#Summit County #Colorado
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| Summit Daily |
Capping off a blockbuster summer for Summit County's real estate sales was the most active month so far this year.
Summer is always the strongest time of the year for real estate sales in the High Country, but the number of transactions and volume of sales for August absolutely blew the roof off just about everything else on record.
For example, August 2017 was an exceptionally strong month for property sales as well, but this August crushed it with the number of transactions, overall sales volume, most expensive sale and number of luxury homes sold all vastly exceeding what they were the same month a year ago.
"It's almost like every month continues to get better," said Dennis Clauer, broker and owner of Real Estate of the Summit, referencing the county's continuously improving statistics for sales volume and value added on Summit County properties.
Records at the Summit County assessor's office show 317 property transactions worth over $235 million in August. Compare that to August 2017, when the assessor had 265 sales for $163 million on file, and it shows just how big the month was for the real estate market, which has been consistently breaking records since emerging from the recession.
According to Slifer Smith and Frampton Real Estate's monthly report, August was the most active month so far this year with 199 residential transactions alone worth $172 million combined.
The month also saw more luxury housing sales — defined as any home sold at or over $1 million — than any other month in Summit County history with 54. It should be noted Slifer Smith and Frampton, like other real estate firms, tracks the market with MLS data, which doesn't always match perfectly with local property records. Still, both are highly reliable methods to track market trends.
It's not terribly hard to track the luxury housing record because the county previously broke it in July. Slifer Smith and Frampton noted in its latest report that one out of every five transactions in Summit County this year has been for a luxury home.
The most expensive housing sale in August was for a 3,729-square-foot, five-bedroom home with 6.5 bathrooms in Breckenridge's Timber Trail subdivision, which went for $4.5 million. However, a little over three acres of grazing land along the Green Mountain Reservoir sold for $6.6 million, marking the month's most expensive property sale.
Additionally, year-to-date residential sales volume is over $800 million for the second time after barely eclipsing $600 million in 2016, according to Slifer Smith and Frampton. Sales volume, residential volume, land transactions and $1 million-plus sales are all up anywhere from 3 to 12 percent.
However, the available inventory remains extremely low with 533 residential property listings and 734 listings for land and residential properties across Summit County, which Slifer Smith and Frampton says is "the lowest in the last decade for September."
Additionally, the number of days the average home spends on the market is at an all-time low while the average sales price and price per square foot are at all-time highs.
Because sales can take a little while to be recorded, Summit's hot summer of housing sales should continue showing up on the monthly sales reports through September before slowing down in October as the county begins to enter one of the slowest times of year for the market. Still, Clauer sees no signs of a slowdown outside regular market trends.
"I don't want to sound like a broken record, but as the Dow Jones Industrial Average approaches the 27,000-point mark, there's been a tremendous amount of wealth created over the last couple years and people are spreading money around (by investing in real estate)," Clauer said, adding that with those profits, more people have the ability to invest in the higher-end market and many sellers, and even buyers, have benefited greatly from that.
