Mar 21, 2025 article (Estin interview excerpt):
…The effects were not only physical and emotional, but economic, especially in destinations such as Aspen, where urbanites flocked for a feeling of refuge and relaxation during a moment of global tumult. By the summer of 2020, it was evident that a “great urban exodus” was afoot — a term Aspen real estate broker Tim Estin used in an interview with The Colorado Sun during the height of the phenomenon.
“All of a sudden, you start to see a surge in buying activity, and it’s like, ‘Whoa. Something dramatic is happening here,’” Estin recalled in a recent interview with Aspen Journalism
The Sotheby’s broker has been tracking and analyzing market data for 20 years in his Estin Report, which looks specifically at Aspen and Snowmass Village. He scrubs through every individual data point to make sure the numbers are “pure” — that a teardown, for instance, gets counted as a land sale instead of a single-family home in average prices.
And he noticed that home prices were going up — at a much faster rate than they had been prior to the pandemic. Although those numbers might have popped up eventually, Estin thinks the pandemic initiated a “quantum jump,” pushing the upvalley housing market a decade into the future.
“COVID seemed to be the great accelerator,” Estin said…
Source: Aspen Daily News and AspenJournalism
