Waterboro Town Affected By Rising Foreclosures

The Waterboro’s housing market is one of the worst troubled areas of the state due to rising number of foreclosures. It is a symptom of the troubled economy in rural Maine.

Waterboro has some of the modest cape and ranch-style homes set amidst the snow-clad pines and the winding shores of Lake Arrowhead. It is one of the epitomes of affordable country living. But now, the place faces a gnawing trouble. This rural York County community is one of the most distressed housing markets in Maine.

Now, one can only find “For Sale” signboards hanging in the unplowed yards at a few vacant homes. There are also some small orange tags on the front door of vacant house which signals that, some lender has shut off power and drained the water pipes for the resident living there.

Since October, 85 homes in Waterboro have been sold, listed for sale or put under contract. While some twenty-eight of them or roughly 33 percent are owned by a bank or are listed for less money than their sellers owe on mortgages.

The nation’s growing foreclosure crisis is not only seen in urban areas but true rural areas like Maine too. The state has qualified 15 communities for new federal money to buy and redevelop properties that might otherwise be abandoned and values of the property may go down.

Waterboro is located away from an urban service center. Even then, the experts say that Waterboro’s will be affected by foreclosures in cities where there have been maximum lay offs in jobs, high commuting costs and high amount of debt forcing people to sell their homes.

Dale McCormick, who heads the Maine State Housing Authority, said "It very much jibes with what we know about sprawl and the cost of sprawl."

When the value of the home was rising, families flocked to the outskirts of suburbia in search of cheaper homes and open space. McCormick said that, the other reasons were high gasoline prices and an economic recession. She added that, there has been a huge affordable housing problem in Maine.

Waterboro is among the 15 communities to share $19.6 million in federal money from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The funds have been for the places with high foreclosure rates and an elevated risk of property being abandoned. Some of the properties which have topped the list in Maine are Sanford, Lewiston, Portland and Bangor.

Waterboro is at the bottom of this list. But according to the Maine Office of Community Development the number of past foreclosures, geographic density and the risk of future foreclosures, the ranking of this town with 7,000 residents is more than triple the state average.

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