Park City real estate is surging in 2015

Home sales hit highest mark since 2007

Bubba Brown
The Park Record
POSTED: 08/14/2015

The Park City real estate market is partying like it’s 2007.

Home sales in the area for the first two quarters of 2015 are up 9 percent over the same period in 2014, which is the highest mark for the first half of any year since before the recession, according to the Park City Board of Realtors. The total dollar volume was up 11 percent over the same span.

“2007 was our best year,” said Nancy Tallman, president of the Board of Realtors. “That’s the year we kind of hold up — the highest prices, the highest dollar volumes.

“Clearly, 2015 has been really strong in terms of pricing and number of sales,” she added.

The real estate market has been improving for about two years, but growth had been slowed because there weren’t many homes on the market, Tallman said. But rising prices in this year’s first quarter helped break the logjam.

“Inventory was at record lows,” Tallman said. “That helped drive prices up, just pure supply and demand. Then people who were sort of thinking about selling, waiting for prices to come back, saw that ‘OK, this is my time. Now I can sell.’ So you started seeing more homes on the market in the second quarter. Even now, what I’m seeing in July and August, our inventory is definitely higher.”

That real estate is strong throughout the country has also boosted the local market. And Utah’s economy, which is among the strongest in the nation, has brought in plenty of people wanting to put down roots in Park City.

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“We are getting a lot of people relocating to Park City who are taking jobs either here or in the Salt Lake Valley,” Tallman said. “People are moving into our area, and they’re taking good jobs — executive-level jobs.”

Sales have been particularly strong in areas such as Old Town, Prospector and Park Meadows, according to the Board of Realtors. But neighborhoods in the Snyderville Basin are also booming. The median sales price of a single-family home in the Basin was up 18 percent, to $850,000.
Tallman said there’s a simple explanation for the rising cost of buying a home in the Basin.

“The story, I think, is that being in town is expensive,” she said. “It’s driving more people to look outside of 84060, all the way down to Kimball Junction and Jeremy Ranch and Pinebrook.”

Don’t expect interest in Park City real estate to die down anytime soon. Tallman said she took a trip over the summer to three Colorado towns where Vail Resorts owns or operates ski resorts. She walked away with one strong impression.

“It was sort of like peering into the future,” she said. “We talked to Realtors in all three resort areas, and the No. 1 message that all gave us what that Vail Resorts will drive people into your town. They have a huge marketing budget and that’s what they do.”

Tallman acknowledged the spotlight Vail Resorts’ presence shines on Park City, while good for the real estate market, is not welcomed by all in town.

“If you’re a Realtor, it’s great,” she said. “But if you’ve been living here since it was a sleepy town with one stoplight, some people may not like these changes. But you’re not going to turn back progress.”