Aroostook County, Maine home loans: financing homes for sale in Presque Isle, Caribou, Houlton and Fort Kent

People in Maine call Aroostook simply The County. It is the largest county in the state, about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island put together, with New Brunswick along its eastern edge and Quebec to the north and west. Farm fields roll across the middle of it, the North Maine Woods cover much of the west, and almost all of Maine's potatoes are grown here. A good part of the county has no town government at all, just numbered townships, which matters when you buy land or a camp there.

If you are searching homes for sale in Aroostook County Maine, houses for sale in Aroostook County Maine or Aroostook County Maine real estate in general, I can finance what you find. You will see prices and property types you won't see farther south: old farmhouses with big barns, village homes within walking distance of Main Street, and lake camps a long way from the nearest pavement.

Presque Isle is the largest city in The County and the place most people drive to for shopping, the hospital and the airport. The University of Maine at Presque Isle is here, and just south of the city is Aroostook State Park, the first state park in Maine, with Echo Lake at the foot of Quaggy Jo Mountain. Homes for sale in Presque Isle Maine run from neighborhoods near the university to houses on a few acres off the back roads.

Caribou sits a few miles north on the Aroostook River, the same river that winds through Presque Isle. The National Weather Service office for northern Maine is in Caribou, and its long term records put average snowfall there at close to ten feet a season. Anyone looking at homes for sale in Caribou Maine, or houses for sale in Caribou Maine on a few acres, should treat heating, insulation and the roof as part of the price, not an afterthought.

Northeast of Caribou, Limestone was home to Loring Air Force Base for about four decades. The base closed in September 1994. Most of the land became the Loring Commerce Centre, an industrial and aviation park, and about 4,700 acres became the Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge in 1998. Plenty of people who served at Loring, and plenty of veterans who grew up nearby, still look at homes in Limestone, Caribou and Fort Fairfield. If that is you, a VA loan is worth a close look.

Houlton is the county seat, which is why locals call it the Shiretown. Interstate 95 ends here at the border crossing into Woodstock, New Brunswick, so Houlton is the easiest part of The County to reach from Bangor. Its downtown, Market Square, is a historic district of brick commercial blocks, and The Temple, a movie theater built in 1919, still shows films there. Southern Aroostook also takes in Hodgdon, Island Falls, Oakfield and the farm towns along Route 1 north to Mars Hill.

US Route 1 starts in Fort Kent, at a monument overlooking the St. John River, and runs all the way to Key West. The town is home to the University of Maine at Fort Kent and to a log blockhouse built during the Aroostook War, the bloodless border dispute of 1838 and 1839. Fort Kent, Madawaska, Frenchville, Van Buren and the other valley towns share a strong Acadian and French heritage, and you will hear French at the post office. Madawaska looks straight across the river at Edmundston. Homes for sale in Fort Kent Maine tend to be older village houses near the river and newer places on the hills above it.

South of the valley, Long Lake, Mud Lake, Cross Lake, Square Lake and Eagle Lake form the Fish River chain, and the water leaves Eagle Lake by the Fish River and reaches the St. John at Fort Kent. Long Lake runs south from St. Agatha, and Route 162 follows its west shore past year round houses and camps. Portage Lake and St. Froid Lake feed the same river from the west. If you have been scrolling Maine lake houses for sale or lakefront homes for sale in Maine and keep landing on Long Lake or Cross Lake, this section is for you.

One thing catches buyers off guard on these lakes. A large number of camps on Long, Cross and Square Lakes sit on lots that are leased or licensed from the timberland owner rather than owned outright. A camp on a leased lot can sometimes be financed, but only when the lease itself meets the loan program's rules, so I read the lease before anything else. My leased land home loans page explains what I look for.

My name is Travis Penny. I'm licensed as a mortgage broker in Maine and Florida, I compare several lenders for each buyer instead of selling one bank's products, and I stay on your file myself from the first call to the closing table. I started in 2004 and I'm still here.

Most of my Aroostook buyers want a primary residence, which opens up the widest set of programs. Depending on you and the house, I compare conventional financing with an FHA loan in Maine, a Maine VA loan if you have served, and a USDA loan when the exact address and your household income both fit that program's rules. USDA guidelines do not require a down payment for eligible buyers. If you have never owned a home before, my Maine first time home buyer guide walks through the steps. Not everyone will qualify.

A house in The County has to be ready for months of hard cold, and lenders look at that too. Standard guidelines expect a permanent heat source that keeps the whole house, including the plumbing, above freezing. Oil, propane, heat pumps, pellets and wood all show up in listings up here. A house that relies only on a wood stove can work in some cases, but some programs ask more questions or want a second heat source, so tell me how the house is heated before you write an offer.

Before you buy, ask the seller for a year of fuel delivery records or electric bills and the age of the furnace or boiler. That gives you a real number for the winter budget, and the inspection can then tell you what is left in the system.

Outside Presque Isle, Caribou, Houlton and a few other town centers, most homes run on a private well and a septic system. Lenders may ask for a water test, so plan for one. Find out where the septic tank and leach field are, when the tank was last pumped and whether there is a design on file. In Maine that design is usually an HHE 200 form, and it matters even more if you plan to build.

Many rural homes and nearly all lake camps up here sit off a private road. A home on a road that is maintained and plowed all winter usually finances like any other house. Expect the lender to ask who keeps the road up and who pays to plow it, so ask the seller early for any road agreement or association paperwork. Some camps are reached over roads owned by timber companies, and those can have gates, fees or seasonal limits. A place on a seasonal road, or one you can only reach by boat or by snowmobile in winter, is harder to finance and depends on the lender and the appraisal. Send me the address and I'll check it.

In the unorganized townships and in many plantations, zoning and building permits come from the state Land Use Planning Commission, not a town office. The commission has an office in Ashland that covers most of Aroostook. If you are buying a camp or a lot in a numbered township, ask the seller which permits are on file for the house, the septic and any additions, and if you plan to build, expect to work with the commission rather than a local code officer.

Aroostook has a lot of farms for sale, and how a lender sees one depends on how you will use it. A farmhouse with land, a barn and a big garden that you live in is a home, and a regular mortgage can cover it. A working potato or grain operation that earns a living is a farm business and needs an agricultural lender, which I do not arrange. Large acreage can also limit how much the appraiser credits, because extra fields may add little to the value. Much of the farmland and woodland up here is enrolled in Maine's Farmland or Tree Growth tax programs, so ask how the land is enrolled before you change its use. My Maine farm and hobby farm loans page goes into the details.

If you are looking at land for sale in Aroostook County Maine, it is often cheap enough that building looks better than buying an older house. With a Maine one time close construction loan, the lot, the build and the long term mortgage close together once. For a home you will live in, I compare FHA, VA, USDA one time close construction and conventional options. The conventional version also works for a second home or a rental, though attached condos are excluded, and the VA version is only for your primary residence. You will need an approved builder; these programs don't let you act as your own general contractor. A standalone loan on raw land you have no plan to build on is a different thing, and I explain that on my land loans in Maine page. Not everyone will qualify.

If you live elsewhere in Maine, or you grew up here and moved away, a camp on Long Lake, Portage Lake or one of the smaller ponds can be financed as a second home when it fits. That means a single unit place your household actually uses for part of the year. Renting it out for a few weeks while you are gone usually works; handing the calendar to a rental manager does not. Rent you hope to collect on a second home generally can't be used to qualify, so the payment has to work on your own income.

A camp built for summer only, with no heat and water lines that get drained every fall, is hard to place in a standard loan. Wells, lake water lines and shoreland rules for camps are covered in my camp and lake house financing guide.

The County has thousands of miles of snowmobile and ATV trails, and some buyers want a place to rent to riders and summer visitors. If renting most of the year is the plan, I treat it as an investment property. That usually means a larger down payment, and with some programs the rent can help you qualify. A DSCR loan is one route; DSCR is for investment property only, I offer it in 38 states, and my DSCR investor loans page explains it. Check the town's rules on short term rentals first.

The St. John, Fish and Aroostook Rivers all run high in spring. In the spring of 2008 the St. John set a record at Fort Kent, and the levee there held while more than a hundred homes and businesses outside it took water. If the house is on low ground near any of these rivers, look it up on the flood map before you offer. When a home is in a FEMA special flood hazard area, the lender will require flood insurance, and the premium becomes part of your monthly cost, so get a quote for that address early.

Sales are spread thin across a county this big. For a farmhouse on forty acres, a camp in a township or a house in a small valley town, the appraiser may need to use sales from several towns away. That can add some time to the loan, but it seldom stops one, and I plan for it from the start.

If you own the home you live in, in Maine or Florida, its equity can help you buy up here. A Maine HELOC, a Florida HELOC or a fixed home equity loan can cover a down payment, buy a lot outright or, on a modest camp, pay the whole price. I'll set that side by side with a regular mortgage so you can compare. Not everyone will qualify.

A lot of my calls about The County come from people who grew up in Presque Isle, Caribou or the valley and want to come back, or from out of state buyers who fell for the lakes. The whole loan can be handled by phone, text and email. The house has to be in Maine, since my licenses cover Maine and Florida only, so a place across the river in New Brunswick won't work. For second homes elsewhere in the state, see my vacation home financing guide, and if you are looking farther south toward Bangor, see my Bangor home loans page.

• The listing link or the street address
• Whether you will live there, use it part of the year, rent it most of the time, or build
• The road: town road, private road with an association, logging road, or seasonal
• How the house is heated and whether it has a well and septic
• For land or a farm: total acres, buildings, and whether any income comes off the land
• Your down payment and where it is coming from
• Recent pay stubs and tax returns, or a short note on how you are paid if you are self employed

From there I'll tell you which loan fits and anything I think could slow down the appraisal. If you already have a house picked out, contact me.