By Jennifer Van Allen
From our March 2022 issue
Before we moved to Maine, the question “could we live here?” came up any time we traveled. We lived near Philadelphia and wanted to get closer to nature, farther from the crowds, and into a community where we felt less like fish out of water.
So we took out a pencil and paper, and devised a grid listing all the U.S. cities we’d loved visiting and cross-checked them against our financial and quality-of-life musts: a house under $250,000, mountains and wooded trails nearby, a walkable downtown, an airport within an hour’s drive, some optimal proximity to water and family. A few contenders immediately fell out of the running. Boulder? Too expensive. Big Sur? Too far from family. Columbus, Indiana? Too close. Maine, where we’d spent a dozen summer vacations, checked the most boxes, and we bought a house near Portland in 2014.
A lot of others have come hot on our heels. While non-natives made up 29 percent of Maine home buyers in 2020, now 34 percent come from away, according to the Maine Board of Realtors. Many of them moved long before COVID, and their selection and planning process was even more complex than ours.
When she started plotting her retirement, in 2015, Kathleen Norton, then of Alexandria, Virginia, compared stats on taxes, crime, and cost of living and read up on health care, housing, and access to arts and culture. “I needed to make sure I was clear about not making Maine seem like nirvana, because no place is,” she says. “What appears to be idyllic on vacation can be a completely different experience when you live there.”
After all that research, she realized she had to see it for herself. So she visited eight different towns along the Maine coast, at peak tourist season and in the depths of winter, where she got to know some locals and picked their brains about the communities she was contemplating. “It was important to get the feel of an area firsthand,” she says. “What might be quaint to one person is downright kitschy to someone else.”
In the end, though, her decision to move to Camden was largely driven by her gut. “I decided I need to be where I can easily feast my eyes on Penobscot Bay, the Camden Hills, the forests, farms, streams, rivers, and falls,” she says. For all her research, the “friendly factor” ended up counting for a lot. “Often, when you visit beautiful places, people can be pretentious and put on airs,” she says. “But everyone from the clerk in Hammond Lumber to the people at the Farnsworth Museum were friendly, open, and helpful.”
For Laurie Reed, once of Collegeville, Pennsylvania, comparison shopping was key to choosing a new home base. Her sights were so set on the Pine Tree State that when her now-husband proposed, she told him that he’d have to move to Maine or the answer was no. He agreed, and even though they fell in love with Belfast on their honeymoon, they still looked at locations in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and other Pennsylvania towns, returning to Maine two to three times a year, staying one to two weeks at a time. Ultimately, they bought land to build a home on in Bath. She gained a great deal of peace of mind knowing that they’d weighed so many different options. “Every location has its pros and cons,” Reed says. The biggest lesson she’s realized since? Don’t believe everything you hear. Reed asked a lot of people for advice about living in Maine and was warned, among other things, that she and her husband would never be accepted because they were not “real Mainers.” She hasn’t found this to be true. “If I’d listened to what other people said, we’d probably still be back in Pennsylvania,” she says.
For Andrew and Amelia Singer, the big takeaway was about keeping an open mind. Initially, after narrowing their search for a home to Maine, they simply assumed they’d move to Portland, since they’d read so much hype about the restaurant and shopping scenes. But when the couple, then living in Bristol, Pennsylvania, started seriously house hunting, they couldn’t find anything that fit their budget and had the kind of space where they could envision raising kids. The Singers ultimately moved to Stockton Springs, a town they’d never heard of before they found their dream home there. “It offered the rural beauty we wanted, but it was still close to Belfast for that feeling of being in town,” Amelia says. “It was the perfect mix for us.”
For my family, a few lessons from our relocation loom large. First is the realization that living in Maine is nothing like vacationing here. Yes, having easy access to so much free outdoor fun means we no longer have to wait for a vacation to do the things we love. We live within a mile of five public boat launches, so getting on the water is a cinch. Our house is within walking distance of a 22-acre park, where our son learned to ride a bike, catch a fish, and kick a soccer ball. My husband built a shed, a boat, skateboards, cutting boards, and all the tables in our house. I have reclaimed hobbies I loved when I was young, like playing the piano, and taken up knitting and Nordic skiing, which I love even though my efforts produce cartoonish results. (Anyone need a Swiss-cheese scarf?) But living in Vacationland is far from perfect. We bemoan mud season, the lack of diversity, and heating costs. Having a garage is a lot more essential than I thought it would be. I wish I had been a little bit more prepared for those challenges before we had arrived. To anyone considering a move to Maine, I’d have as many candid conversations with as many locals and newcomers as possible about the challenges and trade-offs of living here.
Finally, know that the best arguments for moving to a place may be the intangibles that no amount of research, on the ground or otherwise, can prepare you for, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Over the past eight years, what we’ve come to treasure the most is the sense of community we experience here. Folks seem to have embraced the whole “we’re all in this together” spirit long before the pandemic. Many times since March of 2020, we have heaved with relief to be riding out the hard times here and not in greater Philly. Time and again, we have been wowed by the kindness of strangers. We say, “This would only happen in Maine” a lot. When my son was in preschool, he dropped his beloved stuffed dog on a walk in town. A neighbor recognized the dog, knew where we lived, and dropped it in our mailbox before we realized it was gone. I lost my keys and wallet multiple times, only to have them show up on our doorstep within 24 hours.
None of these things would fit into any of the categories on our grid, but they’re a huge part of why we’re here to stay.
Start Right Here
Pondering a move? Here are five resources to support your search.
Live and Work in Maine. This non-profit group maintains a job board, maps of coworking spaces, and a trove of other resources for people who are searching for work in Maine, or plan to work remotely here. To hear directly from other newcomers who made the move, check out their YouTube video library.
Maine Department of Revenue. Taxes can vary dramatically between different locales, even neighboring ones. The Department of Revenue maintains a town-by town list online, which makes it easy to compare mill rates between different communities.
Maine Land Trust Network. Vacationland has a robust network of land trusts throughout the state. The Land Trust Network maintains an online directory of preserves and trails throughout the state.
Maine Homes. Our sister publication, Maine Homes by Down East, maintains a property search tool, a directory of local homebuilding pros, tips from experts on home improvement and decor, plus stories on architecture, design, gardens, antiques, and more.
Living in Maine Facebook Group. On this private discussion board, which is maintained by the Down East staff, prospective Mainers can connect with people who live here, and others who are dreaming of making the move.
