The Wall Street Journal recently featured a look at the changing landscape of New England's luxury real estate market, focusing on significant family properties coming to market after decades, and in some cases generations, of family ownership. The piece includes insight from Chris Lynch, president of Legacy Properties Sotheby's International Realty, on what is driving this shift along the Maine coast.
In "These Great Family Estates Are Turning the Page," the feature examines the generational and economic factors prompting longtime owners to consider selling, including the rising costs of maintaining expansive homes and properties as family circumstances change. It also considers a new generation of buyers, many younger than those who have traditionally purchased these estates, who are looking to recreate the experiences they remember from childhood with their own families.
The story offers a particularly relevant perspective on Maine, where a high share of coastal properties have been seasonal homes since the late 1800s and early 1900s. Lynch speaks to that long history and the changes now shaping these properties' future.
"Maine has a long history of multigenerational properties," Lynch says, noting that "some of those properties are still in family hands, and have been for over 100 years."
Lynch also describes a shift among today's buyers. Where buyers in recent decades were often freshly retired executives in their late fifties through seventies, he says today's buyers tend to be in their forties to mid fifties and are often bringing their children with them. "They're craving that experience for themselves," he says. "They're looking to repeat the incredible experiences they had as children."
For longtime family properties, the transition can mark the end of one chapter while opening the door to another. As Lynch notes of the estates coming to market, "What they also have in common is they're in staggeringly beautiful locations," with much of their value found in "the land, the view, the frontage, the crashing surf, the quiet coves, the bird life and fishing."
It is a fitting reminder of what continues to distinguish Maine's legacy properties, and why generation after generation of buyers return to recreate a piece of that history for their own families.
Interested in a property built to welcome generations to come? Explore Maine Homes for Multigenerational Living & Aging in Place here.
