Minus 28 degrees! That’s right, minus 28 this morning. A friend who lives west of town by the river had it at minus 33. What does that mean in Ski Town USA? Pretty much business as usual. School isn’t cancelled until the thermometer hits 40 below. Both of my girls went through the entire school system here in Steamboat and NEVER had a snow day.

The temperature on top of the gondola on Mt. Werner sat at a plus 8 degrees as of 8:00 am this morning. That is a 36 degree difference from town to the mid way point of the Steamboat Ski area. Another way to look at it would be the same difference from the temperature that water freezes to a short wearing, golf playing 68 degrees. How is this possible? It’s called a temperature inversion. Cold air is heavier and sinks down the valley walls while a layer of lighter, warmer air caps the inversion. Most people won’t believe it until they experience this phenomenon.   Alright, enough about the temperature, let’s move on to another number. 118. That is the number of inches of snow that the ski area has received to date. This pretty much puts us on par to reach our average of 350 inches of snowfall for the winter. The winter of 2007-2008 brought us our highest snowfall total of 496 inches. The interesting and forgotten number is that the Ski Area closed a week earlier than normal that year and the week following the end of the ski season we received another 60 to 70 inches which would have increased this amount dramatically. The most snow fall in one month was January 1996 where we saw 216.5 inches of snow fall.Let’s move on to 3.8%. That is the national inflation rate for 2008. 2009 actually saw a .04% decrease in inflation. Unemployment has gone from 5.8% in 2008 to 9.3% in 2009. Again on a national level existing home sales (in the millions) have increased from 4,913 in 2008 to 5,011 in 2009 with the National Association of Realtors predicting another increase in 2010 to 5,694. NAR is also predicting a 3.6% increase in cost of homes for 2010. Within the Steamboat Springs area Multiple Listing Service (MLS) we saw 427 single family home sales in 2007 down to 148 in 2009. Average price of a single family home in 2007 was around $800,000 and in 2009 was $631,000. Of course there are a myriad of reasons why there are these differences. Remember that these are only the single family homes and do not include condos, townhomes, multiplexes or fractional. Still it is always fun to look at these numbers. Numbers are what we do at Buyer’s Resource. We do it because it is fun and interesting but, most important; it’s valuable to understand the market in which we live. Of course we go into much more depth and detail but this blog is longer than anticipated already. Why not just give us a call and let us know what numbers you would like to glean and let us show you how we can put these numbers and our expertise to work for you. 

As we wrap up the Holiday season with one more big bang to go we begin to anticipate what might be in store for us in the upcoming year. Will 2010 treat us better than 2009?  Let’s take a quick review of where we stood this time last year. Interest rates on Dec. 31, 2008 for a 30 year fixed mortgage was 5% Today the rate is again at 5%. The DOW was at 8776.39, today we are at 10548.51. The S&P has jumped from 903.25 to 1,126.42 and the NASDAQ has risen from 1577.03 to 2291.28. Quite a dramatic rise when some predicted that the DOW would plummet to 6000. The question of course is; is this real? Will we see another significant drop? Oh, if I only had a crystal ball. One thing that hasn’t changed is that all of us at Buyer’s Resource remain dedicated to serving you, the buyer, with the best service, knowledge and expertise. 

 

Most economists believe that the recession has bottomed out and we are on the upswing to recovery.  Of course until unemployment drops and some of the housing inventory is absorbed we won’t be able to really claim that the economic crisis has been alleviated.

 

What does this mean to Real Estate in the Yampa Valley? Because we are, in the most part, a secondary housing market the economy that hits the rest of the nation generally lags about 6 to 12 months before hitting us. Over the past couple of decades there have been several smaller recessions that have simply missed us altogether. Of course this also means that while other markets are seeing significant signs of recovery and increased housing starts and sales we still have significant inventory hat will need to be absorbed. This is further complicated by the current lending practices toward certain product types.

 

We at Buyer’s Resource of Steamboat always seem to have our glasses half full and see 2010 as a recovery year. We believe that Steamboat Springs as a resort and as a community has a lot of upside for the future. The pressure of the Baby Boomers retiring at a pace of 4 million per year for the next 16 years will continue and more and more of these folks are active and healthy and don’t wish to spend the rest of their lives playing shuffleboard and canasta. Steamboat will remain an attractive area to move, relocate and retire to and we, as a community need to be proactive in planning for this growth.

 We hope that 2010 is a banner year for all of you. We wish you all health and happiness in the upcoming year.