#Summit County #Colorado
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| Michael Yearout Photography |
Always one of the best months for property sales in Colorado's High Country, July saw a wildly high number of luxury homes change hands in Summit County's explosive real estate market.
Defined as any home sold at or above $1 million, luxury housing sales boosted the overall real estate sales volume to more than $150 million, a $5.2 million increase over July 2017 and $46.1 million ahead of July 2016, according to property records at Summit County Assessor's Office.
Summit's top three sales were for single-family homes in Breckenridge, with homes slopeside at Copper Mountain and along a Keystone golf course rounding out the five most expensive sales of the month.
The most expansive lot sold last month with a luxury home on it was a 40-acre parcel with a four-bedroom, five-bathroom, 4,400-square-foot house north of Silverthorne that went for $1.02 million. At the same time, four condos closed at over $1 million each in July, including one at Copper Mountain, two in Breckenridge and another off of Main Street Frisco that sold for just shy of $2 million.
The most expensive housing sale of the month — and the year, for that matter — was for a five-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom, single-family home at 142 Penn Lode Drive in Breckenridge's Shock Hill neighborhood. The 5,069-square-foot home went for $4.7 million. At the base of Breckenridge Ski Resort, Shock Hill consistently has some of Summit's most pricey homes.
"July alone produced $147 million in residential volume, an astounding 57 percent increase over last July," notes the Slifer Smith & Frampton real estate firm in its July market report, attributing the increase in July's sales volume to a record number of luxury homes closing during the month.
Additionally, the assessor's office most recent monthly sales report has 38 $1 million-plus sales on record for July. However, three luxury home sales were turned into the office on June 29, a Friday, and more than one local real estate firm has put the number of luxury homes closing in July at 41.
Because many local firms use Multiple Listing Services data, the recorded sales don't always line up perfectly with the assessor's office, though both are viewed as highly reliable methods for tracking trends in the industry.
According to the Association of Colorado Realtors, which also uses MLS data, of the 58 single-family homes that sold this July in Summit County, the median sales price was just over $1 million, up 17.8 percent from July 2017, while the average sales price was $1.3 million, up 33.7 from the same month a year ago.
For Summit's townhomes and condos, the median and average sale prices were $495,000 and $600,229 respectively, which both increased by just under one-third compared to July 2017.
Meanwhile, the average number of days a home spent on the market in Summit County was down 14 percent and the inventory of available homes for sale was down a whopping 37.8 percent.
Across the state, the Colorado Association of Relators found the number of homes pending sale or under contract in July was up 6.4 percent compared to July 2017. However, the number of listings sold was down 3 percent with a median sales price of $390,000.
Nationally, July brought more of the same with a 0.7 percent decrease in sales, according to the National Association of Realtors. While the median sales price is up 4.5 percent year over year, existing-home sales have subsided nationally for the fourth straight month, reaching their slowest pace in more than two years.
Looking at the industry by region, existing-home sales dropped in the Northeast (8.3 percent), Midwest (1.6 percent) and South (0.4 percent).
Only the West, where existing-home sales rose 4.4 percent, bucked the downward trend. Still, sales in the West remain 4 percent behind where they were at this time a year ago.
With July's decline, real estate sales now have fallen across the U.S. on an annual basis for five straight months.
The association's chief economist, Lawrence Yun, attributes the dip in sales to continuously rising prices, which have been especially hard on first-time homebuyers, cutting into demand.
"Led by a notable decrease in closings in the Northeast, existing home sales trailed off again last month, sliding to their slowest pace since February 2016 at 5.21 million," he said in a statement. "Too many would-be buyers are either being priced out, or are deciding to postpone their search until more homes in their price range come onto the market."
Nationwide, the median existing-home price for all housing types in July was $269,600, up 4.5 percent from July 2017 and marking the 77th consecutive month of year-over-year gains.
Realtors are reporting that buyers are swiftly snatching up moderately priced properties as the inventory remains low and new home construction has not kept up, Yun said.
