March Market Summary - by Shanna Lalley

I would like to say the Winter Park area real estate market is finally above the bottom, but we still have a little ways to go before we recoup pre-recession prices. Real estate along Colorado's front range really sky-rocketed in 2015 with unprecedented sales numbers, sales price increases and multiple offer situations. Grand County hasn't seen those major increases, but we have witnessed some incredible growth for us and more multiple offer situations as our inventory tightened up this past fall. Grand County had 500 real estate sales during 2015. This is the highest number of sales ever in the County ahead of 448 sales in 2007. 2015 ended with the total sales volume in Grand County at $206.3 million, just a tad shy of the high sales volume in 2007 of $222.8 million; I suspect that 2016 will surpass this. The highest annual average sales price for Grand County was $497,329 (in 2007) while the average sales price in 2015 was $412,634. I dont think the 2016 average sales price will exceed 2007 but with a lot of new construction in the $400k to $500k range we could come close. This new construction pricing will also put upward pressure on the prices of lower-end resales such as Hi Country Haus & Meadow Ridge. Some other fun statistics that bode well for Winter Park and Fraser: Taxable sales for the Town Winter Park were up a total of 6% over December 2014 and finished out strong with a Year to Date growth of 13% over 2014 Compared to the same month in 2014, December lodging occupancy rates were up 7.6% and January was up 7% And the craziest number of all...drum roll please...2015 summer occupancy was up 31.6% over 2014! Check out this Winter Park map detailing all of the exciting new development currently in the works. This Denver Post article does a great job of reporting on all of the exciting things happening in Grand County.