Fewer Maine homes sold last month than in January 2025, but they sold for higher prices, kicking off the year with a familiar, if slow, pattern after an unpredictable market in 2025.

Data released Thursday by the Maine Association of Realtors suggests things may not all be doom and gloom for home-buying hopefuls, though.

Here are three takeaways from the January sales report.

A SLOW START

Just 778 single-family homes changed hands last month, a roughly 9.5% decrease from January 2025.

The sales were lower this year despite more homes hitting the market. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, there were 3,769 Maine homes for sale last month, compared to 3,044 a year before.

Tepid figures aren’t unusual for January, which is typically one of the slowest months for Maine’s seasonally-driven housing market. But this year was particularly quiet, thanks to poor weather and lingering economic uncertainty following the record-long federal government shutdown in the latter part of last year, according to Judy Oberg, president of the Maine Association of Realtors.

“This January has been the coldest in years, with above normal snowfall, which has also impacted buyer and seller activity,” said Oberg, who is also an associate broker at Oberg Insurance and Real Estate Agency in Bridgton.

Maine’s numbers mirror the national trend.

Sales decreased more than 4% nationally compared to January 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the national association, said the decrease is disappointing.

“The below-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation this January make it harder than usual to assess the underlying driver of the decrease and determine if this month’s numbers are an aberration,” he said.

PRICES MAY BE SOFTENING

Prices rose again last month, but just barely. The median home sale price in Maine was $389,000, a 0.65% increase from last January. The median means that half the homes sold for more while half sold for less.

The less than 1% increase and sub-$400,000 median is a welcome sign after record-high prices last year, and could point to a more buyer-friendly 2026.

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.

Sales between Nov. 1, 2025, and Jan. 31, 2026, show even slower price growth, with just a 0.23% increase from the same period the year before.

Prices decreased in eight of Maine’s 16 counties during that time frame, with flat sales in another two.

Knox County saw the greatest price decrease (15.8%), dropping from a median of $475,000 to $400,000. Sale prices were stable in Kennebec and York counties.

GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS

Yun, at the National Association of Realtors, said housing affordability is the best its been since March 2022, according to the organization’s Housing Affordability Index.

That’s not based on prices alone, but rather on “wage gains outpacing home price growth and mortgage rates being lower than a year ago,” he said.

However, the affordability can’t improve much more until supply also increases.

The median — both the $389,000 for Maine and $400,300 nationally — is the highest January sale price on record, which may dampen some of the optimism brought on by the increased affordability.

However, Yun said that’s good news for homeowners.

“Since January 2020, a typical homeowner would have accumulated $130,500 in housing wealth,” he said.