The good news and the bad news

Eagle County real estate sales for 2008 actually were amazingly higher than one would imagine. In December alone sales were $225 million which brought the total for the year to $2.234 billion. These sales, however, are down 25% from 2007 and 19% from 2006. High end transactions?were the main force in these numbers with 71 transactions coming in at more than $5 million. New developments, fueled by the Billion Dollar Renewal of Vail, have always been a big factor in Eagle County's growth, especially over the past three years, and 2008 was no exception. In? previous years, those new projects have made up 25% of sales volume and in 08, the new construction closings accounted for 41% of volume. Those projects were The Westin with $104 million in sales, Vail Mountain View Residences with $54.8 million, Chalets at the Lodge with $143.6 million in sales and The Arrabelle with $233.5 million.

The bad news is, of course, that the number of transactions is off substantially - 1,606 in '08 compared to 2,688 in 2007 and 3,115 in 2006, and 0ver 4,000 in 2005. The trend continues when looking at this past December where only 102 transactions took place, the lowest number since 1996 when these stats were first tracked by Land Title, the source of these numbers. Now for more good news - Eagle county has been the least affected resort market compared to Pitkin, Garfield and Summit Counties. We are over double the volume of Pitkin County (only $1.3 billion), who is the next highest, and this is nearly triple that of either Routt or Garfield Counties. When you walk down the streets of Aspen these days, you can find a parking space in front of many of your favorite restaurants. And the stats show Vail is off only 20% in bookings compared to Aspen which is off 40%.

One last statistic from Land Title is the Per Single Family?Average Sales Price of all residential sales for 2008. Mainly because of the expensive new developments the Av. Single Family?Sales Price is $1,455,774 which can be compared to ten years ago in 1998 where the average was $605,340. And if you want to take a long look back, the Average SF price in 1988 was only $207,893.