Bryce Martin / bmartin@skyhinews.com
Coming off rising housing prices and a strong summer of sales, Grand County’s real estate is showing signs the market could begin to level off.
Data from the Grand County Board of Realtors shows that from June to September listing volumes and sale prices have grown over last year in all types of units, from single family homes to condos and townhomes.
Carrie George, a real estate agent at Keller Williams Top of the Rockies Real Estate, noted that her summer started strong, but those months could signal the market has peaked this year.
“I do feel we have peaked in terms of prices and volume,” George said. “Historically, for me personally, September has always been my busiest month in terms of closing, so I would say it’s not typical that we have a peak at the beginning of the summer and then taper off.”
Compared to last year, August saw drastically fewer new listings for single family homes but a 61% increase in newly listed condos and townhomes.
Carrie Flynn, a real estate agent with Real Estate of Winter Park, said recent housing developments in Winter Park and Fraser, along with investments at Winter Park Resort, have excited potential buyers, and condos remain one of her most popular products.
“I think we’re still moving upwards,” Flynn said of the Fraser Valley market. “It’s not homogenous here. We don’t have a market that’s cookie-cutter.”
On the other side of the county, George has noticed condos are still a hot product that doesn’t stay on the market long, but the biggest demand right now is for affordable housing.
“Anything that is going to be owner-occupied or a local is a product that we’re still seeing quite a bit of action on,” she said.
On that front, the tides may be turning. George has seen housing prices begin to level off with data showing a slowing in the upward trend of average sales prices.
Last year, average sales prices were up 15% for townhomes, 24% for condos and 10% for single family homes. This year average sales prices have only increased 7% for townhomes, 2% for condos and 5% for single family homes.
However, Flynn noted that the buyer demand is still higher than the number of available properties, which she suspects means the market will stay favorable for sellers.
Also, Grand County appears to have some advantages over its neighbors. Both George and Flynn said they had a number of clients over the summer who originally looked at purchasing property in Summit County, but landed in Grand because it’s still more attainable and less crowded than other resort communities.
“There’s a lot of pent up buyer demand out there,” Flynn said. “The entire county has been experiencing a lot of growth in general.”
Looking to the future, George expects another unusual year in 2020, but not for the same reasons as this year.
“Typically, when we get to presidential election years, they can be really strange for real estate,” she explained. “It has people on edge. They don’t want to make any decisions until they know who the president is going to be and we’ve got to wait until November.”