Our market is hot! Almost everyone on AR these days writes about what to do in slow markets. Well, I was doing those things about three years ago when the rest of you were so busy you didn't have time to spend all the money you were making! Today the tables are turned and my vacation home market is buzzing. We have no inventory and prices are skyrocketing. Normally, if you had fewer sales each year for the last two years you would think the market was slow. Not in our case! Our average price is up about 18% this year. For some reason the vacation home market seems to be contrarian, but it hasn't always been that way. Denver is our nearest metro area, and it used be be that as Denver went, so did the mountain areas. Today, Denver, and Colorado in general, has a very high foreclosure rate. We have hardly any foreclosures. Denver's real estate market is pretty soft, while we are hot. Why, when we share a lot of the same population?
My personal opinion is that the affluent baby boomers who are our clients are pretty insulated from the vagaries of the economy. They have invested in real estate their whole lives, and it has done well for them. They have put money aside for retirement, and they are preparing for it every day. Their kids may be having financial problems, but they are not. The boomers are looking for places to bring their families back together, have good times and create memories, and they are buying second homes or looking for bigger ones. They are only selling if they can find something larger, and that is hard to do.
Summit County is about 85% public lands, mostly National Forest. That is a good thing, and it will keep our mountains unspoiled. However, that means that only 15%+/- is available for development, and we are almost built out. Devlopment land is scarce and expensive, so any new construction is done 2 to 12 units at a time, rather than 40 to 60, the way it used to be. You can't find anything new for less than about $700,000. We are pretty much relying on resales for our new business, and when those baby boomers won't let go, prices go up. Baby boomers get the blame again! No wonder they say that we have been an influential generation, going through the economy like a rabbit in the belly of a snake.
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