National and Local Real Estate News

Real estate continues to be at the forefront of both national and local news. On the positive side, the National Association of Realtors reported that housing sales rose by 6% for the month of July. This is the third straight month that housing sales have increased. The down side is that the average sales price of a home continues to decrease and is about 6% lower this year than at the same time in 2007. What this indicates to me is that buyers are out there buying, but are looking for deals and, in many markets it is mostly foreclosures or short sales that are selling. On this thought, I saw a very interesting video clip from Good Morning America radio interviewing Donald Trump and his thoughts on real estate. Click on the link below to go to this video clip:

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=5576708

Whether you like or dislike Donald Trump, he should be respected for his real estate savvy, and he feels that now is the best time to buy. He goes on to say that he has not seen better opportunities to purchase real estate for at least 20 years. I feel that same way here in Park City in that there are more opportunities to pick up a “deal” than I have seen for many, many years. It appears that I am not alone with this thought as we are definitely seeing an increase in activity. I attribute this increase to buyers feeling that we may be close enough to the bottom of the market that now is a good time to buy and that while we are approaching winter, we are still far enough out that sellers are still negotiating. History has taught me that the closer we get to the opening of the ski resorts, the less flexible sellers become.

As I mentioned in last weeks blog, this past weekend was the Deer Valley Jazz Festival, and what a weekend it was. Perfect late summer mountain weather and fabulous music made for a memorable weekend. Everyone I talked to felt that if this was not The Best Festival, it was certainly right up there. It’s hard to believe that next weekend is Labor Day weekend, but fall is definitely in the air here. The nights have cooled off dramatically, with the occasional frost. I expect to see the first leaves changing in a week or so. With the arrival of fall, excitement starts building for the upcoming ski season and the resorts scramble to get all of their summer projects completed. Stay tuned for future articles detailing the improvements that each of the resorts has made for the ski season…