Snowing hard, blowing hard...it must be President's Weekend! I’ve just seen more often than not that President's Weekend is very snowy, and this one is no exception. We got about 25” of snow from Saturday morning to Sunday morning. Which of course made for incredible skiing. I was out on Sunday which was as usual a sellout day at Deer Valley and everyone had big smiles. The powder was soft and deep and the groomed was perfect soft-packed powder. Just from watching everybody and talking to people on the lifts they will be talking about this weekend for many moons.
At the end of January, I attended the WMRA annual meeting in Vail, Colorado. These meetings give me an opportunity to meet with fellow resort realtors and discuss with them how their market is faring in today’s economy. The overall consensus was that everyone’s market had improved considerably starting sometime during the 3rd quarter of 2010.
During the weekend’s meetings, we were fortunate to listen to a presentation from a real estate consulting and appraisal group out of Denver, Colorado. This group has been hired as a consultant for many different projects throughout all of the western resorts. The presentation that they gave was extremely positive and enlightening and quite encouraging. Looking at resort numbers from 2007-2010, a trend became quite obvious. 2007 (and for some areas 2006) was definitely the high part of the market with 2009 the low point. Pretty much every resort showed the same trend: high dollar volume and high number of sales in 2007, trending downward in 2008, bottoming out in 2009, and starting to recover in 2010.
Two other interesting statistics came out during this presentation which I also found very relevant. First was the number of active listings per single family home and condos for each of the Western resorts showed a sharp decline from 2009 through 2010. The second was that the average sales price for homes and condos was at the peak in 2007, declined through 2008 and continued to decline through 2009, then remained relatively flat in 2010. Anyone familiar with economics would find this interesting in that if the number of sales are on the increase while inventory is decreasing. Logic would state that prices should also be on the increase. More demand, less supply, causes higher prices. I believe that we still have enough downward pressure on prices from bank foreclosures and short sales that we will not see prices increasing quite yet. However if the trend of increasing demand and decreasing inventory continues, prices will have to follow.
Click here to view the presentation. (It's a rather large file, so please be patient. It's an excellent read!)
There was another section of this presentation regarding resort hotel occupancy, but I’ll save that for next week. In the meantime, come out to Park City and enjoy the incredible winter we’re having; the skiing is fabulous!
There was another section of this presentation regarding resort hotel occupancy, but I’ll save that for next week. In the meantime, come out to Park City and enjoy the incredible winter we’re having; the skiing is fabulous!
