It is happening…and it is not!
The pace of sales has normalized, the volume of units sold has curtailed, and the aggressive list prices are being reduced, but Vail Valley’s housing market is not heading toward a recession. I waited until this point in the summer to gauge the market and report on it. What we have here is a correction.
The headlines from national media outlets have been a bit ghastly and hyperbolic. There may be some markets around the country that lose their year-over-year gains, but this is not one of them. What happens elsewhere does not exactly happen in the Vail Valley.
In May, domestic and global conditions came together to cool the overheated buyers and they swiftly stopped paying above-list price and many house hunters simply stopped house hunting...and the seller’s market dissipated. But the pendulum has not swung too far. Enough buyers have stayed in the game and not enough homeowners have chosen to sell their home. Demand is behind supply just enough to cause the sellers to become more reasonable with their list prices. And therein lies the correction.
The properties that went up for sale in late winter/spring with an aggressive markup of 5-10% above appraisal value are slowly but surely being reduced. Listings which have come online over the past month have been priced much more accurately. Newer, turn-key properties are still preferred, and the pace of those sales is still swift. Worth noting, our collective awareness of the market slowdown was well known on July 1, yet ninety-seven properties have gone under contract since then.
