Mountain Side is a Frisco condo complex with enough units that it can give us a substantial demonstration of what has happened in our Summit County real estate market in the last few years. 2007 was the peak sales and price year. While the first half of 2008 still showed some price increases, sales lagged in the last half of the year. Going back to 2005, there were 18 sales in Mountain Side Condominiums. Six were one bedroom/one bath condos and six were standard two bedroom/two bath floorplans with about 850 to 950 square feet. The other sales were a mixture of one bedroom/lofts, 2 bedroom/lofts and a larger, 1100-1200 square foot 2 bedroom plan.

In 2005, the one bedroom/one bath units sold in a range between $174,900 and $189,000. In 2006 that range went from $189,000 to $247,500. It increased to between $250,000 and $266,000 in 2007, and in 2008 jumped further, to $262,500 and $277,500. In three years, the increase in this size condo…….

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?   It is!  But if sales had been any less than they were last year, we would have really been in a world of hurt.  In February 2009, we had just 28 residential real estate sales in all of Summit County Colorado!  Compare that to 103 in February of 2008 and 122 […]

To most of the people looking on our website for real estate in Summit County, Colorado, photos are of prime importance. The majority of our Buyers are from elsewhere, and they do their preliminary research online. We take care that our listings have good photos. Meredith, our marketing manager, will often straighten up prior to taking photographs so that the home will present as well as possible. Here you see some before and after photos of a studio that was staged by a client of ours. She did a great job, especially considering it was only a one room condo.

The importance of good photos was brought home to me today as I was looking through a New Zealand real estate website seeing what the price of real estate is there. I was born there, and still have a lot of family there. We go back frequently, and as we get older we think it would be nice to have a place there that my sister and brother and I could take turns using when we are off season here.

I found a home that at first glance looked good for the money, but as I looked through the photos, I couldn’t help but wonder why the Listing Broker would post some of them online! The boy’s bedroom is obviously a teenager’s bedroom, with the….

Sales taxes must be collected when you rent your condo yourself.  Many towns, strapped for cash to provide services for their citizens, are looking for owners who rent their homes and condos but don’t collect or report sales tax.  A recent article in the Denver Post highlighted the problem in Crested Butte and other resort towns, including Breckenridge. 

Under-the-radar renters […]

Today a Lagoon homeowner contacted me, asking for information about what her condo might be worth in today’s market.  She has a large, two bedroom unit and she wondered about the feasibility of turning her dining area into a bedroom as some other owners have done.  A three bedroom condo is always worth more than a […]