Report from resort real estate markets as I attend the Resort Symposium

On Saturday I attended the Rocky Mountain Resort Alliance meeting as the representative from my Board.  Today I attended the NAR sponsored Resort Symposium in Vail, and I will be there again tomorrow.  Attending the Resort Symposium is a way to help earn yet another designation, the RSPS, which stands for Resort and Second-home Property Specialist.  I signed up for last class I need for the designation, an online course on 1031 exchanges, last January, but somehow blogging got in the way and I haven't got around to taking that last course yet! 

The RMRA affiliation and the symposium are a good way to find out what is happening in the rest of the resort market.  It seems that we are now overlapping with the people who specialize in international real estate as there is a lot of resort  development going on in Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, the Bahamas and many other similar locations.  It seemed strange to me that I would meet people from Denver who are selling Panamanian condos without being in Panama, but that seems to be a trend.  I know we have Tiffany Wilson from California in our vacation home group on AR who posts about Costa Rica and the opportunities there. 

It seems that the beach areas, especially Florida, are hurting a bit.  I attribute that to hurricanes and overbuilding with a lot of speculation.  Now that the speculators are gone prices are receding and have not hit bottom yet.  Las Vegas seems to be in the same situation, minus the hurricanes.

I talked to a lot of people in mountain areas, and they are a bright spot.  I know Summit County, Colorado, where I am, is a hot market and the other mountain areas are following suit.  The trend in the Rocky Mountain Resorts is fewer sales, primarily because of lack of inventory, and sharply appreciating prices.  Combining Park City Utah; Steamboat Springs, Colorado; Summit County, Colorado; Sun Valley Idaho; Telluride, Colorado; Teton (Jackson Hole), Wyoming; Vail, Colorado; and Whistler, BC; the average sales price of all residential units went from $646,474 in 2005 to $684,500 in 2006 and up sharply to $850,513 in 2007.  Aspen would have brought the prices up higher still, but we did not have their numbers for a portion of time these figures covered so they were not included at all.  Winter Park, Colorado and McCall, Idaho were also not included for the same reason.

Single familly homes averaged $1,285,754 in all resorts in 2007, with the highest average price in Telluride, where they jumped from $1,756,906 in 2005 to $3,261,938 in 2007!  Part of our presentation today was on affordable housing for locals, and you can see why it is an issue in these markets.  Vail's average single family home price was only $1,657,251, but that was because Vail covers a much larger area, and Telluride is very limited in its market.     

Intrawest Resorts seems to be developing everywhere!  They are in Snowmass, Winter Park, Copper Mountain, parts of Utah, California, Destin, Florida, and of course, Whistler/Blackcomb, as they get ready for the next winter Olympics.