11/22/20 Aspen Daily News article by Madeleine Osberger
Link to article.
Excerpt:
“During NAR’s yearly conference, which was held online this year, Chief Economist Lawrence Yun predicted that home prices will rise by 3% in 2021, which follows 2020’s year-over-year rise of 6% nationally. Pitkin County assessor Deb Bamesberger said that for the county as a whole this year, value increases will be greater than 5%.
How that impacts those who already own in Aspen and Snowmass Village remains to be seen, though anecdotally there are reports of a wave of longtime residents downsizing and moving to the mid-valley and beyond.
Tim Estin, agent with Sotheby’s International Realty, called the pace of transactions at the Park Modern and One Willits Place townhomes “off the charts” and cited 27 sales of those Willits units this year.
Asked if he had a sense of what, if any, unintended consequences might result from the 2020 Pitkin County real estate boom, Estin had this to say:
“The unintended consequences: more people, new homes [and] more construction in and around town, everywhere. More traffic, more construction vehicles on Highway 82, more density and an even more divided class of locals — the employee class and the rich class, with no one in the middle … so expensive that mere mortals of the middle and upper-middle class are priced out of the pearly gates.”
Estin went on to note, “But that social ‘caveat’ has been well-recognized for at least the past 30 years in Aspen. So why would anything fundamentally change, except to become more so?”
He added, “On the positive side, a lot of really nice, successful and smart people and families are part of this COVID wave of more full-time residents. Their values appear to have much in common with the general local sensibility. And that would seem to be a net-net on the side of good, cool things to come to town.” “
11/22/20 Aspen Daily News Link to article.
