Park City is just a hop, skip and a ski slope away

By Larry Olmsted, Special for USA TODAY
With ski towns, getting there is rarely half the fun. Many, like Aspen and Telluride, are hours from a major airport. Moreover, small mountain-town airports operate at the whims of nature.
But the ski resorts surrounding Salt Lake City are the most accessible in North America, a city-bus ride away from a major hub airport that rarely closes. Three of the biggest Utah resorts can be found in one place: historic Park City.

"We moved here 28 years ago from Laguna Beach," says Ann MacQuoid of Chin MacQuoid Fleming Harris, Utah's top Prudential real estate agent for many years. "We came then for the same reasons people come here now: We were skiers who went to Colorado or Tahoe but found we could get on a plane in Orange County and be here 2½ hours later. This is what has made Park City so popular. That, combined with the really successful Winter Olympic Games in 2002, started a huge upward curve in second-home sales."
Many Olympic facilities are still widely used, and visitors can bobsled, luge, speed skate and even try their hand at ski jumping and biathlon. Cross-country skiing abounds; in summer, biking and hiking are hugely popular, as is fly fishing, golf and boating on Jordanelle Reservoir.
But by far the main draw is a trio of world-class ski resorts: Deer Valley, Park City Mountain Resort and The Canyons.
Park City began as a thriving silver mining town in 1869, and though the full-time population has shrunk to about 7,400, the town issues more than 1.3 million daily lift tickets every winter. The other huge draw is the annual Sundance Film Festival.
The very walkable downtown, known as Old Town, is on the National Historic Register and filled with restaurants, shops and galleries.
This combination of small-town charm, ample dining and shopping choices and especially convenience have made Park City somewhat unique: Essentially a suburb of Salt Lake City, it has attracted significant numbers of residents who live the mountain lifestyle and commute into the city for work, the opposite of nearly every other ski town.

A Wall Street Alternative: 5 Timely Reasons to Invest in Vacation Property

RISMEDIA, Oct. 27, 2008-The stock market is down, and if you’re like most people, your level of investing confidence has dropped as well. Yes, only those with nerves of steel feel good about playing the market right now. And if you’re not one of those hearty souls, you’re at a bit of a loss as to what to do with your nest egg. Christine Karpinski has a suggestion: Instead of pouring your money into Wall Street, why not consider Ocean Boulevard or Mountainside Drive?
“A vacation home can be a remarkably good investment right now,” says Karpinski, director of Owner Community for HomeAway.com (an online vacation home rental marketplace) and author of How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner, 2nd Edition: The Complete Guide to Buy, Manage, Furnish, Rent, Maintain and Advertise Your Vacation Rental Investment (Kinney Pollack Press, 2007, ISBN: 0-9748249-9-2, $26.00).
“Stock market woes have always pushed people to look for alternate investments, and real estate is a consistent stronghold,” she says. “Yes, home values are down right now but they have always rebounded. I wouldn’t recommend buying a second home with the expectation of flipping it for a quick buck, but if you hang onto it for a while-and better still, turn it into a vacation rental property-you’ll make a nice profit.”
Not incidentally, in many areas of the country, rental demand exceeds supply. The sunshine state (Florida) is a prime example. Buy a vacation home in a market like Cape Coral, Daytona, Destin, Fort Lauderdale, Indian Rocks Beach, Kissimmee, Madeira Beach, Orlando, Panama City Beach, Sanibel Island, West Palm Beach, or Windsor Hills, says Karpinski, and you can’t lose. Even if you prefer to buy elsewhere, if you adhere to proven marketing tactics, you should be able to attract enough guests to make the purchase worth your while.
So what makes buying a vacation home so attractive right now? Karpinski explains:
There are plenty of great deals to be had. Thanks to the aftermath of the real estate bubble, home prices are down right now across the board. That means in many vacation markets, you can pick up a beach condo or a mountain cabin at a decent price. And that means that if you’ve been kicking yourself for not buying a vacation home back before prices escalated beyond all reason, you’ve got a reprieve-Karpinski says that in some markets homes are back to 2000 prices.
“Housing bubble or no housing bubble, you’re not going to get bargain basement prices on, say, a cottage right on the ocean-but if you’re willing to buy a few rows back, you’ll likely find that prices have fallen substantially,” notes Karpinski. “Because houses aren’t flying off the shelf, there’s less pressure on you to make a quick decision. You can afford to take your time, do your research, and refine your plan.”
Interest rates are attractive right now. Recently, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point in an effort to shore up America’s faltering economy. And rates have been reasonably low for awhile, following earlier rate cuts toward the beginning of the year. That’s good news for anyone (anyone with good credit, that is) who’s in the market for a mortgage.
“Add the lower interest rates to the lower housing prices, and it’s clear that now is the time to buy,” says Karpinski. “Of course, for the sake of our nation’s economy, we want the real estate market to pick up, but from an individual buyer’s perspective, the combination of lots of houses for sale, low prices, and falling interest rates is hard to beat.”
If you’re worried about investing in a sluggish real estate market, relax. Recent reports indicate housing is on the rebound. Last week the National Association of Realtors® reported that, “The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in August, jumped 7.4%…and is 8.8 percent higher than August 2007.”

Park City homes holding their value

But buyers seem to be waiting for prices to fall
By Christopher Smart The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 10/23/2008 12:14:43 AM MDT

The good news is Park City real estate hasn't lost a lot of its value. The bad news is that sales volume is down 42 to 45 percent, according to Park City's Board of Realtors.

The market, observers say, has yet to bottom out. Eventually, that could lead to more significant dips in housing values. But according to the Park City board's latest statistics - covering Summit and Wasatch counties - the median sales price compared with one year ago is down just 3 percent for single-family dwellings, to $653,750. Set against a national real estate market that's been on the skids amid double-digit losses, that figure is comparatively good. Remarkably, the median sales price in Park City proper was up 12 percent, to $1.82 million. By contrast, that statistic in nearby Snyderville Basin is down 13 percent over the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30.
"We're seeing a lot of interest," said Tyler Richardson, the organization's president. "But people are still sitting on the sidelines, seeing how things flesh out." For the past decade or longer, Park City real estate - particularly high-end property - has been largely immune from ups and downs in the economy.

The run-up to the 2002 Winter Games and then its afterglow continued to push growth in the area's upscale vacation housing market established 25 years ago by Deer Valley. Resort real estate since the late 1980s - particularly in the Park City area - has proved to be a good investment for those who can afford it.

Prices have gone higher and higher. But this financial crisis is different. "We've seen a leveling off of sales and in some cases decreases as we've seen national events unfold," Richardson said. "Nobody knows how it's going to shake out." The majority of second-home owners in the Park City area - as well as potential buyers - live in other states, where real estate values have declined more precipitously. And buyers are waiting for bargains, which means that sellers, if they are in a position to do so, have to be patient. "Buyers are in the driver's seat," Richardson said. "They have a lot of choices to look at." The low sales volume has left many in Park City's veritable army of real estate agents with little to do but watch and wait. Utah economists say real estate prices in the state are not yet at their lows, according to Dave Anderton, public relations director of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors.

"I have people call me every day and ask if we've hit the bottom yet? I think the median price will go lower statewide." Sales volumes also are way off in tony Deer Valley. But the transactions that have gone through represent increases in the median sales price, said Bob Wells, the resort's vice president of real estate and development planning. In lower Deer Valley, the median sales price is $1.98 million. In upper Deer Valley it's $6.65 million.

To some extent, Deer Valley remains buffered from economic ups and downs. "The property owners are a very affluent group," Wells said. "They buy in Deer Valley for family use, not for speculation. And a lot of them pay cash."

Nonetheless, Deer Valley and Park City, like the rest of the nation, should prepare for tough times and a slow recovery, Wells added. "You have to expect this will have an effect [on real estate sales] this winter. In history, that's been determined by snow, not economic downturns. This could be different."