Out-of-staters moving to Park City and putting up big numbers buying homes

PARK CITY—  A real estate agent says there is a big shift in Park City Real Estate. Lots of people from out-of-state are buying homes and aiming to become permanent residents, a symptom of the pandemic. 

Joe Davis, KSL Reporter and Real Estate Expert with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services and Park City Resort Property says “it’s a seller’s market, for sure… weird things were starting to happen with COVID, it was probably more of a balanced market.”  But now Davis says the pace has picked up so much “that most homes in Park City [have] a full price offer within days of being released, often with several backup offers.”

Full price ain’t cheap.  Davis says the luxury home market in Park City really begins at $1.5 million.  “But the average price is probably 3… maybe 4.”  And it goes into the tens of millions.  

Davis says there are still people from “vacation driving distance” purchasing, but also people looking for virus elbow room from out-of-state.  “We’re seeing a bunch from Illinois, a ton of people from Texas: Houston, Dallas, Austin… and we do have a lot of people coming from New York.”

PARK CITY LISTINGS AND SALES WAY UP IN JULY

Home inventory is strong.  Davis quotes a statistic showing the 326 jump. “Residential listings are around 459 compared to 364 last year at the same time [of year,] so that’s a 26% increase.  [But] the market is still down 34% for the year, so this business is has been over the last few weeks.” He says the last 15 weeks business is up almost 60%… and July’s volume reached $1.54 billion which up 45% from July 2019.  Davis thinks the biggest takeaway is that “sales in July total half the entire volume sold from January through June.”

IS THE VIRUS DRIVING PEOPLE TO PARK CITY? 

Despite Summit County being a hotbed in Utah early in the pandemic, Davis is seeing that people are coming here to live.  He says he’s meeting people in the street that say they’re in town visiting, and that they are thinking about moving here.  He feels the days of people mostly buying second homes in Park City for vacations is gone.  “We have people coming [here] who have sold what they have on the East Coast, put everything they have in a car, shown up at a hotel, and then they call us and say, ‘I need to find a house.”  He says the work-from-home symptom of the virus has woken people up. “All of a sudden people are realizing, I can work from home, or I’m going to demand to work from home… Now all of a sudden [what would be their second home] has become their primary.” 

 

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