I have had more than one Seller of a Frisco home ask me why the Buyers are so single minded in trying to get every last dollar from him that they can. One Buyer told me he was acting like a jerk, but he knew he could get away with it. He was right. Buyers today are in the driver’s seat.

Much of the country has been a Buyer’s market for a couple of years. Here in Summit County, real estate sales first declined in double digits a year ago, although they were softening for a few months before that. Today, our inventory is up about 45% from January 2009, and sales are still down by roughly 60% from a year ago. Buyers are recognizing that there might be a few anxious Sellers (there are, but not all of them are desperate) and are taking advantage of the ability to get a good deal. The last couple of weeks……

This week, we hit a high of 2,000 Summit County homes and condos for sale. These numbers do not include properties in Park County. Leaville or Kremmling, and they do not include lots for sale. Last August, there were about 1700 homes and condos available, and as people pulled unsold properties off the market so they could be rented for the winter, we got down to a low of 1396 by January 2nd. As owners decided to sell as the economy got worse,, numbers started gradually increasing by about 100 every 4 or 5 weeks. By the end of April we had 1697 listings; a month later there were 1830 and here we are in the last week of June with over 2000. From January 1 to mid year, inventory levels increased by 43% while sales dropped by almost 60%.

Why do we care? Because with more properties on the market…..

Condos in Keystone, Colorado have a large price spread.
The lowest one currently is $174,900 for a 470 square foot studio. The lowest priced one bedroom Keystone condo is at Wild Irishman and it is currently priced at $209,900 after the original list price of $224,900 was reduced.

Searching on the internet for Keystone real estate, you may find a Keystone cabin for only $149,900! When that was listed recently I had to go and take a look at the photos. It is actually a 5 acre mining claim in the backcountry behind the town of Montezuma, about seven or eight miles from the ski resort. It has an old cabin on it that a strong wind might blow over one day. It looks like it has been open to…..

Breckenridge real estate comprises 47%
of all our listings in Summit County, and for the first five months of the year, 44% of all residential sales were in Breckenridge. That tells us that home sales in Breckenridge are a little slower than in Dillon, where we have only 8% of all listings but 10% of all sales. That difference may lead one to believe that better buys are available in Breck than in Dillon, but it may or may not be true. Perhaps it is not a specific location in the county as much as it is motivated and realistic Sellers. Inventory and sales numbers can help us try to figure out where the Sellers are that might be more motivated, but it all comes down to how badly a Seller wants to sell and how aware of market conditions they are. Dillon is doing better than Breckenridge simply because……

May real estate sales picked up considerably over the four prior months, with 66 residential closings for Summit County property. We now have had a total of 221 homes and condos sell in the first five months of this year. That is about what we could expect to sell in an average month two years ago! We are still down more than 50% from a year ago.

The highest price property sold was listed at $399,999,999; about as close to $4 million as you can get without actually being there. It sold for $3,300,000, a $700,000 discount, or 82.5% of the list price. A pretty hefty price reduction, even in today’s market. The lowest sale was….