Everyone says they want to buy a house, but can’t. Then again, everyone says a lot of things.

What they really mean is they won’t. They’re demanding that they be allowed to purchase a very elaborate, large, new or newly re-minted, plastic palace in exactly the high-rent metropolitan area they prefer, and at a rock bottom price at that. Yes, we get it. You’d like to live in San Francisco and pay 1970s prices. Good luck waiting for that. You’ll get 1970s crime and squalor, and like it.

Things are changing somewhat, though. We’re entering familiar territory for yours truly. I warned people during the Great Recession that the real estate market would bifurcate. Regular houses would keep selling for regular money to regular buyers, if slowly. Oddball stuff would get gobbled up by real estate Legrees and disreputable flippers and would eventually be sold for regular money to regular buyers again. You’ll end up with nothing if you wait for prices on regular houses to implode.

Well, that all happened. It’s probably happening again now. Interest rates are considered high again. That is, if you weren’t alive in 1980 and don’t have a library card. Sales are down, and the market doesn’t totally consist of Shirk Brothers Realty telling you to write them a check for $5,000 before they change their mind and wait ten minutes to get offers 20% over list. You’re going to wait until a ranch house in Boston is $150,000 again, and then pounce, right?

Wrong. Here’s the National Association of Realtors telling you like it is:

The National Association of Realtors reported a sales price uptick of 2.9 percent nationally last month to $408,000, while sales eased 2.2 percent compared to March of 2024. Regionally, sales figures in the Northeast for March 2025 remained unchanged from March a year ago while the MSP jumped 7.7 percent to $468,000.

So waiting isn’t helping. What to do?

No worries. Staying out of hot real estate markets is the smart play, anyway. If you want a house, go to overlooked places and buy one for cheap, renovate it yourself, and live in it. And maybe sell it later, and move where you want to with your ill-gotten gains.

Here’s where the burgeoning bifurcation I mentioned will help you. There is always a market for houses that have dropped out of the mortgage world. You’ll find out what a structure is really worth when no bank will write a 30-year-fixed for it. The short, cash only answer is: Not Much. Fifteen years ago, repairable wrecks were everywhere in Maine. I bought one. Then the rest slowly disappeared down the flipper rathole. But I can smell it on the breeze again. Houses are appearing on the realty pages again that you could afford, and you could live in while you fixed them.

How about this one in Gardiner, Maine?

I live really close to Gardiner. It’s part of a pleasant strip of towns named the Augusta Micropolitan something or other. There’s about four or five towns in a row along the Kennebec river that sane people wouldn’t mind living in. Gardiner has a small population, maybe 6,000 souls. It punches above its weight class, though. There’s a real downtown lined with handsome brick buildings with twee shops and restaurants in ’em. There are major retailers of all kinds nearby. The state capital is a ten-minute drive. There is no crime in Gardiner to speak of, even by Maine standards, which is about the lowest in the nation.

It’s a 3-bed, 2-bath vinyl-sided mess, but it’s currently only $66,900. If you wait a few minutes, it will disappear, or be even lower. That’s what happens when a house isn’t mortgageable anymore. Let’s take a look at the Price History, a wonderful place to discover properties like this one:

Hmm. Bit of a gap there between 1870 and 2025. But six price drops since it was listed on March 25th? They can’t get rid of it, and they know it. In my (recent) experience, right around 100 grand is the cut-off point for regular mortgages. People will buy houses with borrowed money, but there are precious few who will buy it with money in their hand. The realtor took a shot at around 100 large, and gave up pretty quick. They’ll keep hacking at the number until somebody jumps. The house has to be sold, and it shows.

I’ve never been to this house, and I’m not interested in going. But I’ll offer my ill-considered but somehow dispositive opinions on why you could buy this place, and make a go of it, based on the info in the listing. So come back tomorrow. Wear sturdy footwear.

[To be continued]