Park City Real Estate Trends

            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.