Bad News – Good News for Vacation Home Sales

Posted by Jim Kimmons, Broker/Owner • April 8, 2009 • Printer-friendly

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

If you're a Taos real estate market vacation homeowner with a home listed, or you're planning to list for sale soon, you might want to consider recent statistics about vacation home sales. The National Assn. of Realtors has an agenda, but they're statistics are usually pretty good.

In 2008, their figures show that investment and vacation home sales dipped from 33% to 30% of total home sales nationally. Separating vacation homes, the entire drop was there, from 12% to 9% of all sales. That's the bad news. The good news is that more than 40% of investment buyers, and more than 30% of vacation buyers paid cash for their property. Many were diversifying assets, moving cash from other investment types.

Though we know they couldn't have been buying in the Taos real estate market for these numbers, here are national averages for purchase price:

Median price of vacation homes was $150k in 2008, down 23.1% from the 2007 median of $195k.
For investment properties, the median price in 2008 was $108k, down 28.1% from $150k in 2007.

One of the most important considerations of a seller in this market should be to make certain their real estate broker is giving them realistic price numbers, as throwing a number against the wall and seeing if it will stick isn't going to work in this market.