August falls short of tough comparisons

Nominally, August looked like a rough month for Summit County real estate sales as transaction volume dropped 6% and dollar volume fell 16% from the year ago period. Digging a little deeper, however, shows that it wasn’t this August that was slow but last August that was so unusually strong. A year ago dollar and transaction volume rose 53% and 26% respectively in a year that saw totals increase only in the mid-teens. At $88.8 million, August 2014 sales were still 29% ahead of those of 2012 and were the third highest sales of this year dipping only modestly from the $90.7 million seen in July. Similarly, transaction volume was up 28% from 2002 and at 203 sales was the highest level of activity so far this year.
Year to date, total dollar volume is up about 5% to $546,825 while transaction volume has increased 2% to 1,141 sales.
Year to date, average selling prices (ASPs) for single family homes continued to slip from the beginning of the year hitting $770,747, essentially flat with the $770,858 of a year ago. Multi-family ASPs fared a little better rising 5.7% year-over-year to $362,167. As one might expect, the changes in ASPs are not uniform across the county particularly when one looks as ASPs per square foot. Many areas such as Blue River, Dillon Valley and Farmers Corner have seen healthy rises while some of the more remote such as Peak 7, Summit Cove and the more rural areas are flat to down.
Interestingly, the price point mix would suggest higher ASPs. Last year 54% of all sales were below $400,000 while YTD this year that number was only 49%. Conversely sales over $1 million have represented 3.5% of the transactions versus only 3% of the sales in 2013.