Park City area 2013 single-family home and condominium sales results were released by the Park City Board of Realtors last Friday and the trends appear to be moving in a positive direction.
"Finishing 2013 with a total of 2,230 sales, the Park City area real estate market is up 22% over 2012 and double the number of the market low in 2009," the Board's press release stated. "Property prices show a steady appreciation of 7% over last year and demand is strong for all property types selling in both the high and low price ranges."
Inventory is at an all-time low. The Board reported 1,981 active listings in the greater Park City area (which includes the Heber Valley, Oakley and Kamas), down 46 percent from the "high mark of 3,684 in July of 2008."
The Board has only been tracking inventory numbers since 2007, but still describes the current number as "shocking."
Greater sale prices are not yet necessarily accompanying the reduced inventory, however.
"Supply and demand, you would assume that because the supply is so low the prices would be going up, and we really haven't seen that," Marcie Davis, the Board's new president, told The Park Record. "They've gone up a bit and they're starting to move up, but you wouldn't say that the entire market is up a whole heck of a lot."
With respect to the length of time homes are taking to sell (the "absorption rate"), the Board reported an average of 7.4 months.
It stated that this figure "varies widely by property type and neighborhood," and noted that Silver Springs and Summit Park homes averaged only 1.45 and 2.07 months on the market, respectively.
Old Town was singled out as being a particularly active area for sales in 2013, "averaging about one sale every five days," with a median price of $912,500 for single-family homes and $380,000 for condos -- 14 and 17 percent increases over the prior year, respectively.
The Jordanelle area was singled out as being "flat" in total sales "and actually saw a 12% decrease in price to $660,000," the Board reports. However, that area did have the "highest spike" in the number of vacant land sales, more than double than in 2012. The Heber and Kamas Valleys also saw increases in vacant land sales. "With reduced inventory and increased sales in Summit County, buyers naturally branch out for better prices. Wasatch County saw a lot of activity in 2013," Davis said.
Distressed sales have declined to the point where "they are no longer a factor in our market," the Board stated, reporting 3.4 percent of total sales as distressed in the last quarter of 2013, down 13 percent from the same period in 2012 and 31 percent from 2011.
Though the overall trends are showing a market on the upswing, Davis stops short of making any bold predictions for 2014. "As I say to my clients, my crystal ball is broken," she said. "It's really tough, it depends. I mean, the [stock] market went down how many points [Monday]? All of that is going to have an effect. So for us to try and say what we think the market is going to be, you just don't know.
"I do think that Park City is now on everybody's radar, where I think years ago it was not."
Median price of all units sold in the greater Park City area:
- 2007: $540,000
- 2008: $480,000
- 2009: $411,000
- 2010: $398,000
- 2011: $350,000
- 2012: $395,000
- 2013: $409,000
Data from Park City Board of Realtors
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