Maine House Shopping

Trip #1: Jump to

Because there's nearly 300 photos in this first weekend, and we still have one more extended weekend left, i'm shrinking the photos down to thumbnails so that this omnibus page loads more quickly, and also creating separate pages for the houses out into their own pages with the individual houses with the medium-sized shots.

• Thursday
  • MLS# 825032
  • MLS# 831615
  • MLS# 837532- Smurf blue countertop
  • MLS# 811551
  • MLS# 837312
• Friday
  • MLS# 818310 - picket fence, very low 2nd floor ceilings
  • MLS# 826418
  • MLS# 823931
  • MLS# 836751 - Vassalboro 1800s farm house
  • MLS# 836396
  • MLS# 838780
  • MLS# 822670
  • MLS# 820451
• Saturday
  • MLS# 834464 - ready to move in
  • MLS# 838110
  • MLS# 838763 - Foreclosure Property
  • MLS# 836022 - Charming Winslow home, but extremely low basement
  • MLS# 836056
  • MLS# 803354
  • MLS# 834903 - Larger home (relatively) on slab foundation, no basement
  • MLS# 822657 - Standard ranch, finished basement, nice location

Trip #1, Thursday

We looked at 5 houses today: 4 in Waterville, and 1 across the river in Winslow. All were around the same price, and all were relatively in town, which means they all should be close enough to Maine General in Waterville. Also, all were a tad on the smaller side, but some seemed more useable than others. Here's what we saw, in order of what we saw today (excluding the last two houses, both of which were still occupied, so we didn't want to intrude with tons of photo taking and publishing online).

MLS# 825032

• List price: $99,900
• 1,004 sq ft
• 2 bedrooms
• 1 (and 3/4... ish) bath (the 3/4 is a toilet, sink, and shady shower stall in the completely unfinished basement)
• 5 rooms total (2 beds, kitchen, living room/dining room slightly divided with a fairly open archway)
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, metal roof
• Extras: hardwood floors throughout, 1 car barely attached (actually, it's stuck on the back of the house, but you can't go from the garage to the house without going outside)

MLS# 831615

• List price: $99,900
• 1,300 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 1/2 bath
• 5 rooms total
• Exterior: Aluminum and vinyl siding, shingle roof
• Extras: on a dead end street

MLS# 837532

• List price: $99,500
• 832 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 5 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, fiberglass shingle roof
• Extras: Basement recently waterproofed. Sewer line replaced in 2001.

MLS# 811551

• List price: $99,900
• 816 sq ft
• 2 bedrooms (both tiny!)
• 1 bath
• 5 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, metal roof
• Extras: ...

MLS# 837312

• List price: $99,900
• 868 sq ft
• 2 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 4 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, shingle roof
• Extras: 2 car detached garage, more rural compared to the other sites, so the neighbors aren't quite as close. Basement accessable via bedroom (wierd doorway) or outside only.

Trip #1, Friday

8 houses today. Yes, i know, i said something like 20 on the phone, but i clearly was overestimating. the farmhouse tod and i were eyeing in Waterville is out on contract (i.e. someone put in a bid and it's about to be sold), and we dropped a couple that we'd seen with the other realtor yesterday as well. Here's what we saw today.

MLS# 818310

• List price: $94,900
• 1,375 sq ft
• 4 bedrooms
• 1 1/2 bath
• 7 rooms total
• Exterior: Shingle siding, shingle roof
• Extras: 3 car detached garage with plenty of storage above, nice yard, front porch, fireplace in livingroom (likely needs to be cleaned and inspected)... but looks by far like the nicest house on the block. Many multifamily homes in the area; has been on the market for several months. "dining room" area off kitchen was a former laundry room, and needs some cosmetic work. Kitchen is oddly shaped, with a galley section sticking off from the rest of the kitchen. also, very low ceilings in the 2nd floor (likely 6'). Master bedroom is 11'x11' so may be a very cozy fit for a king sized sleigh bed. Hx of asbestos on heating pipes, but the majority was removed by the current owner's father.

MLS# 826418

• List price: $94,900
• 1,875 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 1/2 bath
• 7 rooms total
• Exterior: Clapboard and wood siding, fiberglass shingle roof
• Extras: Victorian home, very large rooms, but very difficult to renovate kitchen, needs a fair amount of work to make nice, absolutely no parking on the property itself (though supposedly, the property has the right to park on the neighbor's lot). No room to expand to add on a driveway or garage.

MLS# 823931

• List price: $89,900
• 1,090 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 6 rooms total
• Exterior: Clapboard siding, metal roof
• Extras: Gorgeous front sunroom area, but master bedroom is actually probably a family room (glass panes in door), two bedrooms upstairs are miniscule, too small to even use as office space. no photos by us because the home still is occupied (but here's the realtor's stuff).
Realtor's info and pictures

MLS# 836751

• List price: $94,900
• 1,800 sq ft
• 4 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 8 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl and wood siding, shingle roof
• Extras: At least it's been gutted for the most part. This is the kind of house that would look awesome in Flip That House. Unfortunately, it's barely liveable in this state, and while i love the location (rural, low taxes, right between Waterville and Augusta, near an elementary school, nice large level property), we just can't afford to fix it up the way it needs to be fixed up. too bad, though... i loved that upstairs with all the open space up there. too bad the camera also ran out of battery while we were at this house.

MLS# 836396

• List price: $86,900
• 1,093 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 6 rooms total
• Exterior: Shingle siding, shingle roof
• Extras: wrap-around porch, house on hill but drive is level, two upstairs bedrooms have minimal hall at the top of the stairs, in augusta instead of waterville, need cosmetic work (sanding, painting), low heating bills per info given, basement appears potentially damp, but was not accessable today due to the house still having people living in it with lots of stuff around the stairs in the basement.

MLS# 838780

Vanilla looking ranch that likely will vanish from the market tonight.
• List price: $97,500
• 1,040 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 5 rooms total
• Exterior: Shingle and wood siding, shingle roof
• Extras: very good neighborhood; good resale prospects; probably way underpriced for what it is. for pictures, see above link.

MLS# 822670

• List price: $83,000
• 1,718 sq ft
• 5 bedrooms
• 1 3/4 bath
• 9 rooms total
• Exterior: Wood siding, shingle roof
• Extras: Former 2 family home. Needs a LOT of work, even more than the gutted Flip That House one above. It's just bad, ok? at least, bad for us. I like the wood heat stove. I like the laminate flooring in the kitchen. I like the little details on the exterior. I don't like anything else.

MLS# 820451

• List price: $68,900
• 1,092 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 6 rooms total
• Exterior: Wood siding, shingle roof
• Extras: Beautiful view of Kennebec River... between the less pretty houses. Interior looks like it's in good condition. Exterior looks decent as well. Too bad the land is barely bigger than the house's footprint, with nowhere to park except the road, and the neighboring homes are not in very good condition.

Random shot of the post office turned into office space

Trip #1, Saturday

We upped our max list price to $115,000 and looked at 9 more houses today. Below are descriptions of all the ones we liked (6) or that we had photos of. It's impressive how much better the choices are with merely increasing our max list price a little. I think there's 4 that we really like, but all of them are worth considering, along with our favorites from thursday and friday.

MLS# 834464

• List price: $109,900
• 970 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 5 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, metal roof
• Extras: Full unfinished basement looks in good condition, large, plenty of room to consider finishing and making a family room. Recently rewired, with very good looking wiring job. Old furnace, but in very good condition considering age. 1 car detached garage. On dead end road with no neighbor to the left of the property (if on the road looking at the house). property appears to have enough room to put a second parking spot on the side of the driveway so that I can park in the garage while tod's car is outside.

MLS# 838110

• List price: $104,000
• 874 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 5 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, shingle roof
• Extras: Only one exterior shot because this house is still inhabited. Honestly, we can't remember much about this house other than it's nice but not as nice as the first one we saw today. It has some work that needs to be done on it, but hopefully the realtor's photos will trigger our memory. It does have a one car detached garage with a nice awning to connect the garage to the house, as well as a full unfinished basement. The bedrooms are decent sized, (10x14' on the first floor, 11x12' and 9x12' on the second floor) as are the other two rooms (10-15' kitchen, 11x13' livingroom), so even though the house is small, it's functional.

MLS# 838763

• List price: $109,900
• 1382 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 1/2 bath
• 5 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, shingle roof
• Extras: Foreclosure property, on dead end street with lots of trees and no neighbor to the left (but practice field for the high school there). Fenced in back yard with very nice deck and above ground pool (which we'd like to remove and replace with a little more deck). Needs paint in spots (likely picture frame holes), and updated bathrooms (full bath in the first floor with PINK tub, sink, toilet; half bath upstairs is potentially big enough to replumb for a shower stall). the kitchen is terrific, with lots of room, nice cabinets, a peninsula, and eat in space. Must be inspected.

MLS# 836022

• List price: $110,000
• 1100 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms (though one is very small and a walk-through to get to another bedroom)
• 1 bath
• 6 rooms total (kitchen, dining, living, and 3 bedrooms)
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, shingle roof
• Extras: Very good condition house, with oak Kraftmaid cabinets (like Aunt Deb's but in oak) in the kitchen as well as a peninsula. Dining room floor also very pretty with hardwood in a concentric rectangle pattern. Master bedroom big enough for king sized bed comfortably, has a walk-in closet that is also a walk-through to the next bedroom. Second bedroom also accessable via a small room with very cottage-style wood paneling; this small room is perfect for either a small office or laundry room (except for lack of hook-ups). Basement is full, unfinished, and doubles as the laundry room. However, the ceilings are VERY VERY low in the basement, to the point that even I was hunched over to walk through the space and could only stand straight up between the floor joists and ductwork. Thus, why we think there ought to be a laundry room upstairs. The easy place to put it would be in the master bedroom, which abuts the bathroom. The hard place to put it would be in that small walk-through room to the second bedroom, which is above the kitchen. However, it's unclear how hard or easy it would be to run water and 220 volt electricity up to that room. Last perk: there's a cat door to the basement in the wall next to the basement door (but it's too small for Loki).

MLS# 836056

• List price: $114,900
• 1,008 sq ft
• 2 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 5 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, shingle roof
• Extras: Very charming rural Winslow home with 0.428 acres of land, corn fields for neighbors. Lovely condition, but designed for traffic to have to move through rooms to get to other rooms (challenging for the bedrooms). Not enough functional space for our purposes.

MLS# 803354

• List price: $109,900
• 970 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 7 rooms total
• Exterior: Painted brick and wood siding, shingle roof
• Extras: 1 car garage under house (taking up half the basement). A little dated with lots of wood paneling on most of the walls. Extremely steep stairs to the basement (not too big a deal, even though that's also to the garage). Extremely steep carpeted stairs to the second floor, where all the bedrooms are. By extremely steep, I mean the steps are not big enough to fit an entire normal sized foot on them straight on. Maybe the stairs could be rebuilt to go out into the finished porch area, but that won't be a project we're going to undertake. Also, the fuel line for the furnace has to be dug up, and there's some ceiling wood coming off in the basement. Much more minor details compared to the stairs.

MLS# 834903

• List price: $114,900
• 1,443 sq ft
• 4 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 6 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, shingle roof
• Extras: 1 car garage, detached. Slab foundation (no basement). Furnace is in laundry room space, just off the kitchen. Kitchen is dark, dated, and could benefit from some work. Same with the living room. 2 bedrooms on the first floor, with the larger of the two at just over 11'x11'. 2 bedrooms upstairs are probably the best rooms in the house, with fresh paint, good condition, and nice amount of room; perhaps they were finished at a later date than the rest of the house. "Deck" in back of the house is really more of a slightly raised platform, and what wasn't covered in snow appears to need stripping and refinishing at the very least. Decently large back yard. Few trees on property.

MLS# 822657

• List price: $114,900
• 1,080 sq ft
• 3 bedrooms
• 1 bath
• 6 rooms total
• Exterior: Vinyl siding, metal roof (shallow, but still angled).
• Extras: 1 car garage, detached. 0.3 acre lot (about twice standard sized lot).Full basement partially finished with a good sized family room. Master bedroom is 11x12'; second bedroom slightly smaller, and third bedroom very small. Master and third bedroom decorated for children. Kitchen and living room connected by a half-wall that needs a little more finishing on the livingroom side (trim and cosmetic stuff). Located in one of the best neighborhoods of the houses we've seen, per our realtor. For sale by Lakepoint Realty.

copyright 2005 "Gina" Hoai-nam Hoang