PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Speakers at a conference for more than 600 Maine real estate professionals say the state’s real estate industry is slowly recovering from the recession and showing some bright spots, but will continue to face challenges this year.
Karen Rich, a commercial broker at Cardente Real Estate in Portland, said at Thursday’s conference that the worst is over.
But Charles Colgan, an economic forecaster from the University of Southern Maine, tempered her remarks and said home prices and real incomes continue to decline and will keep the market from improving significantly before 2013.
Maine Today Media reports that Rich says the Portland area’s retail vacancy rate, which peaked at nearly 11 percent in 2009, is falling. The rate last year was just above 6 percent.
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Information from: Portland Press Herald, http://preprod.pressherald.com
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