The commercial building at 1830 Lisbon St. in Lewiston, a 19,600-square-foot retail space, was leased in November 2022 with a triple net lease of $5.50 per square foot. Frank Carr, the senior vice president of Maine Realty Advisors, predicted Thursday that as more people move to Lewiston and Auburn, a growth in commercial real estate will follow. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal
PORTLAND — Lewiston and Auburn were the stars of Maine Real Estate and Development Association’s annual forecast conference Thursday at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland.
More than 800 professionals attended the meeting billed as a “sneak peek into Maine’s real estate industry.” The “booming” growth in Lewiston and Auburn’s residential market, as MEREDA Executive Director Shelly Clark put it, was a major theme throughout the day.
“(There’s) a lot of opportunity and excitement about the Lewiston-Auburn area and that’s being reflected in the sales activity we’re seeing up there,” Brit Vitalius, the founder and designated broker of Portland-based Vitalius Real Estate Group, said in an interview Friday.
“That area has struggled for many years to enjoy the levels of pricing and prosperity and investment that has benefited other communities in southern Maine. And it seems like in the last few years, it’s started to turn the corner. And that’s being reflected in the prices and sales activity,” Vitalius, who specializes in selling multifamily properties in southern Maine, said.
Multifamily properties are basically any property with more than one individual family unit. These range from smaller properties with two to four units to larger commercial developments with five or more units.
Compared with the market for multifamily properties in Portland, South Portland, Westbrook and Biddeford and Saco, only the Twin Cities saw an increase in the total sales volume — the sum of all real estate transactions made