Excellent video of not only the state of luxury real estate in San Francisco.  The interview speaks to the challenge of finding buyers for truly exclusive properties.  With the number of properties in Aspen and other parts of the world increasingly exceeding $30mm the amount of time on market could be extremely long.  The pool of buyers worldwide for this price range is very narrow.  In Aspen’s history we have only seen 4 sales above $30mm and one above $40mm with the sale of Mandalay Ranch in 2004.

Single-family home on Ridge Road sells for $3.4 million, sets mark for Basalt proper

The single-family home at 240 Ridge Road in Basalt broke a record Monday when it sold for $3.4 million. (Courtesy David Marlow)

The Aspen Times
Aspen CO, Colorado
May 17, 2008



BASALT — Times are tough in the local real estate market, but that didn’t prevent the setting of an apparent record for a single-family-home sales price in Basalt this week.

A $3.4 million deal closed May 12 for a house at 240 Ridge Road. The home is in the Basalt Highlands subdivision and sold to the Barbara L. McMahon Living Trust, according to a deed filed with the Eagle County Clerk and Recorder’s office.

The house size is modest, by today’s standards, at 4,184 square feet, three bedrooms and 31⁄2 bathrooms. The interior features 110-year-old reclaimed heart pine floors and a tongue-and-groove ceiling from a mill in North Carolina. The home was sold furnished.

A top selling point was clearly its commanding position at the top of a hillside overlooking Basalt and offering stunning views of Mount Sopris and the valley floor. The house’s location is in Basalt what the top of Red Mountain is in Aspen.

That record sale was confirmed by data tracked by the Aspen-Glenwood Springs Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The previous highest sale price within Basalt’s town boundaries was $3.35 million for a home in the Roaring Fork Club, which sold in January.

Sales of homes in Emma and in the Fryingpan Valley regularly eclipse the $3.4 million mark, but they are outside the town boundaries.

The house was on the market for about one year and was listed at $3.8 million. The home was designed in 2004 by Carbondale architect Doug Muse and he was the only owner prior to this sale. The house isn’t huge, but it uses the site well. It’s not a cabin but it’s rustic enough to match the desires of many people.

This sale shows that the right home, with a great location and finishes, can sell even in a sluggish market. There are qualified buyers out there, and when a house fits their needs and is appropriately priced, they will buy.

Over the years, Basalt has evolved as more of a destination market — rather than one that captures buyers that spill down from Aspen. Much of that evolution occurred since the Roaring Fork Club was developed in 1996 and brought a different kind of buyer to the midvalley market.

The first single-family home sale to top $1 million in Basalt appeared to occur in July 2003 on Riverside Drive, according to MLS statistics. A home there went for almost $1.3 million. Since then there have been roughly 85 sales in Basalt proper that topped that mark.

Article by WSJ

May 2, 2008, 1:50 pm
Wealthy Still Shopping for Vacation Homes

The wealthy think the U.S. is in a recession. But they’re still bullish on real estate, according to a new study.
Last month the Harrison Group, a Connecticut-based marketing and consulting firm, conducted an Internet survey of 638 respondents with incomes of $100,000 or more. The company broke the group of respondents into four categories, ranging from “Upper Middle Class” (incomes of between $100,000 and $149,000, 123 respondents) to “Wealthy” (incomes of $500,000 or more, 119 respondents).
The survey found that more than three-quarters of respondents believed the U.S. was in a recession. The wealthy were the most pessimistic, with 81% agreeing that we’re in recession.
Yet the wealthy were also the most cheery about the real-estate market. Of wealthy respondents, 40% said they plan to buy real estate over the next year. That compares with only 17% for the Upper Middle Class.
The rich who plan to buy homes are mainly looking for leisure properties. One-third plan to buy a vacation home, while about a quarter plan to buy third homes. Only about a quarter plan to buy primary homes.
The most obvious explanation for their bullishness is that the wealthy still have money and aren’t as affected by gas hikes, bread prices or job losses. As we’ve seen, the super high end of the real-estate market (properties that cost $20 million ore more) seems to be holding up the best, although all levels have been affected.
Yet some of the wealthy may be expecting big bargains — and they may be disappointed. Lots of people still have wealth, and they’re willing to pay up for rare properties. That means the bargains they’re waiting for at the high end may not appear.
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The real estate winds are shifting
By Mike Russo
Real estate figures released by Land Title for the first quarter of 2008 in Pitkin County show that we are experiencing a new trend in the Aspen/Snowmass market. Transactions through the first quarter were down 33 percent from last year and sales volume was down 52 percent.
Given that volume has seen a greater decline than transactions, we conclude that current purchases are at a lower aver­age sales price than last year.
The average purchase price in Pitkin County for the first quarter of 2007 was $2.44 million versus $1.73 million for the first quarter of 2008. Compare that to the first quarter of 2006 when the average pur­chase price in Pitkin County was $926,505. Also worth noting is that during the record sales year of 2006, the market experienced five times the amount of closed transactions in the fractional con­dominium market. During the first quarter of 2006, fractional sales accounted for 16 percent of the total volume versus a paltry 3 percent in the first quarter of 2007.
Although sales volume is off, compared to a record first quarter of 2007, it is off to a lesser degree compared to 2005 and 2006. The volume difference is -17 percent and -23 percent, respectively.
The blaze of sales volume that occurred in the first quarter of 2007 represented 30 percent of the sales volume reported for the entire year. Going back to 2003, the average percentage of yearly sales volume has been 19 percent in the first quarter.
Although the year did not finish like a lion, 2007 was still the second best year on record, finishing the year at $2.5 billion, about 4.5 percent less than 2006.
So what does it all mean? The real estate market in our valley is still vibrant and not in the dire straits that some observers suggest. We are still seeing a large number of consumers looking to purchase property in the Aspen/Snowmass market.
The challenge in the marketplace today is the disparity between buyers and sell­ers. With news of the threatening reces­sion, a credit crisis that remains tenuous at best, followed by a national housing crisis and inflationary fears, among other con­cerns, the Aspen valley market continues to hold its ground in pricing.
A recent seller of a home in Wildcat Ridge exemplified the Aspen real estate market when he was quoted nearly two years ago in the Wall Street Journal as say­ing,“ If we don’t get the right price, we won’t sell.”
So how has the wind shifted? Of the 207 consumers that chose to purchase in Pitkin County this year, they decided they still wanted a property in our county, but on average decided to spend less than the buyers of last year.
(Michael S. Russo is president of Aspen Sotheby’s International Realty He can be reached at mike.russo@sothebysrealty.com.)