I've spent the last couple of weeks at the Aspen Center for Physics.
As always, it has been productive and a pleasure, but I noticed one big change as I was puttering around town.
The Aspen housing market is outrageously high, and prices go up double digit percentages almost every year.
But, this year I noticed a lot of "for sale" signs wandering around, in neighbourhoods where in past years houses just did not stay on the market long enough for signs to go up.
Now, the caveat is that it is a small market, so there are large Poisson fluctuations in sales. But, for the first time that I recall, the ads for houses and condos now include "price reduced to sell" - by eyeball it looks like sellers are discounting 15-20% from initial asking price.
Yes, that $5 million 3BD/3BA can now be yours for a mere $4 million.
'course in a few weeks that will be, like, 2-and-sixpence, or about 3 Euros.
Sounds like the Russians are still buying...
As everywhere, the top of the market seems to be sticking though, the little place across the river for $67 million asking ain't budgingnah, wait, that was last week, looks like they dropped their asking 15%.
Or, if you wait a bit, one of the great Aspen Physicist Homes - the Flying Dog Ranch - is about to go on the market...
I'm figuring people in trouble with first houses, overextended on adjustable mortgages and/or about to lose bonus and jobs in the financial industry are having to get out, now. On top of normal turnover. As in many other high end markets.
Be interesting to see how low it goes.
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Aspen's idyllic conference centers are where I first met the PharmGirl - we love it and go back regularly, especially this time of year. Scientists are often surprised at how reasonable restaurant prices are there given the NYC/LA quality of the food. But as you say, the real estate is still beyond belief even with this dramatic burst of the bubble.
What's blown me away is the price of real estate downvalley in Basalt and Carbondale. If we ever buy a vacation home, it sadly won't be in the Roaring Fork area.
Yeah, although I was shocked at the percentage cuts in asking prices the short time I was there - since the local free papers are half-real estate ads it was quite noticeable.
A surprising number of physicists own second homes or condos in Aspen - the most prominent had family money, and the good sense to invite their buds to come hang out in this nifty place they'd stumbled on - most of the "regular" physicists who own seem to have bought in the seventies or early eighties. They'll do well.