Whistler real estate transaction report for May 1

Whistler received some disappointing news today as global media giant ESPN announced that the X-games would not be coming to town in 2013. Favouring expansion into 3 cities (Barcelona, Munich and Foz do Iguacu, Brazil) for summer X-games, the decision put a damper on the efforts that Whistler Blackcomb, Tourism Whistler and the Municipality of Whistler had taken.

Of course, the current plan of continuing with the Telus World Ski and Snowboard festival offers a great fallback without the anticipated $750,000.00 expense needed to bring the X-games here.

This past week’s good news was that Whistler enjoyed its strongest March and into April room bookings since the recession. This, combined with December and January’s record setting bookings will see this year’s overall winter bookings exceed a 10% increase over last winter.

We had 19 new listings, 13 price reductions and 15 sales occur in the past 7 days, compared to 21 new listings, 14 price reductions and 18 sales that we saw the previous week. Of note is the 51 expiries that occurred yesterday. I was hoping to see a higher amount of new listings come to market today, but still feel fairly bullish that there are more to come this spring.

Although we continue to see a prevalence of price reductions which points to a Buyer’s market, the lower pricing means our absorption rate is picking up. The rule of thumb is: sellers market over 20%, balanced market 15% – 20% and Buyers market below 15%. Quarter 1 of 2012 gave us 17.9% with 123 sales/ 685 listings. While I hesitate to say we are in balanced market at this time, if the current trend of increased purchasing continues, there may be less selection to choose from at the lower price points.

Please click here to view the past week’s new listings and price changes as reported by the Whistler Listing System. Please contact me directly for sales.

A 2 bed 2 bath unit in Greyhawk in Blueberry hill caught my as offering good value. The fact sheet can be viewed here: http://matrix.buywhistler.com/Matrix/Public/Portal.aspx?ID=219888230

If you have friends or family who would like more information on these or other Whistler opportunities, please forward my contact information to them. I would welcome the chance to see how we can help them call Whistler ‘Home’.

All the best!

Nick