Local Area And Real Estate News

Park City Real Estate Value

By Todd Anderson
Jul 28, 2009

            Pricing trends in the Park City and Deer Valley real estate market are very interesting right now. As the national economy tries to find its bottom, Park City, Utah real estate is doing the same while making an effort to prop up its values.             There has been an uptick in the sales activity recently and there is a feel within the real estate community that Buyers are coming back to the marketplace. Recent sales activity confirms the feeling. While the second quarter of 2009 shows 121 sales of land, homes and condominiums in the greater Park City area, there have been 75 closings in the last 30 days. There are some very interesting stories within the numbers here. A third of the sales were for over $1 million which goes against recent trends leaning toward "starter homes" and condominiums. Approximately 30% of the recent real estate sales in Park City and Deer Valley, Utah fall into a category of having drastically reduced prices (at least 20% from original asking price), being a distressed sale (short sales or bank owned properties), or a large variance to current asking prices for a local community.             There is a definite trend toward value no matter what price level, and in the upper most price level there is a tendency to hide sales prices in an effort to keep neighborhood values up. The top 14 sales in this recent report show 5 sales at 20% or more off their original asking price and 6 sales reporting an undisclosed sales price. Utah is a non-disclosure state which means that the sales prices are not part of the necessary data for recording a sale and the sales price is not public record (this is one of the reasons that Zillow has such poor information for Utah). The MLS systems do report sales prices, but again, it is not public record. In an effort to keep data attached to a sale, an undisclosed sales price is recorded in the MLS as 95% of the list price at the time of the sale. The inordinate number of undisclosed sales prices at the top end of the market may artificially inflate the value of these areas, but it can be argued that it is better than no record at all. The number of undisclosed sales prices at the top combined with those sales showing a 20% price reduction (11 of 14 combined) shows that the top levels of the Park City and Deer Valley real estate markets are not immune to the market downturn and that the sellers in the luxury marketplace are also willing to make a deal.             The increased number of real estate transactions in Deer Valley and Park City show that there are strong values in the market and that there are "value shoppers" finding deals here.  Not all of these values have a listed price that reflects a value, but with some negotiation, bargains can be found.  Contact a YouInParkCity.com real estate professional to claim yours.

Stale searches from Yahoo.com

By Todd Anderson
Apr 10, 2008

Hitwise (a web metrics company) reported that in March, 2008 the top 4 real estate websites in terms of market share were Realtor.com, Re/max, Yahoo.com and Zillow.com.  If you watch the month to month statistics that lead to these rankings, nothing seems wrong.  These are big companies with large marketing budgets and many people working to make sure the sites show up when people use various search engines to find real estate.  As many of the various MLS's (multiple listing services) become more transparent and the use of the internet increasingly becomes where consumers start their housing searches, web traffic to these sites seems normal.  There is one glaring problem with some of these searches; stale and/or incorrect data, as well as inconsistencies. Recently while I was working with a Buyer, I was sent a list of MLS numbers that the client wished to see.  There were nine numbers emailed to me which corresponded to the 2 different MLS systems available to the greater Park City, Utah area (Park City MLS and Wasatch Front MLS).  Being a member of both the Park City and Salt Lake Boards City of Realtors, the numbers didn't present a problem.  After searching the numbers, I found not one "active listing" in the homes my client had liked.  All of the listings had sold or expired, some had new listing numbers.  The sales had happened a year ago or more.  All of the data that my client had searched was stale and effectively worthless.  What a waste of time!  I asked what search was used and the response was "Yahoo".     I redirected the Buyer to my website http://www.youinparkcity.com/ which features an IDX feed from the Park City MLS and my client found current active listings and information. While the You In Park City group will never have the budget of a Yahoo or Zillow, it is somewhat comforting to know that we will always have a better ability to stay current and offer better information and service than the big dot com's.

 
 
Existing user sign in: 
Forgot Password?