Well, just checking in with the “I can’t afford a house” crowd. I’m sure you’re living in a cardboard box behind a dumpster right now, but it’s got good wifi, so you don’t mind. You’re waiting out the market. In many ways, it’s a sound strategy. Prices for houses are slipping right now. If you wait long enough, I’m sure you’ll be able to buy that 4,000 ft2 Midcentury Modern house in perfect condtion in downtown San Francisco you’re imagining, as long as it’s priced at around $150,000, with nothing down, and a thirty year fixed mortgage with a negative interest rate that pays you to live there. Those happy days are bound to be just around the corner.

Or maybe not. I’m not sure you’re going to enjoy shuffling out to the mailbox to pick up both your Social Security check and your mother’s at the same time, because you’re still living in her basement. So maybe I can help. I’ll find you a house you can maybe afford to live in. You’ll have to live in Maine. I do. I can assure you it’s not all that difficult to chip the ice off the well in February to fill your Keurig. The bull moose are very friendly in rutting season, and you can walk right up to them and pat them on the nose. Well, that’s what I tell people from Massachusetts, anyway. In any case, Maine has everything from lobsters to maple syrup. While I’m not suggesting that you combine those two, you can use them with the other items we have in abundance. You just might be happy in Maine, who knows?

So you’re going to need a house, because tenting is a bit of a challenge for about seven months a year. And to get back to the topic at hand, you’re going to need a cheap house. How about this one, in Rockland, Maine?

Sorry for the fuzzy wuzzy images. The town “tax-acquired” this house. That means the real estate agent won’t even get out of his car to take pictures. They probably don’t even have keys to get in. But this is Maine, so I figure all the windows and doors are unlocked anyway. If he wanted in, he would have gotten in. The realtor knows he isn’t even going to make a car payment on the sale, so he might not have even stopped, just rolled down the window and rolled past slow enough to take these pictures. So we’ll have to guess about the inside. The price? $39,000. I’ll guess it’s a wreck.

Now, what do you get for about the cost of a Hermès Shiny Porosus Crocodile Birkin handbag? Well, it’s a two-bed, one-bath, 1,262 sq foot Cape Cod house on about a quarter of an acre. Built in 1850, and abused some since then. It’s probably some kind of disaster inside, but it looks fairly solid for how old it is. It’s got a new roof, and new-ish windows and doors in most of the openings.

It’s got a little addition on the side that probably was a summer kitchen, or a pigpen, or both way back in the day. It could use some window glass. I have no idea if the Seadoo conveys, but I’ll bet it does. If you’re crazy enough to go into the Atlantic Ocean in Rockland, I’m sure they’ll let you do it.

Those are asbestos sidewall shingles on the house. They were probably added around World War II. They were the eco-friendly never needs maintenance wonders that preceded aluminum, and then vinyl siding. They’re fairly indestructible, and you can paint them pretty easily, so you can roll with them if you want to. If you wanted to take them off, you’re allowed to do it yourself if you’re the homeowner, or you can hire it out. Probably cost about 15 grand if you hire it out. Asbestos is treated like toxic waste. However, asbestos shingles are like concrete. If you remove them carefully, and they don’t crumble, patting strange cats is more dangerous. And the wood siding underneath is probably fine, anyway. Just peeling paint, and a lot of nailholes from tacking the shingles over it.

The house has town water and sewer, so there’s not likely to be any five-figure problems lurking underground. There’s an electric meter on the house, so you could probably have running water, a flushing toilet, and lights burning inside the house on day one with a few phone call’s-worth of work. Real estate taxes in Rockland aren’t cheap exactly, but they’re not the end of the world, maybe $1000 a year per $100,000 of valuation. And speaking of the end of the world, Rockland is near the end of the US world, so there will be no HOA fees or anything. You could do what you like with the place. And you know — live in it.

Rockland is fairly nice, actually. It has US Route 1 wending it’s way through it, so it’s not off the beaten path’s beaten path. About 7,000 people, a cute little brick downtown, a lot of artsy fartsy stuff to do in the vicinity, and various seafaring things like lighthouses and ferry boats and so forth.

So there you go. Financially, it’s a Hyundai with a lawn out front. Downeast Maine is about the safest place in the country. There’s things to do, and you might even be able to find a job around there if you’re not drooling on yourself when you apply. Or even if you are drooling, if you work for the asbestos abatement company.

Buy this house! But remember to bring tools, and a certain lack of judgment. The lack of judgment isn’t mandatory, of course, but it is helpful.