Of course there would be a buyer for your home. Dirt floors are nothing new in Maine. When we were looking at older houses here in Southern Maine, we saw more then one dirt floor. Even one with a small stream running through it and that house sold. It isn't that unusual for a farm house to have a dirt cellar.

Sure it can put off some buyers. I was in love with a wonderful 250 year old house in MA but my wife, inexplicably, was put off by the stream running through the basement. She just wouldn't buy the argument that anything bad would long since have happened.

But yes, someone will certainly buy your house. For the age and location it would be a fairly typical condition. They might pay you more for a concrete basement floor, but not more than it would cost you to instal it.

And having just downsized from a 20 acre farm, to a nice smaller home in a suburban setting, do it now while you are still healthy. I am thrilled with my smaller footprint and so much less work!

The house we just sold for asking price has a partial dirt basement. The house is around 170 years old, but the basement it's on is only about 70 years. (They moved it to its current site but on a new foundation)

I wouldn't think a thing of a dirt basement in a historic New England home. That's typical.

My home in Maine, which we are listing this week, has a dirt basement. We added a sump pump and it has not been a problem for us. I know many homes in our area have similar basements. I hope it won't detract!

To be honest, it will turn off some buyers. But buyers familiar with the area and with older homes won't blink at a dirt cellar floor. Someone who wants an older house, as opposed to someone who is just looking at everything that fits their requirement/price range, won't mind.

I'm in New Hampshire, and my house has a dirt floor in half the basement.

Your house sounds like heaven. I think I would list it as that is the only way to see if it will sell at a price you are comfortable with. You will be out nothing by listing it, but have plans if it does indeed sell quickly. And I totally understand the upkeep of an old house and how that wears on us as we look at our future. The upkeep is truly a labor of love. In my experience it is a labor best enjoyed in your 30's and 40's when you are old enough to appreciate the house and land, but still young enough to not worry about how you will care for the house as you age.

Interestingly, in this post there are two posters who viewed a house in Maine with a stream in the basement. That would be so fascinating to me. I won't even lie, I would build a small above ground Koi pond in such a basement if the water was fresh. Maybe just 2k gallons with 4 to 6 outstanding Koi. Dreaming......

Your house and property sound lovely. Were I looking there, I'd consider it. Back in the day when I was house hunting, I saw a couple homes with dirt floor basements. This didn't put me off of them! (I might have offered on one of them, except that the interior doors were of variable height - and I'm tall).

Update: The comments here are valuable to me, and much appreciated! We haven't yet de-hoarded enough of our 45+ year collection of stuff to dare start trying to sell our home; also, none of the places we've been looking at with realtors have made us eager to move just yet. We just know that one or both of us (or our older daughter) will have to sell it one day and we're doing what we can to pre-smooth that task.

So, while we keep trying to sell old treasures online (or give them away or throw them away, depending!) we've decided to try to get an estimate for having the cellar floor evened out and a trench dug along two sides adjacent to the corner where the water comes in. I spent many hours last summer re-shaping the yard to drain away, to no avail. The water table's got to be high there. Not surprising, as there's an ancient dug well (now dry) under the pantry floor.

The image of a "stream" crossing a cellar conjured up crystalline waters, maybe a cattail or two, and the chance of a trout for supper. Well, our stream starts as a patch of dampness across flat clay that drains into a 2 inch by 2 inch trench. The trench makes a 90 degree turn around the wood furnace slab then runs past a few volunteer mushrooms (descendants of escapees from a mushroom growing kit we bought a few years ago), and ends in a pit dug in the sandy side of the cellar. It's observed by two quietly curious salamanders, who live in tiny caves they burrowed under a jack post footing and an uncut fieldstone slab that was probably too much bother to remove when the cellar-diggers found it around 1799.

You'd have to be about an inch tall to view this as a stream, and even so you probably wouldn't be tempted to sip the water... unless you were a salamander, of course.

Again, many thanks. Your comments are all kind and encouraging.