Moving to Maine Timeline (Bangor, Eastport: for sale, real estate, to rent) - (ME) - City-Data Forum

corgis · 12-02-2007, 09:57 AM

I've been reading lots of posts of people wanting to move to Maine recently and some of the posts are full of questions on what to do, how to do it, when to do it and more so I thought I would share my own timeline for moving to Maine. It took a lot of thinking and planning and doing but it's very close to happening now.

In 1996, we decided to move to Maine from WV when we retired in 12 years. That summer we bought 6.5 acres in Midcoast Maine, a little town named New Harbor, down the Pemaquid Penninsula with savings that we had started for our retirement years before.

In 2002, Midcoast got "discovered" and prices for land and homes went through the roof and it got too expensive to build our retirement home on our land, so we sold the land at a good profit and started looking on the internet for small towns further north along the coast, that had homes we could afford.

In 2003, during the winter I found Eastport and the Spinnaker Realty site. The homes there were easily affordable, the city looked quaint, old and small. Just what we wanted. We contacted the realty company, had them send us information on the city as well as their listings. We picked out 6 listings that we wanted to see, made arrangements to fly to Bangor and rent a car. The real estate agent got us reservations at the Motel East and in March we flew up there.

We spent 6 days there checking out houses and driving around experiencing Eastport and fell in love with the city. We found a house that had been for sale and empty for over a year, they were asking 45K for it. Hubby being an electrician crawled up in the attic and saw all the old knob and tube wiring and the additional 100 AMP box in the basement. With our eyes wide open, we took note of all the repairs that would be needed, including one of the foundation walls, the crumbling chimney, hooved up corner of the porch, peeling wallpaper and crumbling plaster, broken water pipes and old boiler. We also took note of the beautiful staircase with Victorian newel posts (3 of them), the spaciousness of the rooms, the amount of land around the house, the layout of the rooms, etc. and made an offer that day of 33K noting all the stuff that needed replaced, fixed or altered.

That same evening we were sitting down to dinner at the only restaurant open on a Sunday evening when the real estate agent came in with a counter offer of 35K. People at the next table had just moved to Eastport from Arizona and bought us a congratulary drink on our purchase. We signed the papers that evening and the next day flew back to WV.

May 2003 - the house was signed, sealed and delivered to us. The keys had been mailed to us along with a list of repair people. We had the plumbing fixed, the roof checked for leaks, hired a contractor to meet us at a certain date at the house, rented a UHaul, filled it with furniture that we had in storage from my mothers house and headed for Eastport. We stayed a month doing repairs and tearing down wallpaper and broken plaster.

May 2004 - The contractor tore out the old kitchen and put up new drywall, tore off the old porch and front deck and replaced them, build a fence around the side of the house for the dogs and put in 10 new windows. I stayed until November getting everything done.

May 2005 - Another UHaul truck with our better furniture, paint, building supplies, lawn mower, that kind of stuff went up. We had the contractor redo the bathroom, one of the bedrooms and put in a downstairs potty room in the ell. I stayed until October painting and sanding and making new friends just like the year before.

May 2006 - Heating system was updated, chimney was rebuilt, broken concrete sidewalk on the side of the house was hauled away, trees were trimmed away from the house. Stayed again until October.

May 2007 - Took up another UHaul with more of our furniture, some of our antiques and some of our winter clothing. Contractor found a tin ceiling under the cardboard ceiling tiles in the foyer, got the foyer drywalled and the tin ceiling cleaned and painted and the foundation wall replaced. It's beautiful. Back in WV, our house has less furniture, making it easier to sell when it's time. Came back in September this year.

We redo a room or two a year, complete with new windows and new wiring, paint and while we have not done new flooring or replaced any of the flooring, we have painted the floors. The old knob and tube wiring is only in two bedrooms now, everything else has been replaced. We have a contract with the heating oil company to clean the boiler and replace the little washers every year as well as relighting the furnace if the power goes out.

We spend our winters planning what we will do the next summer down to the smallest detail. Since we change our minds a lot, we need to start doing this as soon as we get back to WV.

In 2008, another UHaul truck will be bringing our dining room furniture, our double door refrigator (bringing back Mother's smaller fridge to use here) and some french doors we found that were thrown out in a neighbor's trash, one of the bedroom suites and a few more antiques as well as boxes of decorations, clothes, lamps, sit around stuff. We will be tearing out the upstairs hallway, ceiling and walls and redrywalling that area as well as tearing out another bedroom and redoing it.

In 2009 we will be tearing off the painted paneling and drop ceilings in the living and dining rooms and redoing those rooms.

We will put this house on the market in January, 2010 and will be moving up there permanantly in the Spring.

If this house doesn't sell by the time we move, we have plans to rent it to one of hubby's relatives until it does sell. By that time, we will have two retirement plans and 1 social security plan going in the bank every month.

I don't know if this timeline will help anyone or not but for us, it's all in the planning and details. Everything thought out well in advance and everything possible taken into account. I know there will be some snags but they shouldn't be mountains of snags, more like molehills of snags. 10 years in the planning and only two more years to go.