Welcome to the True North Realty Blog, where Maine real estate is only part of the story.
Explore helpful information about buying and owning property in Maine, along with the places, people, seasons, and outdoor lifestyle that make our state unique. From private roads, waterfront and rural land to Maine camps, wells, septic systems, local communities, ATV and snowmobile trails, and life in Northern Maine, our goal is to provide useful information you can actually use.
Whether you've lived in Maine your entire life, are considering a move here, or simply want to know more about owning a piece of Maine, we're here to help you navigate the journey.
Maine property. Maine communities. Maine life.
True North, Navigating Your Real Estate Journey
For most people, there's one feature of a house they don't spend much time thinking about.
You turn on the faucet.
Take a shower.
Run the dishwasher.
Flush the toilet.
And everything disappears.
If your home is connected to a municipal sewer system, that's pretty much where your involvement [...]
You're looking at a Maine property online and everything seems pretty straightforward.
Three-bedroom home.
Ten acres.
Detached garage.
Private well and septic.
Then somewhere in the listing, deed, or property information you see three words:
“Access by right-of-way.”
Or perhaps:
“Subject to a [...]
Buying real estate has changed dramatically.
Not that long ago, buyers depended almost entirely on real estate agents to tell them what properties were available. Today, you can sit on your couch at 10:30 at night and search hundreds of homes, camps, waterfront properties, and parcels [...]
Maine has four seasons.
At least that's what the calendar says.
Anyone who has spent enough time here knows there's another one squeezed somewhere between winter and spring.
Mud season.
It's that wonderful time of year when you can leave the house wearing a [...]
You find it online late one evening.
Three acres.
Beautiful wooded lot.
One hundred feet of waterfront.
The price seems surprisingly affordable.
You immediately start imagining a small camp overlooking the water, a dock, a firepit, kayaks along the shoreline, and [...]
Twenty acres.
For someone accustomed to looking at quarter-acre house lots, that can sound enormous.
You start imagining a house set back from the road, a big garage, trails through the woods, a garden, maybe a small farm, hunting out the back door, and enough room that seeing your neighbors becomes [...]
If you're thinking about moving to Lincoln, Maine, you might initially look at a map and see a small town surrounded by an incredible amount of water and woods.
That's accurate—but it doesn't tell the whole story.
Lincoln offers an interesting combination that's [...]
If you've always lived somewhere with public water, buying a rural Maine property can introduce you to a whole new vocabulary.
One of the first questions you may hear is:
"What kind of well does it have?"
For many Maine homeowners, having a private well is simply a normal [...]
Ask someone in Maine how far it is to the next town and there's a pretty good chance they won't give you a number of miles.
Instead, you'll hear something like, "Oh, it's about 20 minutes."
Ask how far it is to Bangor and you might get, "About an hour from here." The lake? Fifteen minutes. The nearest grocery store? Maybe 10 minutes. The camp? Forty-five minutes—unless it's mud [...]
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