North Fork Real Estate: Home Sales Good and News About Marble
By Mike Jackson – Coldwell Banker Colorado Realty – Hotchkiss and Paonia
As the calendar turns to November and people start thinking about the holidays I’m often asked if it’s too late to list and sell real estate. The short answer is “No”. Sure, the market usually begins to slow down but at the pace things are moving now it still makes sense to give it a try before the cold weather really sets in. Residential home sales for Delta County continued to move along at a pretty good clip in the third quarter posting an impressive 30% increase in the number of homes sold over the same period last year. Dollar volume rose 27% to $24 Million with the Delta market leading at $8.5M (up 15%), Surface Creek was $8.2M (up 34%) and the North Fork posted $7.3M (up 37%). While demonstrating the greatest sales growth, North Fork area transactions were uncharacteristically smaller with the average sale falling 26% and the median dropping 13% but were, nonetheless, still the highest around the county. Sales of vacant land rose in Delta but were down in Surface Creek and the North Fork. It’s hard to draw many conclusions however because the parcels varied so much. Of the 16 sold last quarter, a few were “subdivision lots,” there were a couple of “mountain land,” and some “grazing / pasture” ones that could have been classified as farm land. Other than the big orchard sale on Rogers Mesa mentioned in August’s column and a good sized ranch sale in Crawford not much happened around the county in the farm & ranch category during the third quarter. The sale of the old ProBuild facility south of Delta for $2M represented the bulk of the commercial sales activity. (Hoping to fill in some detail about the buyer – waiting for a return call) In sum, across all categories and areas of Delta county sales rose by 50%, from $22.5M to $32.5 – a HUGE gain!
While 30-year mortgage rates do not exactly mirror US Treasury’s it is worth noting that both are at, or near, the lowest we’ve seen this year. In January 10-year T-bills were yielding 3%, now it’s 2.2% and the 30-year is paying 3% – meaning that mortgage rate are back to about 4%, down from 4.5% or so a few months ago. If you’ve followed this column very long you know I’ve been concerned about how soon and how fast rates would rise as the economy improved. Apparently those worries can be put on the shelf and I can channel my angst elsewhere because it looks like this is the new normal.
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