Summit County real estate took a major tumbled in June when compared with the year ago month. Dollar volume declined 13 percent to $113 million and transaction volume was off 16% with 220 sales. However, things aren’t as bad as those numbers may imply as the year ago period was a blockbuster month having registered gains of 86 percent and 69 percent in dollars and transactions respectively. Even with the decline from 2015, the 2016 figures showed a 62 percent gain in dollars and 42 percent increase in transactions over the 2014 levels.
The average year to date selling price for a single family home in the county held fairly steady versus May at just short of $937,000. That mark is up 8.4 percent from a year ago and up 9.4 percent from the year end figure. Multi-family properties had an average selling price of $393,575 down about 1 percent from May of this year and off about 2 percent from the 2015 year end number.
While there were a couple of sales above $3 million, the $1-3 million range was a little soft. In June, that range represented 7 percent of transaction volume versus 8.3 percent in the prior 5 months and 9.2 percent all of last year. Conversely the share of the $700,000-$1 million range was ran a couple of points ahead of last year as did the $200,000 to $300,000 range.
I have had a number of people ask me about the apparent slowdown in the higher end of the Summit County market. It would appear there are several factors contributed to the lull.
Oil and gas prices would be first on my list of causes. The dramatic drop in prices over the last several has had a significant negative impact on petroleum related investment, employment and income. Oil and gas has been a major industry for Colorado, from which half our buyers hail as well as Texas one of our largest sources of non-Colorado buyers.
A second factor is home prices. While the lower end of the market is up modestly, higher end home prices have moved up dramatically. As an example, the Highlands is the largest concentration of high end homes in the county. In 2011, the average price per square foot of a Highlands sale was $287. In 2015 that number had risen 38 percent to $397. That increase was nearly twice that of homes priced under $1 million.
A third factor is the sluggish economy. So far we are experiencing the slowest economic recovery since the great depression with 11 straight years of sub 3 percent growth for the first time ever. With the last two quarter averaging 1.2% it’s a good bet that 2016 will be sub 3 percent as well.
On top of all this we have a Presidential election with neither candidate generating overwhelming support, even within their own party.