In this episode, I cover some trends in real estate nationally, statewide, and in Summit County. Wondering how real estate is looking? Wondering if prices are dropping? Listen in.

Then we dive into 4 deals that we’ve found for our clients, and where we’re seeing the best deals in Summit County.

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Welcome to Mountain Real Estate, where we bring you the latest insights on real estate from Denver to Summit County, Colorado. I’m your host, Candice De, a realtor, investor, engineer, mom, and Colorado native.

Today I am going to give an update on our current trends in both Summit County, Colorado and nationally. And then I’m going to dive into a couple of deals that we’re seeing in Summit County recently. So we’ll start with the market trends.

Prices Continue to Climb

So nationally, we’re seeing prices still continue to go up. They’re not going up very quickly, but they’re still in the net positive direction. And for reference, there were less than 5 million homes sold in 2023, which was the lowest sales volume on record since 1995. So we’ve definitely seen things slow, but we’re not seeing that price impact just yet. We are seeing inventory building, and it is less of a seller’s market. In some neighborhoods, it’s even shifting to a buyer’s market. And that’s where there’s more than six months of inventory. In the new build market across the country, we are seeing prices softening and we expect them to continue to be softening Q4.

Improving Affordability

The trend that we’re seeing in these new builds is to build smaller homes to improve affordability. We think as there’s more homes supply in that new build market and these smaller homes, we’re going to see minimal price growth in this area.

Interest Rates

When we talk about interest rates, we’re anticipating the rates to drop in Q4, but so far every time we see rates drop, they kind of bounce back depending on what the Fed does. But as we see markets slow down over the election time and over the holidays, we anticipate rates to go down. What this has been reflected in recently is mortgage applications are 40% below the nine-year average. The nine-year average takes out those market cycles, and we’re still seeing that we’re way below that average in mortgage applications, which is an indication of buyer demand. Those are the national trends.

Colorado Real Estate Trends

Now, we’re going to jump into Colorado trends. In general, we’re seeing the market slow similar to those national trends. So what that means is if you’re a seller, make sure your home is ready for a parade and that it’s perfect. We’re seeing a lot of properties stay longer on the market and we’re seeing some price drops. We’re also seeing condos get hit even harder because of high insurance and high HOA dues and mortgage rates just making the affordability of condos even harder. So we’re seeing condo, the condo prices softening, single-family homes. We’re still seeing a slight appreciation, but because Colorado population growth is slowing. We don’t anticipate seeing that same level of appreciation that we saw over the past few years. We anticipate it being a little bit slower than what we have seen.

Summit County Real Estate Trends

Now moving to Summit County, a couple interesting tidbits. A year to date through September of 2024, we’ve closed 763 transactions. In all of 2023, there were 742 transactions. So we’re trending higher than last year. but it still feels slow because when we compare those numbers to 2022, there were 922 transactions. So we’re 150 transactions lower than we were a couple of years ago, which is leading to some price reductions. So we’re seeing an average of 2.5% discount off the list price. So we’re seeing some price reductions, but the median sales price is still… within $15,000 of what it was in September of 2023. So we are slightly under our median sales price at this time last year, but in general, looking over month to month throughout the year, we’re fairly steady over an average. And when we compare these prices of feeling like $15,000 under, since from the last year, we compare it to four years ago and in 2020, September, right before things started picking up, the average price or the median sales price in Summit County was 680,000. So we obviously saw a big jump during the COVID years. And even though we’re not seeing that same appreciation, we’re still, our prices are still fairly flat. We haven’t seen those big drops that the media is portraying. So those are the market trends.

And now I’m gonna jump into a couple of deals that we’re seeing in Summit County. So we’re not seeing overall prices drop, which means there’s still some demand. And some of that is because almost half of our deals that have closed this year have been cash. So regardless of those macroeconomic factors and the mortgage rates, we’re still seeing that demand, but we are still seeing some deals.

So I’m gonna go through five different or four different properties that we’ve helped our clients secure that were good deals.

So first I’m gonna compare some list price per square foot numbers. And when we look at the Frisco median list price per square foot, the median is $765 per square foot. In other areas, we see it over a thousand in some of our new builds, we’re still seeing it over a thousand in Summit County. But our average in Frisco right now is 765.

So the first property I’m gonna talk about is at Hon Drive in Frisco. And that one are… It really needed a lot of updates, but our clients secured that at 83% of the list price. So they were over $175,000 below that list price. And their price per square foot was $542 per square foot. That compares with the Frisco median of 765. So in properties like this where it needs updating, there’s a lot of deferred maintenance, there’s a lot smaller buyer pool and we’re seeing really good deals on those types of properties. Another one, we saw a townhome that our buyers got 2.5% off the list price. So not as significant, but it was already a low list price. So they ended up at $629 per square foot. So it’s a big townhome, it is connected. But there were some opportunities to add some outdoor space. So there’s some value add potential here and it’s a lower price point. So that one was a good purchase for our buyers.

The next one I’m gonna talk about is a condo in Keystone this time. So this one, our buyers are under contract for $700,000. And the most recent comp that sold last week was at $872,000. So that’s a delta of 175,000 within the same building. And there are some slight upgrades in views, but this one is a great deal just with motivated sellers.

And then one more I’m gonna cover is another motivated seller. We have some buyers under contract in Breckenridge for a home that is under contract for $600,000 less than the previous purchase. So the previous owner bought it in 2021 at the peak of the market. And we saw this property come on and snagged it up. pretty quickly because it’s a great lot, a great property, and the seller is motivated. So our buyers were able to get a really good deal on this one.

So these are a couple of the deals that we’re seeing and where we’re kind of focusing our clients. All of these had negotiations during inspection, which we’re not used to over the last couple of years during COVID, but we are still able to negotiate during the contracting process, as well as getting low prices during. that offer phase. So those are a couple of deals we’re seeing and some market trends for this month.

Thanks for joining us today on Mountain Real Estate. I’m Candice De. If the mountains are calling you, reach out to me. See you next time.