BETHEL — The asking price for the West Bethel post office is $115,000. It is a deal, if you are ok with the post office boxes in your home’s front entrance, the lettering on the front of the building and many other post office-specific attributes.

First time home buyers in the Bethel area face a housing market with few affordable listings and much competition. As in many places across the country, they face older ‘boomer’ buyers who sometimes waive inspections and pay cash.  Also, said Justine Pittman, there are investors who buy a home then turn it into an Airbnb the following day.

Additionally, buying with an FHA (Federal Housing Authority), VA (Veteran’s Administration), RD (Rural Development) or another first-time home buyer loan comes with restrictions. Most of the requirements are meant to keep the buyers “safe, secure and sturdy enough to live in the home.” But often the repair costs are prohibitive.

“It’s actually more complicated than just finding something. For someone like myself, the type of loan I would get requires a lot of inspections and the house needs to be in livable condition. A lot of things in the price point I can afford don’t check off those boxes… so there is really nothing, because maybe it has no heating system [or is missing another loan qualifier].

“Unless you purchased a home a long time ago, there’s no where to live. That tends to be older people, not people my age,” said Pittman.

Don Lawrence, of Bethel, a long-term rental landlord, sold a trailer home to first-time home buyers in West Paris. He said “yes it can be done”  but often the buyer needs to jump through hoops. The loan representative, in this case, insisted that the skirting around the trailer be insulated.

“If the trailer manufacturer wanted that skirting insulated they wouldn’t have put vented skirting on it. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me … That was a waste of $570 of insulation board because it accomplished absolutely nothing,” he said. “They (the new owners) needed all kinds of craziness done. Stuff that we didn’t think that made any sense at all, in order to get it qualified.” The buyers had had other homes fall through and were eager to jump through whatever hoops they needed to, said Lawrence.

Engineered weather tie downs are also required. “I’ve never seen a tornado go through here strong enough to move a mobile home,” said Lawrence.

Area towns

Speaking at the short-term rental ordinance meeting on Feb. 21 in Bethel, Mahoosuc Realty owner Rick Savage, talked about what is for sale in this area. “Our affordable housing market is basically the surrounding towns [around Bethel]. Can anyone afford to live on Main Street? No. [You] can you afford West Paris, Woodstock. I recently bought a house in Bryant Pond for a couple hundred thousand dollars so my clients could stay there while I was building their house.”

In the towns surrounding Bethel – West Paris, Woodstock, Bryant Pond, Hanover, Gilead, Andover, Newry, Albany and Greenwood – the search for a house for “a couple hundred thousand dollars” proves difficult.

Of the 42 listings, seven are in the “couple hundred thousand” dollar range. Of these, one is a Woodstock camp with a snowy unplowed winter road, another in west Paris has a visibly leaky roof, a third has peeling paint and borders a junkyard full of cars. Many are short sales, making first time home buyer loans difficult. Except for the West Bethel Post Office, there are no homes in Bethel in the couple hundred thousand dollar range.

“You don’t want to discourage people from buying second homes. But how do you fix it for the locals?” queried Jarrod Crockett, homeowner and long-term rental landlord. “I’ve wrestled with this … you really want everybody to own their own home – in a perfect world. It makes them all taxpayers so they are all vested in their community, it gives them hope for the future. You want to build something for your family. Everybody shares a common dream. People live in Maine because they strive for independence … but where’s the balance?” he asked.

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