In America's most expensive town, a trailer is $599,000
Aspen, Colo., has suffered less than other U.S. cities from the real-estate meltdown, and the median home price has risen to $4.6 million.
A few towns in the United States have not felt the doom and gloom of real-estate prices in free fall.
One of those is Aspen, Colo., a ski town that The Wall Street Journal informs us is the most expensive town in America.
How expensive? The cheapest single-family home listed for sale is $599,000, and it's a trailer. At least it's a double-wide.
The median home price in Aspen is $4.6 million, the highest in the nation, and the average home price has increased from $5.4 million in 2006 to $6 million in 2010, the WSJ reports. Here's Trulia's overview of Aspen real estate, which shows prices dropping from 2008 to 2009 and then starting to rise again in 2010. Condo prices are lower, but it's hard to tell from the listings which units are time-shares and which are places where people live full-time.
Here is how the WSJ explains what has protected Aspen from the real-estate bust:
Analysts point to numerous reasons why Aspen has held up so well. A small market where only 13% of land is able to be developed because of zoning laws and the mountainous landscape, it never suffered the overdevelopment now plaguing other areas. Aspen's distance from a major city and spotty air service help to keep away day tourists.
The availability of jobs for young people -- the story doesn't say where they can afford to live -- and purchases by foreign buyers also have buoyed the market.
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Here are some of the luxury properties the WSJ reported as sold or on the market in the last year:
- A 13,000-square-foot estate with a sandy beach, ponds, a 35-foot-wall of disappearing glass, mountain views and a media room with leather seats sold for $24.5 million.
- A 15,000-square-foot stone mansion with a gym, panoramic views, caretaker's apartment and an eight-stall horse stable sold for $31.5 million.
- A 90-acre estate known as Jigsaw Ranch just went on the market for $48.5 million. The property includes a 21,000-square-foot house that took nearly 15 years to build, an 11,000-square-foot house, a guest house and a log cabin gatehouse.
The WSJ has a slide show featuring some of those properties.
Aspen hasn't been entirely insulated from the nation's real-estate woes. The number of homes sold in 2010 was only about half the number sold in 2006, and the city has experienced some foreclosures and price reductions.
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I live in Colorado Springs and am a native of Colorado. What I have seen over the years is that Colorado is full of hard working, down to earth, friendly, spiritual, fun loving, dog loving, nice, decent people. Somewhere along the way, Californians came here and liked it and and constantly try to CHANGE it and make it JUST like California, and now TEXAS, and we HATE it! Which is what happened in Aspen. It bacame Californicated. Now it is full of stuck up snobs.
I live in Colorado and as soon as I saw this on msn I immediately guessed Aspen, and I was right!! Everyone knows that if you live in Aspen then you definitely have a lot of money. It is where many celebs go to ski, I'm guessing many probably have homes there. I believe it was in Aspen where Charlie Sheen was arrested a couple of years ago for threatening his wife.
@yppbbb
You should not automatically assume they were being irresponsible because they got foreclosed on, on year 31.
You would need a Jumbo loan on a $4mil house and those can extend up to 50 Years.
For all you know, they could have had an other 10-20 years left on the loan.
You don't know everyone's story, who knows what happened that caused them to fall behind and lose their home.....
I expericance this housing price hike EVERYDAY.thanks to towns like Aspen the have set a 'standard' for ski resorts.Streets must be paved with silver, sinks are 24k gold.Beds...made out of real clouds , If the ski resorts told you all of this 80% of people would believe it.Just to ski is outrageously priced along with all of the gear.Skis,jackets,pants,goggles,packs and lift tickets its no wonder they give mountain employees free passes.We the common people would tell the to shove it.Lucky for them our passion to ski and ride brings us back.In order for the rich to ski and use thier 'homes' they need poor or middle class people to slave for them at $9 and hour (60% of mountain homes in summit county,neighborish to vail &aspen sit vacated 51 weeks out of the year).I work two jobs and make crap wages in the ski resort towns beacuse of these people.They buy stuff up and never give back to the community.Just gobble up land like fat cows and develope the land here untill there is no wilderness left.I live here because it is amazing place to be for outdoor activites.I spend7 hours a day in my one bd apt in Dillon that i pay $900 a month,that isn't luxury one bit.Hope you rich guys are enjoying sipping your hot cocoa from the lodge while i shovle snow so you dont slip fall and sue for more money...and two weeks free athe timeshare of your dreams.
I'm not sure where you are getting your information . . . but I live about 40 miles from Aspen, in Glenwood Springs, CO. Aspen may not be having the same "loss" as the rest of the US, but
~ there are more homes for sale than I have seen in years - inventory is high
~ prices are dropping by millions - you can see mark downs from $1 - $4 million at a time
~ you can find a Mobil home for a lot less than $599,000
That being said :
~ Are Aspen prices still ridiculous - yes
~ Many of the locals are great people that have been there for years
~ The Rude, Fur wearing people are visitors that have the need to flaunt their wealth
~ Too much of the town has become people that own their second, third or even fourth homes there . . . and they sit empty. They have NO sense of community and drive taxes through the roof.
Aspen is experiencing the "price adjustment" it should have had years ago.
About Teresa Mears
Teresa Mears is a veteran journalist who has been interested in houses since her father took her to tax auctions to carry the cash at age 10. A former editor of The Miami Herald's Home & Design section, she lives in South Florida where, in addition to writing about real estate, she publishes Miami on the Cheap to help her neighbors adjust to the loss of 60% of their property value.
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