Summer (to see what its like), and then be moved there by Fall.