This week the National Association of Realtor's (NAR) is holding their annual convention in San Diego, which I am attending. This annual event is attended by over 20,000 realtors from all over the world. The convention is a source of education featuring top real estate speakers from around the country and is a terrific opportunity to meet and network with agent's who deal in a wide variety of markets, not just resorts, which I typically work with. I feel that this is an opportunity to get a better feel for shat is happening nationally in the real estate market. Of course, I still spend quite a bit of time talking to my fellow realtors from the western resorts.
This morning we had our Fall meeting for the Western Mountain Resort Alliance, of which I am the founder and president where we discussed along with business issues what was happening in our respective resorts. The consensus was that while this past year has been the worst that anyone has seen there is some optimism that the markets are turning, or beginning to turn, and that this ski season may see buyers re-entering the market. To give you an idea of what happened to our market last year, see the graph attached. As you can see from this graph, most of 2006 was the high point of the market, with a slight decline in 2007 and 2008. This year we saw a drastic drop in number of sales as well as dollar volume. This has been reflected in home prices in our resort as well as the length of time properties are listed before selling.
As a result of lower home prices which are being perceived as, “bargains”, everyone is seeing buyers getting back into the game. One of things that we have seen over the last year and a half with the slow down of the market was that buyers were still out there and still wanted that vacation ski home but were reluctant to act on their wishes as the U.S economy was spiraling downward. Now that the economy appears to be stabilizing, or hopefully recovering, there is a pent up demand of buyers once again looking for resort real estate.
The Good News Is That It Is Snowing Here In Park City! It started snowing last night, turned very cold and more snow is expected tonight and tomorrow. The resorts have all resumed their snowmaking operations and with a forecast of rainy and snowy cold weather for next week, it is looking very positive for thanksgiving skiing!
Come back next week! I will have further updates on what I have learned here in San Diego and further updates on the resort openings. Also upcoming will be my annual restaurant review of what’s new in Park City.
