Homeowners
Your home is your castle.Let's keep it that way.
Nearly three in four Maine households own their home, one of the highest shares in the country. For most families it's the biggest thing they will ever own. We stand for the right to your own property, property taxes you can plan on, and a fair process when government comes calling.
Of Maine households own their home, the 4th-highest share among the states. Nationally it's about 65 percent.
Maine's median single-family sale price in 2025, up 35 percent from $299,000 in 2021.
The average 30-year mortgage rate in 2025. In 2021 it was under 3 percent.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, tenure by state (B25003); U.S. Census Bureau, Housing Vacancy Survey, 2025 homeownership rates by state (table 15); Maine Association of Realtors, housing report, December 2022 (full-year 2021 median); Maine Association of Realtors, calendar year 2025 housing report; Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed rate, annual averages (via FRED)
Your property, your rights
Rights older than the state.
Maine's Constitution opens with them. All people, it says, have “certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property.” It secures our “houses, papers and possessions from all unreasonable searches and seizures,” and it says private property “shall not be taken for public uses without just compensation.”
The idea is older than the country. In 1604 an English court put it this way: “the house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose.” The Supreme Court of the United States quoted those words in 1999.
Maine's trespass law protects homes and posted land. In 2023 a bill in Augusta, LD 1949, would have made being homeless and seeking shelter a defense to a charge of criminal trespass, including for entering someone's home or staying after the owner said to leave. It would not have legalized camping, but it had no exception for an owner who said no. Its sponsor withdrew it before any vote. It shouldn't come back.
Getting people off the street and into treatment is part of our work. Opening a family's home or land to strangers without the owner's consent is not the way to do it.
Sources: Constitution of Maine, Article I, sections 1, 5 and 21; Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603 (1999), quoting Semayne's Case (1604); Maine Legislature, LD 1949 (2023), text and status (leave to withdraw, May 25, 2023); LD 1949 as printed, May 16, 2023; 17-A M.R.S. §402, criminal trespass
Property taxes
A tax bill you can plan on.
How much Maine's property tax levies rose from 2019 to 2024, a little faster than inflation, with the steepest increases in more than a decade in 2023 and 2024.
The average rise in Portland's residential values in its 2025 revaluation. Values left to sit for years turn ordinary market changes into sudden jumps.
Maine's homestead exemption, unchanged since 2020. A bill to raise it step by step died in April 2026.
Maine's senior property tax freeze ended after the tax year that began April 1, 2023, and a 2025 bill to bring it back failed. The state's deferral program still lets owners 65 or older, or unable to work because of a disability, with incomes under $80,000 and limited savings, put off the tax until the home is sold. A legislative task force on property tax relief reports by December 15.
Sources: Maine Revenue Services, Municipal Valuation Return statistical summaries, 2012 to 2024 (our calculations); Portland Press Herald, August 28, 2025 (Portland's 2025 revaluation); 36 M.R.S. §683, the homestead exemption; Maine Legislature, LD 140 (2025), to raise the homestead exemption step by step (died April 29, 2026); 36 M.R.S. §6281, the senior property tax stabilization (tax year beginning April 1, 2023 only); Maine Legislature, LD 1144 (2025), to reinstate the stabilization program (ought not to pass); 36 M.R.S. §6251, the State Property Tax Deferral Program; Resolves 2025, chapter 108, the Real Estate Property Tax Relief Task Force (final report due December 15, 2026)
What owning costs
The same house costs more to keep.
Maine's approved homeowners insurance rate increases, compounded, from 2022 through 2025: 10 percent in 2023 and 12.8 percent in 2024 alone (our calculation).
A month in principal and interest on a $300,000 mortgage at 2025's average rate. At 2021's, it was $1,258 (our calculation).
How much more Maine's average heating oil cost in the winter of 2025-26 than in 2020-21, an unusually cheap winter. Against 2018-19, it's up 24 percent (our calculation).
Your Bill puts it all on one receipt for your town, every line beside what it was in 2021: taxes on pay, the mortgage and the property tax, water and sewer, power and heat.
Sources: Maine Bureau of Insurance, average approved homeowners rate changes, 2015 to 2024; Maine Bureau of Insurance, 2025 consumer recoveries release, March 31, 2026 (2025 rate changes); Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed rate, annual averages (via FRED); U.S. Energy Information Administration, weekly Maine No. 2 heating oil residential price (our heating-season averages)
What we'd do
Protect the home.
Keep trespass law whole.
No defense for entering someone's home or staying on posted land against the owner's wishes. Help people off the street with shelter and treatment, not with other people's property.
A real limit, with the voters in charge.
Let each town's levy grow with inflation and new construction, and send anything more to the town's voters. Cover the county tax too.
Pay when you sell.
Open the state's deferral program to every Mainer with a homestead exemption, for the part of each year's increase above inflation, repaid from the sale or the estate. No one should lose a home to a tax on a gain that exists only on paper.
The state pays for what it requires.
Reimburse towns in full for the homestead exemption, so its cost stops landing on everyone else's bill, and pay the real cost of county jails.
Values kept current.
Help towns update values every few years, so change comes in steps instead of a shock, and let an owner spread a sudden jump over three years.
Build on your own land.
Hold the start of the 2025 housing law to July 1, 2027, so owners can add an accessory apartment or a second home on their lot without a zoning fight.
Sources: Public Law 2021, chapter 672 (LD 2003); Public Law 2025, chapter 385 (LD 1829); Public Law 2025, chapter 733 (LD 2173)
Owning a home is the American dream. Keeping it shouldn't take a fight.
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