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June real estate sales rebound after record May rain

Tom Ross
Home sales were brisk in the West of Steamboat neighborhoods in June 2015.
file photo

— The Routt County real estate market shrugged off a soggy month of May and rebounded in June with the highest gross dollar volume for any June since 2008.

“June was a fabulous month, with a total of $61.7 million in gross sales and 144 transactions,” reported Melissa Gibson, of Land Title Guarantee Co. in Steamboat Springs. “This was the highest number of transactions in one month in close to five years.”

September 2014 produced the highest transaction volume of the preceding year, with 137 sales, but Land Title’s second quarter report confirms that not since summer 2010 — when July, August and September surpassed 200 monthly transactions — has the market seen a month like June 2015 in terms of transaction volume.



The 67 percent growth in dollar volume year-over-year in June resulted in part from the fact that June 2014 dollar volume was down 20.7 percent from June 2013. But even that wasn’t all bad news. Gibson explained that June 2014 numbers declined in part because 75 percent of transaction volume in that month was attributable to properties priced lower than $500,000, a sign working families were able to purchase housing in June of last year.

Helping to spur the June resurgence this year was strong interest in purchasing homes in Old Town Steamboat and west Steamboat, according to the numbers Land Title gleans from records at the Routt County Courthouse.



The four primary neighborhoods west of Steamboat — West End Village, Heritage Park, Steamboat II and Silver Spur — represent a concentration of single-family homes that are attainable for well-employed working families.

West of Steamboat saw 13 residential sales in June with an average sale price of $465,300 and a median price of $443,500, for an average price per square foot of $257.

Land Title reported last summer the average price of a home in west Steamboat, based on just five transactions in June, was $426,333. That sample is too small to draw conclusions about sales trends, but the fact that June sales in west Steamboat more than doubled this year is more telling. The average price per square foot this year was $250.

There were 15 sales of residential property in the downtown area in June, with an average residential price of $705,542 and a median price of $420,000 for an average residential price per square foot of $334.

Those numbers were almost certainly skewed by one large transaction: The sale of the residence at 857 The Boulevard, a 6,866-square-foot home, for $3.15 million was the highest residential sale of the month in any part of the county. That sale price, which converted to $457 per square foot, was certainly influenced by the relative value of the unusually large 1.78-acre lot.

Looking at residential sales in downtown for June 2014 and based upon nine overall sales, the average sale price was $694,914, and the median price was $575,000. The average price per square foot of $335 in 2014 was virtually the same as this year’s.

As far as year-to-date progress in the real estate market, 2015 is 3.75 percent ahead of 2014 at the end of June, with dollar volume of almost $239.5 million, but lagging 2013, when more consistent numbers in the first six months of that year boosted total dollar volume for the first two quarters of the year to $249 million.

To reach Tom Ross, call 970-871-4205, email tross@SteamboatToday.com or follow him on Twitter @ThomasSRoss1


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