The students in Nicole DiGeronimo’s first-time homebuyer classes are increasingly older with a little more money saved up. They still can’t buy a home in Maine.
“These are people that probably never anticipated it would be so difficult to purchase a home,” DiGeronimo, who directs Avesta Housing’s homeownership center, said.
These homebuying hopefuls, often aged between 30 and 40 and making well over their area’s median income, represent the “missing middle.” They earn too much to live in income-restricted rental housing but can’t compete in the real estate market that has been overheated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
… The Portland-based nonprofit group that is also northern New England’s biggest affordable housing provider will begin creating homeownership options geared toward middle-income earners. Avesta is in touch with towns as far away as Machias about offering condos and other properties for sale.
