Tim Bradley, CCIM Jackson Hole, WY Commercial Real Estate

As a mountain resort town, Jackson Hole has a high cost of living. It's expensive to live here, primarily because housing is (or was) so expensive, and because you can't actually grow food here. We do brew really good beer though. But I digress.

My last blog rambled a bit about hitting cats with a dead Realtor® and about how easy that was here, because there are so many of us. But why are there so many? Is it something in the water?

Word on the street is that it's an easy living. And with a median home price north of $1,200,000 in 2010 (less for condos and vacant lots), it's true that the average sale is going to make good money for that hard working Realtor.

But how many sales are there in a year? And how many agents are there? Hmmmm. Let's look.

The number of licensed agents in Jackson Hole more than tripled from January 1996 to January 2008. The number of sales doubled over that time frame, which means that each agent was making fewer sales. Then....well, we know what happened then. The banking system collapsed, and real estate transactions stopped dead in the water.

Since 2008, there have been fewer sales each year in this market than there are agents! Ouch.

And when you consider that the 20/80 rule is at work here (20% of the agents making 80% of the deals), I expect we've still got quite a few agents who will exit the business in the next couple of years. That's tough.

How's your market look?

I've been hearing how easy it is to hit a Realtor® by swinging a dead cat, so I thought I'd do a little research. I couldn't find a source that tracked dead cats, so I focused on the number of Realtors instead. In Hawaii, there's a licensed Realtor for every 161 people, but in West Virginia you'd need to whack 648 people with that cat to be sure you hit a Realtor.

I looked up the stats for my local market, Jackson Hole, WY, and WOW! Just over 400 licensed Realtors belong to the local board, and the year-round population here is just 20,000. That works out to be one Realtor per 50 people in Jackson Hole, WY! It was even worse in 2008, when there were some 1,000 licensed agents, making the ratio an astounding 1 Realtor per 20 people. One in Twenty. Think about it. Now that's competition.

Or is it? 60% of those agents have disappeared in the past two years, as the real estate market collapsed. How much business did they really do? How many were part timers, listing only family property, or getting a license because the business seemed so easy?

What does your market look like?

How many antlers does it take to make one of the Antler Arches on the Jackson Hole town square?

The Town Square has an antler arch on each of its four corners, which have served as the backdrop for countless photographs taken by visitors to Jackson Hole. We get an estimated 3,000,000 visitors each year, and I'll bet that half of them stop for a photograph in front of the arches before they head over to the Cowboy Bar for another photo op on a saddle at the bar.

The arches were built around 1950, and have slowly deteriorated. Over the past three years, two of the arches have been taken down and rebuilt with fresh antlers, and today, work crews were dismantling the third arch on the northeast corner of the square. The Rotary Club of Jackson Hole has undertaken the herculean task of raising the money and collecting the antlers necessary for the work. Thank you Rotary!

How many antlers does it take? Well, this arch will require 10,000 pounds of antlers. Work will begin next week reassembling the arch, and don't worry, no elk were harmed in the process. Elk naturally shed their antlers early each winter. These antlers mostly came from the National Elk Refuge just to the north of Jackson.

That's right, the foreclosure does not necessarily wipe out a lien for unpaid HOA dues. I didn't know that, and apparently, neither did Bank of America.

Here's the story. I represent a buyer for a house in Melody Ranch, Jackson Hole, WY. The seller is Bank of America, who acquired the house via foreclosure a few months ago. The previous homeowner quit paying their homeowner's association (HOA) dues months before the foreclosure, and the HOA placed a lien on the property for the unpaid dues. After the lien was filed, the bank foreclosed.

My buyer put the property under contract, and the title company prepared the closing statement. The title commitment showed the HOA lien as an encumbrance, and the closing statement showed that the seller would have to pay the amount of the lien, just under $1000. Bank of America (Seller) protested the charge, saying that their foreclosure should have wiped out the HOA lien, since the Bank of America mortgage was a first lien, and predated the HOA lien. Seemed reasonable to me.

BUT, buried in the Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CCRs) for Melody Ranch was a paragraph that asserts that any lien placed by the HOA will be a superior lien to any mortgage lien placed on the property AFTER THE DATE OF THE CCRs. Who knew you could do that?

So our closing was supposed to be last Friday, and the lawyers have been arguing about this for a week. The attorney for the homeowner's association is very confident the lien must be paid, and has been down this road before, so I believe him.

It makes me wonder how many lenders read the CCRs before they make a loan, and if they would agree to make that loan if they knew their loan would be subordinate to the HOA dues.

Except that the seller, a bank, decided at 4pm to contest the lien placed on the property by the homeowners association. The bank foreclosed on the property 5 months ago, and the lien has been on the property since foreclosure. Why did they wait until 4pm on the day of closing? Who knows. The title company says it's a valid lien, and the treasurer of the HOA confirmed the amount, again, today.

Sigh.

Perhaps we'll close on Monday. My buyer remained in good spirits. He is getting a GREAT deal on the house, so I suppose it comes with some hiccups...