Rental properties in Lewiston Maine

[Joshua Goston]

I’m looking for opinions on buying rental properties in Lewiston Maine. Anybody have any knowledge they’d like to share on the current market there, or future predictions?

[Carl Hebert]

@Harrison Smith thanks for the kind words!

@Joshua Goston and @Brian Mitchell I have to agree with a lot of what @Jeremy A. says. Here is some info I gave Harrison and I will share with you:

 As you may of guessed L/A is a bit different from the rest of southern and central Maine.

There are some areas that are simple to avoid in both Lewiston and Auburn unless you like that type of property.

In Lewiston the biggest area to avoid would be pretty much everything inside the area that starts at the river, go up Main St. to Sabattus st, then to Webster, follow Webster to East Ave and then back to Lisbon st. draw a dotted line back to the river. Follow river back to Main st.

There are a couple of neighborhoods adjacent to that area that are hit or miss.

Auburn the area I avoid is to start at the corner of Court St and Goff St go along Goff to Dennison St, Dennison to Whitney, Whitney to Center/Turner St back to Court St. Not quite as bad as the Lewiston area but still pretty bad.

Same as Lewiston but not to the same degree with adjacent areas being hit or miss.

I do not see the market here doing anything like it has in the southern part of the state. Especially with multi's. The problem here with multi-families is the age of the product, most are 80+ years old and have not been treated kindly.

The plus side to this area is the rents have been climbing due to a shortage of units. A 3br goes for 1000+ even in bad condition. This is probably because of immigration and the city of Lewiston with their aggressive removal of apartment buildings (averaging around 20 buildings a year).

There was an article in the paper(sun journal) about Lewiston and the proposed rental registration fees. I do not have a link but it had some interesting info in it. Came out last month (Sept).

Jeremy hit it on the head about the crime, it is not bad as far as nationwide, but is seen as bad when compared to just Maine. 

For a little insight Lewiston was named 7th safest city out of 180 nationwide with Portland coming in 9th!

As for renters, I highly recommend doing a background check and credit check, charge the applicants the fee when they fill out the application. I put that info about checking them right in the ad and it really helps eliminate a lot of wasted time weeding out folks.

Hit me up if you have any properties you are curious about, I live in the area and own 6 buildings/18 units here.