A Buyer’s Market in Crested Butte?

Hello from Crested Butte,

Buyer’s Market (n.): A buyer’s market is one in which there are too many homes on the market for the number of buyers. Homes take longer to sell and prices fall creating a condition favorable to the buyer.

By definition it may be easy to pin the buyer’s market distinction on Crested Butte real estate. Days-on-market is high, inventories are flush with offerings, the number of transactions is low and now we are seeing asking prices drop. But, is all of this translating into real estate bargains?

If you are shopping ski area condos or vacant land you are going to get a deal. No doubt, it is a buyer’s market. With big inventory levels and flat demand great deals are happening. In some cases, we’ve returned to pre-Mueller era pricing for Mt. Crested Butte condos and on home site parcels in places like Crested Butte South, Buckhorn Ranch and today a parcel on the 12th hole at the Crested Butte Country Club was lowered to $250,000!

But there may be reason to put an asterisk next to our buyer’s market distinction. Single family homes, an important anchor segment of any real estate market, appear to be holding their value and demand is shifting for more expensive properties. Just last week, a 1721 sq. ft., single family home in the town of Crested Butte, sold for $900,000 (that’s $523/sft)! And, if you review the last 4 years of home sales, some interesting facts stand out. A key metric, the median sales price for single family homes in Crested Butte, Mt Crested Butte and Crested Butte South reached a 48-month high by the end of 2008.

The median sales price is the middle price point where 50% of homes sold are above this mark and the other 50% sold fall below. This is a better metric to determine a market’s overall condition versus the average sales price metric where a few multi-million home sales can skew the data.

The graph below demonstrates that in spite of decreasing transaction levels from 2005 to 2008, and increasing days on market, the median sales price of single family homes in our market rose almost $250,000 per sale!

Channing Boucher
Visit My Crested Butte Real Estate Guide