April Ernemann Report
The Aspen Snowmass real estate market is on the move…although not everything continues to trend upward, most notably the pace of sales has started to show the first signs of slowing since July 2020. Here are a few observations from the front lines through the end of the first quarter this year:
- Overall listing inventory is down about 60-65% compared to this same time last year in Aspen Snowmass (and last year was down significantly compared to the year prior).
- This doesn’t necessarily mean there’s “nothing to sell” – for sure it’s slim pickings out there, but the lower inventory levels are accompanied by much shorter average days on market (new listings are selling in 1/3-1/2 the time they used to take to sell).
- The highest priced sale of the year was $50m (the second ever $50m+ sale in our market) and that same home sold for just over $30m only a few months ago – I see two trends here, the first being an increasing acceptance of higher priced sales in our area; the second being an increase in properties selling and then selling again for a substantial increase in a fairly short time period (this happened a lot in 2006-2008).
- Now that we are almost two full years into the accelerated market that began after the initial COVID lockdown it’s becoming clear the current price increases are not sustainable over the long term – on average prices have been increasing about 20%+/- per year for the past 2+ years (and about 15%+/- per year over the past 5 years). At some point price increases will need to slow substantially, it’s not sustainable to have home prices double every 5 years indefinitely.
- Overall transaction volume is down about 25%-50% depending on the neighborhood/price point/property type compared to the first quarter of 2021, yet sales dollar volume is up (or at least down less than the number of transactions, depending on the location). It’s important to know when you are talking about the market going “up” if you are referring to the number of sales, sales dollar volume, prices, etc.