The good, the bad and the ugly - November market stats Roaring Fork valley real estate

As the real estate market is cooling down nationwide due to a rapid increase in interest rates, the Roaring Fork valley local market seems to be leveling off so far, showing resiliency in some areas, and pain in others.

Roaring Fork valley real estate market November 2022 — *Stats credit: Colorado Association of Realtors*

The good.

Sales volume continues to shrink, preventing prices from falling despite the increasing cost of financing (interest rates). The market is asleep: transaction volume is historically low and we see very few new listings coming to the market, though some of this low volume can be attributed to the seasonal slowdown.

The bad.

Inventory is up, and it takes longer for a property to sell. On average 26% longer than last year. You should take this with a grain of salt: last year’s number of days on the market was so low, 26% more is only a 10 days difference. We are now at 48 days on the market, which is still very low and still is the sign of a seller’s market. A balanced market is considered to have 4 to 6 months worth of inventory available, our market is now at 2.7 months. Nonetheless, the extremely fast pace seems to be behind us.

The ugly.

Affordability is absolutely crushed. Interest rates went up and prices did not adjust accordingly. The lack of affordable housing is a problem that’s here to stay in our valley. The cost of construction only allows high-end construction to make sense. The non existence of buildable land makes the problem worse.

Summary

As long as the inventory remains low, there is no reason for prices to drop. What we are seeing now is a tiny amount of new listings and buyers taking more time to pull the trigger and but ultimately figuring out how to make it work at today’s price and interest rates. People still want to live here, they can only afford so much though. Buyer’s psychology has also changed and they have become more careful. The fear of missing out is gone. Therefore prices are leveling off. They remain elevated despite the headwinds. There is still a lot of money out there!

It’s worth noting that the spread between the average sale price and the median sale price is large. It goes to show that wealthy buyer (with more cash available) are still comfortably acquiring expensive properties, while the lower end of the price range, where buyer need more financing, is struggling due to higher cost of borrowing.

Headline numbers:

The median sale price in Silt approaches $700k. The dynamic pushing the buyers down valley for lack of affordability is still in effect.
Both the median and average sale price in Glenwood Springs are above $1,000,000.
After a couple of exuberant months when the median and average sale price in Carbondale were around the $3,000,000 mark, they came back down to the $1.1m to $1.3m range. In a scenario where Glenwood is around a million, it would make sense for Carbondale to level off $100k to $300k above, at the current price point. The $3,000,000 barely seem to be sustainable.

I apologize if the up valley (Basalt to Aspen) numbers are not reported in the post. A change of staff in the Aspen board of Realtor seem to have caused problems for getting those this month… I’m still working on them and will update this article as soon as they come available.