With the economic slowdown, big houses are going begging across the country. Those multi-million-dollar palaces, with four or five bathrooms and a heated garage for the Ferraris and Bentleys, are suddenly stranded on the market, says The Wall Street Journal.

Not so in Northeast Harbor, our own booming luxury resort. The same goes for adjoining Seal Harbor, where Martha Stewart spent nearly $5 million for her hilltop home four years ago. Buyers are plentiful, but available properties are scarce, especially on the water. Local real estate agents have been knocking on doors of big houses that are not even on the market.

“Eastholm,” part way up toward Ms. Stewart’s place on Ox Hill, sold last September for just over $2 million. “Treetops,” also in Seal Harbor, with seven fireplaces and a four-car garage, went in January for $2.6 million. “Windover,” a four-bedroom cottage on shore-side Manchester drive in Northeast Harbor, sold in September for $1.6 million. No details are available on the recent sale of “The Wharf,” on the site of the old Branscom’s coal wharf, earlier listed at $6.5 million.

The biggest project now under way is for Frederic A. Bourke Jr., co-proprietor of Dooney & Bourke, a chain operation that started with men’s belts and suspenders and moved into “functional and fashionable” women’s handbags. He paid $5 million for two next-door houses on a point of land in Seal Harbor, just beyond Northeast Harbor. He tore down one of them and is building a guesthouse, a squash court and a shore-side heated swimming pool. He hopes to occupy the guesthouse in June while workmen raze the existing house and build him a new summer residence on that site.

Competition for these lavish summer homes is so fierce that transactions have crept onto the western or “quiet side” of Mount Desert Island. One of the biggest recent sales there was that of “Crasavitsa” in Seal Cove, which went for $4.25 million.

There is, of course, precedence for this. Bar Harbor had 15 luxury hotels by 1872, attracting the wealthy to the charms of the Maine coast, and massive summer cottages were built through the 1920s for some of the nation’s most prominent citizens, including the Rockefellers and Joseph Pulitzer, according to Maine historian William David Barry. Then, as now, improvements in transportation made summering in Maine, easier – then, it was steamships and railroads; now, I-95 and private planes. (Mr. Bourke plans to moor his yacht with a helipad just off his property.)

Like a century ago, privacy is a draw to the coast. This part of Maine seems remote compared with Palm Beach or the Hamptons. And real estate agents around here respect privacy and tend to be close lipped, although some details come out from tax assessors and observant neighbors.

Workmen who build the summer homes can be as gossipy as journalists. For example, they tell of a place where the owner had the contractor tear out his second jacuzzi and rebuild it 18 inches higher so his guests could get a better view of the harbor while in the tub. Another owner had ordered custom-made bricks of an old-fashioned odd size but, after the walls had been built, didn’t quite like the color. He ordered new bricks and new walls.

So welcome or welcome back to Maine, but remember that privacy is only relative.