Snow, Snow, and More Snow!

President's Week here in Park City finished as it started: with lots of snow. It started snowing Thursday night, and by Saturday morning we had nearly 30 inches of classic Utah fluff. As you can imagine, every powderhound was out Saturday morning enjoying the knee-deep snow. Very difficult to say whether this past Saturday or the previous Sunday was the best day of the year. But both were fabulous and visitors to Park City during the holiday will be talking about this week for many, many moons. With over five feet of snow during the week, conditions have never been much better. Snow during the weekend, sunshine during the week...everyone was smiling.

I was on Main Street Friday night and couldn't believe how crowded it was. I guess I shouldn't have been as it was the holiday weekend and everyone was in town. Main Street merchants, management companies, and owners of rental properties are once again smiling.

Which brings me to this week's real estate topic: the rental market. As I overtoned in last week's blog, at the conference of resort Realtors from the Western states that I attended in Vail at the end of January, we had a presentation from a real estate consulting and appraisal firm out of Denver, Colorado. The presentation's topic was the trends and future of resort real estate. The final portion of the presentation was on the hotel aspect of resort real estate. Not surprisingly, the past numbers from the hotel industry closely mirror real estate sales. 2005 and 2006 made up the high point for occupancy and rental rates. We then saw a pretty steady drop, and then bottoming out in 2009. Similar to real estate sales, 2010 saw an increase in occupancy numbers but not an increase in the daily rental rates that units were commanding. For anybody that owns a rental property in a resort, this is not surprising news. 2009 was a terrible year for rentals and most property management companies reported a decrease in rental days of around 30%. In 2010, we saw visitors returning, but they were still negotiating very hard on prices. What I find very interesting in this report is the future predictions from Colliers Hotel Industry. They are forecasting a steady increase in occupancy days as well as average daily rental rates through 2014.

Click here to see the report.

If this comes to pass, it will be terrific news for the resorts, for owners of rental properties, and for real estate sales. We know the first thing that has to happen is visitors have to come to our town, fall in love, then they purchase.

Right now, we have the perfect combination of low prices, good supply of inventory, and low interest rates. However, we are starting to see interest rates trending upwards. How long this combination is going to last is the focus of much discussion and speculation. But one thing we all feel is that we may never see this combination again in our lifetime. So, come out, ski, enjoy the mountains, and if you are interested in finding a mountain vacation home or just curious about what the real estate market in Park City is doing, please call.