Memorial Day Week

Memorial Day weekend is coming up, the traditional day of the start to summer, barbecues and pools opening. Unless you live in the mountains. A quick look at this week's forecast is calling for Saturday's weather of 47 degrees and rain, hardly makes you feel like summer. People frequently ask if Memorial Day is a busy weekend in real estate and a good time to hold open houses. Anywhere else but the mountains, this holds true. But up here, more people leave than come into town for the holiday.

Last week Thursday I hosted and was moderator for a panel discussion of resort Realtors for three of our neighboring resorts: Lake Tahoe, California; Sun Valley, Idaho; and Vail, Colorado, that was attended by the Park City Board of Realtors. It was a wonderful lunch meeting with over 200 Park City agents in attendance. Not surprisingly, while there are some regional differences, the state of real estate in each of these resorts is very similar to what we're seeing here in Park City. Numbers of sales were up, prices are down and the general feeling is that prices will not be rising anytime soon due to pressure from distressed properties. The differences are in the details for each area. For example, in Vail, high-end condos in the heart of the village have sold at over $2,800 a square foot. Lake Tahoe, where is the real focus of the resort is around the lake (instead of the ski resorts) there are very few condos for sale and prices are around $400 per square foot. Sun Valley is in between but closer to Lake Tahoe with maximum prices pushing but not exceeding $1,000 a square foot. Here in Park City, our high-end ski-in/ski-out hotels on the mountain of Deer Valley sell for between $1,300 and $1,500 per square foot. (Throughout the 16 years I've been involved with the Western Mountain Resort Alliance, prices and amount of real estate sold in Vail have always been the envy of the other resort Realtors.) Each of the resorts reported that skier visits to the resorts, lodging numbers and retail numbers were up 5-10% over last year. Everyone was pretty happy with this gain and gave their confidence that this summer's real estate activity and visitor traffic would continue with upward trends.

Middle of May in the Mountains

Well, it's still snowing. After a beautiful warm weekend woke up to heavy snow falling and about 3" on the ground. Forecast is for snow to continue through Friday, take a break Saturday and start up again Sunday. Oh well, life in the mountains!

This past Friday, the golf course at Tuhaye opened and I joined some clients/friends, for an opening round of golf. Kind of like being on first chair of opening day of ski season, we were first tee time on opening day of golf season. Now, for an unabashed plug for yoga. I started participating in yoga classes last winter and have continued on a regular basis, (for those that know me, the image of me doing yoga is interesting). In spite of all my injuries, that first day on the golf course, I hit the ball further and more consistent than I have for a couple years. So, no matter how humorous the thought of me doing yoga is, I will have to admit that the stretching and core exercises are beneficial. As a benefit of Talisker membership, both yoga and fitness classes are offered complimentary each week. Along with the on mountain lounge, golf course, spa, private fishing waters and jet boats, the fitness classes really make the club stand out.

Food and Wine Part II

In last week’s blog I talked about new restaurants in town as well as some of my favorites, but no discussion of Park City’s restaurants would be complete without talking about our two newest ski-in/ski-out resorts at Deer Valley: the St. Regis and the Montage. St. Regis has been open for a little over a year now and has quickly become one of the “in” spots in Park City. Locals and visitors alike enjoy riding the funicular (a European-style cog train) from the base of Deer Valley resort to the St. Regis hotel. The Jean George restaurant along with Chef Jean George Vongerichten have created a spectacular and interesting menu as would be expected of a St. Regis. The restaurant overlooks the ski runs of Deer Crest and Deer Valley resort and is a wonderful setting for a very romantic evening out. During the summer months, the outdoor deck is the place to see and be seen. The outdoor deck features an elongated fire pit, water features, and on weekends, barbecue and live music. Not much better than a summer evening watching the sunset, overlooking the mountains with a nice glass of wine. In addition, the sommelier at the St. Regis, Mark Eberwein was named one of the top sommeliers of 2011 by Food and Wine Magazine.

Annual Restaurant Review

May is the in-between season and I thought that this would be a perfect time to review Park City's award-winning restaurants in anticipation of a busy summer. But first, let's talk about what's really important. The sun is shining! After weeks of cold, dreary, snowy weather we woke up yesterday to brilliant sunshine with temperatures forecasted to be in the mid 60s by the end of the week. Could this really be spring? We received about a foot of snow this past weekend and looking up at Deer Valley it doesn't look that different from a typical powder day.There are tracks all over from skiers hiking up. Looking at a pathway going from the Silver Lake Lodge to Stein Eriksen Lodge, the snowbank is still over six feet high. This may be the year that I'm able to ski on my birthday, June 14.

It's Still Winter

Winter, winter, go away, come back in October! Woke up with another 4" of snow on the back barbecue and it has been snowing hard all day, probably close to a foot of new snow. As was said this morning, if you are surprised by this morning's snow then you are new to Park City. The big problem yet to come is going to be when it does finally warm up (and it will) and all of the snow comes down quickly. The year 1983 saw a spring like this and it resulted in severe flooding in Salt Lake City. So much so that people were canoeing on State Street (one of the main thoroughfares through Salt Lake City). In late April, the snowpack should be diminishing with warm sunny days, but instead it is at worst staying even and lately been increasing. As I said earlier, it will warm up and when it does there will be a lot of snow coming down the mountain. A week ago, the mountain snowpack was at 140% of normal. This week it has risen to 197% of normal. On Tuesday, Snowbird eclipsed it's previous season record snowfall and has now recorded over 690" of snowfall, with much more to come!

Year In Review

This past Sunday was closing day for Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons Resort, leaving only Snowbird, Alta and Brighton resorts still open. Both Alta and Brighton will be closing in the next couple of weeks and Snowbird will stay open through June and possibly into July. If it will stop snowing here in Park City, perhaps the local golf courses can dry out and we can move on to golf season. This is the 'ugly' time of year for the mountain resorts, no skiing, golf, hiking or mountain biking. Time to head South to warm beaches!

As I've been talking about for the last couple of weeks the first quarter stats have come out and are quite interesting. Before I get into the details, here is a little background info.The Park City Board of Realtors Multiple Listing System (MLS) divides our area into 24 separate areas in and the immediate vicinity of Park City. There are more areas which include the outlying communities but for what I'm talking about these are not important. Furthermore, for this report I am only looking at areas 1-10, which includes all areas within Park City's city limits including Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley Resort and also includes the Canyons Resort which lies just outside the city limits.

Closing Weekend at Deer Valley Resort

Wow! What a closing weekend it was with 27 inches of new snow over the weekend, nobody here, and the most incredible ski conditions. Woke up Friday morning with 15 inches of new snow, then Sunday (closing day), 4 inches of classic Utah "cold smoke." For those of you who are not familiar with this term, it's when snow is so light and dry that you don't even feel it. It's like having smoke on the mountain. That is what Utah is known and famous for: the lightest and driest powder in the country.