Hugh Carey / hcarey@summitdaily.com
FRISCO — Summit County homeowners can breathe a sigh of relief as the real estate numbers are back up for the month of August. After a slow July — with the number of home sales, total sales volume and luxury home sales all lower than July 2018 — August is showing an increase on all metrics compared with August 2018.
Breckenridge continues to lead the pack in sales, making up 28% of the total transaction volume for Summit County and seeing an increase in the average price of single-family homes of 36% year-to-date, according to Land Title Guarantee Co.’s August 2019 Summit County market analysis.
Breckenridge isn’t the only area in Summit County with increasingly higher prices. Montezuma typically has some of the lower prices in the county, but the price of the average single-family home shot up 39% this year through August.
Summit Association of Realtors President Thomas Coolidge attributed this to the limited amount of inventory in Montezuma, where a few home sales can make a significant change to the area’s average sales price.
One price that is going down is the average cost of vacant land, which has decreased as much as 62% so far this year.
“Vacant land is the first to be affected and the last to take off,” Coolidge said in reference to how vacant land sales are impacted by the local housing market.
Since vacant land is more of a long-term project for a buyer than purchasing a home, Coolidge said people want to have a solid plan when they buy vacant real estate. People don’t want to be sitting on vacant land if there does happen to be a downturn in the economy, he said.
As for the overall outlook for the county’s real estate, Coolidge is optimistic.
“We’re going to maintain a strong outlook, and we’re maintaining a strong economy for the foreseeable future, short of something that is unforeseen,” Coolidge said. “Over this year, with all the noise that we’ve seen in the White House and with Congress, both the real estate market and the stock market has kind of shrugged and said, ‘It’s going to be fine; we’re going to be fine.’”
Coolidge said the Summit Association of Realtors is feeling confident in the current and near future real estate market all while keeping an eye on what could affect real estate locally and nationally. He pointed out that the county really isn’t seeing people move away, as the main issue continues to be getting local employees into affordable housing.
Additionally, Coolidge pointed out that Summit County doesn’t always follow national trends in terms of real estate, as can be seen in Land Title’s historical analysis. From 2011 to 2017, the real estate market has gone back and forth every year when it comes to increases in gross volume of real estate sales.
For example, from 2011 to 2012, gross volume increased by 7%, while from 2012 to 2013, gross volume increased by 30%, only to be followed by a 1% increase the next year, 37% from 2014 to 2015 and so on. This trend has continued, more or less, with the exception of 2018 to 2019, which remained at 5% increase in gross volume, which was the same increase shown from 2017 to 2018.
In order to wrap your head around Summit County real estate trends as a person who simply wants to sell their home, Coolidge recommends talking to someone who has watched these trends for years.
“If any person is interested in real estate in our market I absolutely urge them to work with a professional (Summit Association of Realtors) broker who is highly educated and well versed on the history of our local economy,” Coolidge wrote in an email.