Sales up 89% for Summit County real estate – Feb 2010

Mar 6, 2010 | No Responses

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 in February 2007.  This year, 2010, we had 53 sales in February.  That was a huge increase over the year prior, but still only about half of the sales in the same month in other years. 

2009 ended with total sales of 917 units, down 24% from 2008, which was down 43% from 2007.  Compared to the peak year, 2006, we were off by 63%.  Any increases from now on will be greeted with cheering and joy, not only from the entire real estate community,  but from all the owners of homes and condos here in this beautiful resort area. 

Predictions are tough to make this early in the year.   They are nothing more than a hopeful guess.  However,  we can base them on activity levels and the number of people who seem to be looking for property.  Those numbers are up, and  I would think that perhaps we could increase by about 30% and match 2008 at around 1200 sales.  That would still be down 50% from the peak years of 2005 and 2006, so it isn’t overly optimistic.  Today we have more than 1500 homes and condos for sale, just slightly under the number we had at the same time last year.  Listing season is just getting started, and by spring we will probably have around 1700 units or more.  In 2009 our inventory peaked at just about 2100 listings in July.  Many of those homes didn’t sell and were removed from the market.  I look for them to come back on again this spring and summer, and it would not surprise me if  our inventory peaks at an even higher number.  If so, it will hold prices down.  If Buyers stay away, prices will continue to drop. 

With more interest from Buyers and investors,  if consumer confidence levels rise a little and banks are willing to lend more easily on condominiums, the market will move up.  Consumer confidence levels will probably rise before banks loosen their lending policies!  It is doubtful the market is going to come back quickly but perhaps the downward trend is ending at least.  We can hope!  It seems as though our readers agree that the return to “normalcy” as we once knew it, will take a while.  The poll numbers in the right sidebar show that most people think it will take two years or more.