The blistering pace of real estate sales is continuing in Colorado’s high country, with every resort community setting new records in each month this year.
“It’s been crazy,” Crested Butte broker Frank Konsella said, “way past everything in 2019 and 2020.”
Last year saw record numbers of home buyers paying highest-ever prices for properties in and around resort towns. In eight Western Slope counties anchored by resorts last year, $6.6 billion traded hands through August as buyers flocked to mountain communities during the pandemic.
Through August this year, Land Title Guarantee Co. has tracked $11.2 billion in sales volume in those counties, a 71% percent increase over 2020. With four months left in the year, sales volume in resort counties in 2021 has already surpassed the total sales of 2019 by more than $2 billion.
Prices keep climbing too, with most resort areas seeing the average and median prices for single homes this year increasing 10% to 30% over 2020. And that pressure is forcing record numbers of buyers into long overlooked areas of Colorado.
The real estate growth in “down valley” ’burbs — think Basalt and Carbondale downstream from Aspen, or Eagle down from Vail, or Ridgway down the hill from Telluride — has been strong for more than a decade as more buyers seek homes outside, but near, pricey resort towns. With the explosion of mountain real estate in 2020 and 2021, that down-valley growth has moved even further down the road. Call it the down, down valley.
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