Not that you needed another reason, but Forbes magazine just rated the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort as the best ski area in the United States. 

4,139 vertical feet of uninterrupted downhill, an average of 450 inches of snow each year, and it's the lightest, fluffiest champagne powder you could ever want. Heaven on earth, come for a visit and stay as long as you like! I've been here since 1999, and it just gets better each year.

Or take your dog our for a cross-country jaunt and take in the view...

Perfect for the non-profit or the tradesman, this 3,180 square foot office/warehouse is listed for below replacement cost. The building was extensively rebuilt by the current owner/occupant, Westbank Construction, and features high end office finishes, a complete two bedroom lock-off apartment, and warehouse storage bays.

Located on South Park Loop Road between the Maverick convenience store and the Middle School, the location has in-town convenience and good parking.

The property includes a complete set of building plans for an addition for future expansion.

Offered at $700,000, the property is very competitively priced. Call for a flyer and for comparable sales information.

UPDATE: After 6 months on the market, this sale closed in November 2011. The closing was delayed when the title report revealed the back of the building encroached onto a strip of land. Things got complicated when the ownership of the narrow strip of land couldn't be determined. An estate was finally identified, but there were apparently no surviving descendants. Eventually, the bank agreed to make the loan, and we closed! It took a lot of work by the title company, the bank, the buyer and seller, and by a very diligent surveyor. Everyone hung in there, and we got it done!

As a mountain resort town, Jackson Hole has a high cost of living. It's expensive to live here, primarily because housing is (or was) so expensive, and because you can't actually grow food here. We do brew really good beer though. But I digress.

My last blog rambled a bit about hitting cats with a dead Realtor® and about how easy that was here, because there are so many of us. But why are there so many? Is it something in the water?

Word on the street is that it's an easy living. And with a median home price north of $1,200,000 in 2010 (less for condos and vacant lots), it's true that the average sale is going to make good money for that hard working Realtor.

But how many sales are there in a year? And how many agents are there? Hmmmm. Let's look.

The number of licensed agents in Jackson Hole more than tripled from January 1996 to January 2008. The number of sales doubled over that time frame, which means that each agent was making fewer sales. Then....well, we know what happened then. The banking system collapsed, and real estate transactions stopped dead in the water.

Since 2008, there have been fewer sales each year in this market than there are agents! Ouch.

And when you consider that the 20/80 rule is at work here (20% of the agents making 80% of the deals), I expect we've still got quite a few agents who will exit the business in the next couple of years. That's tough.

How's your market look?

I've been hearing how easy it is to hit a Realtor® by swinging a dead cat, so I thought I'd do a little research. I couldn't find a source that tracked dead cats, so I focused on the number of Realtors instead. In Hawaii, there's a licensed Realtor for every 161 people, but in West Virginia you'd need to whack 648 people with that cat to be sure you hit a Realtor.

I looked up the stats for my local market, Jackson Hole, WY, and WOW! Just over 400 licensed Realtors belong to the local board, and the year-round population here is just 20,000. That works out to be one Realtor per 50 people in Jackson Hole, WY! It was even worse in 2008, when there were some 1,000 licensed agents, making the ratio an astounding 1 Realtor per 20 people. One in Twenty. Think about it. Now that's competition.

Or is it? 60% of those agents have disappeared in the past two years, as the real estate market collapsed. How much business did they really do? How many were part timers, listing only family property, or getting a license because the business seemed so easy?

What does your market look like?

How many antlers does it take to make one of the Antler Arches on the Jackson Hole town square?

The Town Square has an antler arch on each of its four corners, which have served as the backdrop for countless photographs taken by visitors to Jackson Hole. We get an estimated 3,000,000 visitors each year, and I'll bet that half of them stop for a photograph in front of the arches before they head over to the Cowboy Bar for another photo op on a saddle at the bar.

The arches were built around 1950, and have slowly deteriorated. Over the past three years, two of the arches have been taken down and rebuilt with fresh antlers, and today, work crews were dismantling the third arch on the northeast corner of the square. The Rotary Club of Jackson Hole has undertaken the herculean task of raising the money and collecting the antlers necessary for the work. Thank you Rotary!

How many antlers does it take? Well, this arch will require 10,000 pounds of antlers. Work will begin next week reassembling the arch, and don't worry, no elk were harmed in the process. Elk naturally shed their antlers early each winter. These antlers mostly came from the National Elk Refuge just to the north of Jackson.

That's right, the foreclosure does not necessarily wipe out a lien for unpaid HOA dues. I didn't know that, and apparently, neither did Bank of America.

Here's the story. I represent a buyer for a house in Melody Ranch, Jackson Hole, WY. The seller is  Bank of America, who acquired the house via foreclosure a few months ago. The previous homeowner quit paying their homeowner's association (HOA) dues months before the foreclosure, and the HOA placed a lien on the property for the unpaid dues. After the lien was filed, the bank foreclosed.

My buyer put the property under contract, and the title company prepared the closing statement. The title commitment showed the HOA lien as an encumbrance, and the closing statement showed that the seller would have to pay the amount of the lien, just under $1000. Bank of America (Seller) protested the charge, saying that their foreclosure should have wiped out the HOA lien, since the Bank of America mortgage was a first lien, and predated the HOA lien. Seemed reasonable to me.

BUT, buried in the Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CCRs) for Melody Ranch was a paragraph that asserts that any lien placed by the HOA will be a superior lien to any mortgage lien placed on the property AFTER THE DATE OF THE CCRs. Who knew you could do that?

So our closing was supposed to be last Friday, and the lawyers have been arguing about this for a week. The attorney for the homeowner's association is very confident the lien must be paid, and has been down this road before, so I believe him.

It makes me wonder how many lenders read the CCRs before they make a loan, and if they would agree to make that loan if they knew their loan would be subordinate to the HOA dues.

Except that the seller, a bank, decided at 4pm to contest the lien placed on the property by the homeowners association. The bank foreclosed on the property 5 months ago, and the lien has been on the property since foreclosure. Why did they wait until 4pm on the day of closing? Who knows. The title company says it's a valid lien, and the treasurer of the HOA confirmed the amount, again, today.

Sigh.

Perhaps we'll close on Monday. My buyer remained in good spirits. He is getting a GREAT deal on the house, so I suppose it comes with some hiccups...

Love the mountains? Love people? Come live the Jackson Hole lifestyle and run this beautiful bed & breakfast inn in downtown Jackson Hole, Wyoming! The Grand Victorian Lodge is a modern building with all the amenities needed to successfully compete. Jackson draws approximately 3,000,000 tourists per year to see Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks and to enjoy our bountiful wildlife, stunning mountains, and the fishing and rafting on the Snake River. 

Call for details and a tour of Jackson Hole! Come for a vacation...stay for a lifetime.

Real estate in Jackson Hole tends to be expensive, but here's some bargain property! Last Friday, this parcel had a lovely view of the Snake River. By Sunday, it was riverfront property, and since then, it's been heading downstream...

What doesn't end up in the Snake is being hauled off by the Wyoming Department of Transportation. The heavy winter snowpack and wet spring caused this drainage to slide off the hillside, blocking Highway 89/26 between Hoback Junction and Alpine. The slide covers 300 feet of the highway, is 40 feet high, and extends over 2,000 feet from the top of the slide to the river. Highway engineers estimate it will take a week to clear it off the road, once the slide quits moving. At one point it was moving at a foot per minute, but as of today, it was down to a foot per hour.

So is it still real estate if it's moving?

Join Rotary in the Spring Cleanup!

The second Saturday in May each year is the annual Town Clean Up, sponsored by the lunch Rotary Club. Jackson Hole is covered in snow from November to April, and when it finally melts, the roadsides have accumulated a lot of litter. Who still throws garbage out of their cars anyway??

The Rotary Club sponsors a cleanup day every May. The day starts with coffee, juice and donuts on the Town Square, and then friends and businesses all set out for different areas of town and sections of the highway. Trash bags are donated, hundreds of people show up to participate. The work only takes 2-3 hours, and then everyone meets back at the Square for a huge free hamburger cookout, live music, and storytelling.

Everything is donated, so all you need is a good attitude and some work gloves.

Our best find today was a small bottle of nipple cream. How exactly do you lose a bottle of nipple cream on the side of a highway?

To find the best place to pick up trash, or to learn about the Jackson Hole commercial real estate market, call me!

Tim Bradley
Owner/Broker
Contour Investment Properties
172 Center Street, Suite 200
PO Box 1152
Jackson, WY 83001
(307) 733-6400
www.contourproperties.com

Tim Bradley is an owner of Contour Investment Properties, the only brokerage firm in Jackson exclusively focused on commercial and investment property in Jackson Hole and Teton Valley. Tim has earned the MAI designation from the Appraisal Institute as well as the CCIM designation from the CCIM Institute.