From the Vail Daily:
EAGLE COUNTY — After a
slowish start to the year, the county’s real estate market seems to have
rebounded. But more sales are generating dollar volume roughly equivalent to
numbers recorded in 2015. According to the most recent data from Land Title
Guarantee Co., transactions were fairly strong compared to 2015, but dollar
volume slumped. April’s dollar volume exceeded that for the same period in
2015, with four fewer transactions.
MORE INVENTORY NEEDED Vail
Board of Realtors Chairman Kyle Denton said the strength of the market this
year has been in the under $800,000 price range. Denton said there’s a lot of
activity in that part of the market, but, as has been the case for some time,
not much inventory. There’s some activity on the new construction front. A
partnership is developing the Aspen Ridge neighborhood in Gypsum, part of the
Buckhorn Valley subdivision. That project alone could add roughly 120 single family
and duplex units to the town. “Gypsum is the one town with developments still
to be finished,” broker Laurie Slaughter said. Slaughter, a broker with
Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Colorado Mountain Real Estate, is a longtime
veteran of the down valley real estate market. She said that while the summer
has started off slowly — May tends to keep families busy with school stuff, she
said — Slaughter said she expects a busy summer. “We might not be as busy as
last year,” Slaughter said. “We may not see as many multiple offers, just
because there’s more on the market right now.”
BALANCED MARKET But Denton,
Slaughter and Jim Flaum, the managing partner of Slifer Smith & Frampton
Real Estate, all agreed that the market right now seems to be pretty balanced.
“It’s not really a buyer’s market or a seller’s market,” Denton said. That
balance means property isn’t on the market for very long. According to data
from the Vail Board of Realtors, there were 131 May residential sales out of
the Multiple Listing Service — which covers most, but not all, residential
transactions. Of those sales, 56 came within 30 days of being listed. Most of
those sales were for 95 percent or more of the original asking price. That
balance, and still low mortgage interest rates, are driving a strong market
for local buyers. “The turnout of local buyers is the strongest I can remember
in my time here,” Flaum said.
UNCERTAINTY
DRIVING SALES
Part of the market strength is
uncertainty about the future, Flaum said. It’s hard to tell just when interest
rates might go up, and it doesn’t take much of a boost in mortgage interest
rates to put a home out of reach of a buyer. There’s other uncertainty at work,
too, from financial markets that dropped in the year’s first weeks to the
collapse in the price of oil late in 2015 to the uncertainty of who might be
the next U.S. President. Those questions may be leaving buyers of higher-priced
homes on the sidelines. “A lot of buyers are in a wait-and-see mood,” Flaum
said. “Since a lot of these buyers are looking for a second, third or fourth
home, they can wait.”
HIGH-END SALES SLOW
The sluggishness in the
high-end market — homes priced at $5 million or more — isn’t unique to the Vail
Valley. The Vail Board of Realtors has data from similar groups around the
state, and Denton said he’s seen softness in other resort markets, too. “We’re
just not seeing the same type of (high-end) numbers we’ve seen in the past
couple of years,” Denton said. The result, at least for now, is that it’s going
to take more transactions for dollar volume to keep pace with 2015’s numbers.
That’s going to require homes on the market priced where buyers can act.
