Spring Skiing

Spring skiing in the Rockies takes on many shapes and forms. When we talk about spring skiing typically the thoughts turn to warm sunny days and soft or even slushy snow. But here in the Rockies, March and April can be very, very snowy, and it seems that the last few years some of the best powder skiing has been at the end of the season with this year being no exception. This is me skiing Deer Valley on Sunday!

It has been a crazy week with snow just about every day since last week Monday and the skiing just can not get any better. Deer Valley is now reporting a 118-inch base and it is snowing hard today with another foot of snow expected. But then the best news is, is that we are expecting warm sunny days starting Wednesday for classic spring skiing, at least until the weekend when more snow is forecast. This is a perfect time to come out and visit your favorite ski resort in the Rockies as the skiing is the best it’s been all year, crowds are down, and you can get great deals on lodging.

In real estate news, real estate sales continue to be quite strong (I’ll be doing an end of the season wrap up in mid April), but all indications are that this ski season's real estate sales are going to be substantially higher than last year. Of particular interest, to me, is the new montage hotel in Deer Valley. This is a high-end boutique luxury hotel located at the base of the Empire Lift with fabulous amenities and of course ski-in/ski-out access. The hotel opened for business December 9th of this year and prior to opening there were three pre-sales of the condos. The condos first went on sale at the end of last ski season. There have been five new sales this ski season with a penthouse for $6,000,000 just being sold last week. In addition there have been a couple of sales in the St. Regis, also located ski-in/ski-out in Deer Valley's Deer Crest area. After the 2009/2010 season with no new sales in St Regis, it is refreshing to see the high end buyer returning to the resort market. In looking at what is selling each day, I am seeing more sales over $2 mil than I have for quite some time. Is this a sign that the resort market is beginning to turn? Before jumping to any conclusions, let's see what the summer brings for sales, but this is certainly good news for resort real estate here in Park City/Deer Valley.

So stay tuned in a couple of weeks for the end of the year wrap-up which I think will be very interesting and until then come out and enjoy the fabulous spring skiing.