Maine’s housing market has favored sellers for the last five years, but this summer and early fall, promising numbers from the Maine Association of Realtors hinted that things could finally be turning around for hopeful buyers.

October’s report squashed that hope.

Here are four takeaways.

Prices hit another record high

Last month, the median single-family home in Maine sold for $426,000 — a record high for the state and the first increase after a four-month slide.

The median is the price at which half of homes sold for more and half sold for less.

While it’s just $1,000 more than the previous record set in May (and maintained in June), it’s a particularly bitter pill for prospective buyers who may have been watching sales figures starting to trend downward.

The $426,000 median represents a roughly 8% increase from October 2024 and an almost 6% increase from September’s $402,500.

The median sale price in Maine has been over $400,000 since April.

Nationally, prices rose just over 2% to a median of $420,600, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Regionally, prices in the Northeast jumped 6.5% to $503,700.

The pandemic bubble has not burst

Home sales this year have been a rollercoaster. In March, the state marked its first year-over-year price decrease after six years of relentless increases.

When prices dropped in March, real estate agents cautioned against drawing conclusions from one month of data — and they were right. Prices hit a record high two months later.

But this summer and early fall, it looked like things might really be changing. In June, the median was $425,000. Then it was $419,950, then $409,450.

In September, the median price started to creep back toward the upper $300,000s with a median of $402,500.

And then we hit October — and the slide ceased.

Like prices, sales also increased last month, with 1,651 homes changing hands, an almost 11% jump from last October.

Inventory could be falling again

For much of this year, Harris, the association president, has touted a steady increase in the number of homes on the market. That also stopped last month.

“Buyers were active in October with sales outpacing the number of new listings for the month,” said Harris, who is also a broker affiliated with Harris Real Estate in Farmington.

The number of homes on the market exceeded the October 2024 listings, but represented a 7.6% dip from this September.

“This is the first decrease of homes on the market since February,” he said.

For-sale inventory could drop further as Maine’s real estate market enters its winter slowdown.

Harris encouraged prospective sellers to list their homes, “as for-sale inventory tends to be at its lowest point during the Maine winter months. Market conditions remain strong.”

Trends inconsistent across the state

The Maine Association of Realtors also looks at three months of data in county-by-county comparisons to get a larger sample size of sale transactions.

From Aug. 1 through Oct. 31, the median sale price in Maine was $415,000, an almost 4% increase from the same span the year before, while the number of sales increased almost 9%.

But both prices and sales varied widely between counties.

Prices fell in five counties and remained flat in Somerset County. Lincoln County saw the sharpest price drop, with a 9% decrease from $520,000 to $471,500.

Prices in Washington County rose the most, increasing almost 24% to $282,500.

Aroostook County, with a 5% decrease to $166,325 was the only county with a median sale price below $200,000.

On the flip side, Cumberland County remained the most expensive county in the state, with a $608,000 median.

While Lincoln County saw the highest price drop, it also saw the largest increase in number of sales, which rose 22% from 136 to 166.

Sales remained flat in Androscoggin County. No counties saw a decrease.