The United States Collegiate Ski & Snowboard Association is the sports federation for collegiate team ski racing and snowboarding in America. In excess of 178 colleges from coast to coast, field some 4,700 men and women, alpine, cross country and snowboarding athletes in over 200 race events annually. Competition takes place across three progressive tiers. Conference qualifiers determine the participants at the six USCSA Regional Championships. The Regionals are the last step on the road to the annual U.S. Collegiate Skiing and Snowboard Championships, the showcase event in college ski and snowboard competition. The 33rd annual National Championships in Sun Valley will be the the culmination of all that hard work. Events will include Nordic, Alpine Slalom and GS, Snowboard GS, Freestyle and Super-pipe competitions. It will be an exciting week for the spectators but not half as exciting as it will be for the athletes who make it to Nationals this March. Best of success to all.

The widely-advertised Chilali Lodge auction was Saturday night in Sun Valley and it was  a big success. There were 35 serious bidders registered all with proof of funds. All 11 luxury units up for auction sold, with prices 15-20 percent above the minimums. On Sunday, another 3-4 units sold based on the average sq ft prices established the night before.

The total dollar volume for the 11 units in downtown Ketchum to be auctioned was $7,205,000. By our “unofficial tally” the auction brought in $8.5 million plus a 2% auction fee. So the above auction premium was about 18 percent above list and the average price per foot was $318 a square.

Great sign for the Sun Valley market!

In reviewing the real estate sales data for 2010, it’s clear the resort market has rebounded and is showing signs of a solid recovery. Sales activity in the north valley was up in almost every area, in terms of both transaction volume and dollar volume. Savvy buyers capitalized on low interest rates, plentiful inventory and motivated sellers during the past year. The upper end sales have been particularly strong in 2010 with 28 closing over $2,000,000 compared to 13 sales in the price range a year earlier.

In the south valley, which was harder hit by foreclosures and short sales, we see signs of price stabilization as more first-time buyers gain home ownership at prices that allow for sustainable mortgages.

If you would like a copy of the complete Windermere Report please email Nichole Britt at nbritt@windermere.com .

by Idaho Mountain Express

Backcountry recreationists can rejoice: winter storms have pummeled the Wood River Valley with almost 50 more inches of snow than last year, bringing the snowpack in the valley to more than 20 inches over last year’s at this time.

According to the National Weather Service, the snowpack at the Ketchum Ranger District headquarters stands at 19 percent above the station’s 30-year average. “We’re doing a lot better than last year,” said Troy Lindquist, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Pocatello. On Jan. 4, 2010, the basin’s snowpack stood at 70 percent of normal. That number dropped to 68 percent by the end of March. Lindquist said this year’s healthy snowpack is due to a La Niña weather pattern “Typically, that’s what we see with La Niña—wetter conditions in the Pacific Northwest and into the central mountains of Idaho,” he said. “We’ve had a good early part of the snow season this year.”

Snowfall for the valley is 56 percent above average, with 68.4 inches reported at the Ketchum Ranger District building as of Dec. 31. Last year at that time, the valley had received 18.7 inches of snow, with less than 5 inches remaining on the ground by the end of December.

Lindquist said the last time the snowpack was above average was in 2008. The above-average snowpack is prevalent in river basins throughout the state. The Salmon River basin is at 104 percent of normal, the Payette basin is at 106 percent and the Bruneau basin is at 147 percent. In northern Idaho, however, snowpack levels are below normal (88 percent in the Clearwater basin). However, Lindquist pointed out, “we have a lot of winter left. There’s a lot still to be determined.”

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” – Melodie Beattie

by Idaho Mountain Express

Sun Valley was the country’s first destination ski resort and is now celebrating it 75th winter season, but it wasn’t even on the long list of sought-after locations.In the early 1930s, the Union Pacific Railroad had built the first streamlined passenger trains but needed an attraction, something to draw people to the West, a destination to make the ride over the rails enticing.

An idea hit Union Pacific board Chair Averell Harriman—build a ski resort. Finding the ideal location was the job of Austrian alpine expert Count Felix Schaffgotsch. The company gave him the entire West to choose from.

His six weeks’ odyssey took him to 14,400-foot-high Mount Rainier outside of Seattle. He toured Oregon’s highest peak, Mount Hood, Southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains, Yosemite, the area around Salt Lake City and Lake Tahoe. He explored Colorado and crossed Teton Pass by sleigh in the winter for a view of Jackson Hole.

But Schaffgotsch was a perfectionist. He crossed each and every one of these places off the list, reporting to Harriman that every mountain was either too high, too windy, too near a city, too remote to be reached by railroad, not remote enough or had too many weekend visitors.

He had seen eastern Idaho and was on his way back to tell Harriman that nothing measured up to the sites of Europe’s greatest resorts. Someone mentioned Ketchum. The defunct mining town had a peak population of 2,000 in the 1880s but had declined to a couple hundred by the 1900s, most of whom left during winter. The road wasn’t plowed. The only contact with the outside world during winter was a little train that twice a week puffed up the branch line from Shoshone.

“It was in a blizzard late on the afternoon of Jan. 19 that the count reached this hamlet in the wake of the county snowplow,” reads Sun Valley Resort’s record of the arrival.

“Among the many attractive spots I have visited,” Schaffgotsch wrote to Harriman, “this combines more delightful features than any place I have seen in the United States, Switzerland or Austria, for a winter-sports resort … An ideal situation in a small basin, surrounded by perfect mountains, hills and slopes largely free from timber.”

Harriman and others from Union Pacific followed within days, setting into motion a wave of construction ending with Sun Valley’s opening day on Dec. 21, 1936.

Greetings from Sun Valley, Idaho, where preparations are now underway to celebrate the 75^th winter season at Sun Valley. As America’s first and finest all season resort, a number of special events and hospitality packages are being offered this historic winter season.

When comparing the real estate sales activity for the first 10 months of 2010, versus  2009, there is a lot of good and exciting news to share.  Based on the first ten months, we have seen 59 closed transactions with a sale price of over $1 million and 25 closing with sales prices in excess of $2 million.  That compared to the 2009 figures of 44 sales over $ 1 million and 11 closings over $2 million.

Another active area of the marketplace includes entry level homes in Hailey and Bellevue. To date, 42 homes have sold in Hailey and Bellevue priced between $100,000 and $250,000, compared to 32 a year earlier. Of homes sold this year in this price range, a full 71 percent were either bank-owned foreclosure sales and or lender approved short sales, according to the Sawtooth Board of Realtors database.

It’s important to note that while distressed sales appear to be “controlling” the single family marketplace in Hailey and  Bellevue, that’s not the case elsewhere in the county. To be sure, distressed property sales in northern Blaine County are “affecting” the resale values of resort area homes.  However, just 15 percent of the 52 single family home sales in Ketchum, Warm Springs, north Ketchum, Sun Valley and Elkhorn could be classified as distressed properties.

We see an additional long-term trend worth noting. The average price of a single family home in Hailey and Bellevue has declined 26.4 percent from the peak in 2006 and is now $316,175, making it comparable to average sales posted in 2004. In the resort area, home values have also fallen 26.4 percent from the peak of $2,099,000 in 2007 and compares closely with prices recorded in early 2005.

 The decline in the condo and townhome market has been not been nearly as uniform. Resort area condos have fallen 20 percent from the peak of $795,000 in 2007 and now have an average sales price of $630,433. In contract, condos and townhomes in the south valley have fallen 49 percent in value and now average $136,135. This compares in prices to levels recorded in 2003.

We believe prices in all categories hit bottom in early 2010 and we’ve seen some modest gains in sales prices since we last ran this report in July 2010. With interest rates remaining at historically low levels, and the number of motivated sellers increasing, we forecast a slow but steady rebound in the Blaine County real estate market. I hope this report has been helpful and I look forward to answering any questions you may have. If you would like an analysis on a particular neighborhood or property, give one of our local Ketchum or Hailey agents a call.

This past weekend, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature story entitled “What Does the ‘Foreclosure Crisis’ Mean for You?”

Here’s a preview:

“For the vast majority of homeowners, new questions about the state of foreclosures appear to be irrelevant. Few people seem to have been wrongly thrown out of their homes, and those who have been are generally months or years behind on their mortgage payments.

But the fallout from the crisis is beginning to be felt in real-estate markets across the country, particularly in places dominated by vacation homes and investment properties. Some of the worst-hit areas could be Western ski towns, because fall is the busiest time of the year for sales.

Real-estate salespeople in some of those places are worried. “September and October are usually the height of the selling-season for us,” says Rich Armstrong, who owns the brokerage Rare Properties in Jackson Hole, Wyo. “Now we are seeing a number of what we call ‘fence sitters,’ people who would have leapt in even a month ago, but now are waiting on the sidelines.”"

The problems with this news article are many. Because National Association of Realtors has a classification called “second homes and investment properties”, these writers are putting forth the position that Western ski towns and coastal communities are at elevated risk for foreclosures and diminishing real estate values. It’s unfortunate, in my opinion, because, second homes and investment properties are two different animals.

A second home is generally owned for personal pleasure and long-term economic gain. An investment property, whether it’s a duplex or a commercial space, is the opposite. It’s strictly a geographically-neutral business proposition intended to generate monthly income. When the income fails to cover the expense, the investor needs to subsidize the monthly payment or risk default. With more investors in danger of foreclosure, these Wall Street Journal writers has taken the illogical leap to conclude that real estate values in resort communities will suffer.

The premises of this article is inaccurate, because it lumps together second homes and investment properties. I think if these writers researched strictly residential default rates in Western resort communities, they would find the opposite to be true. As an active real estate broker in Sun Valley, Idaho, with first-hand knowledge of the distressed property inventory in the Ketchum/Sun Valley area, I can safely say the vast majority of resort area REOs are the result of bank foreclosures on condo developers and not defaults by individual buyers or existing owners.

There are some great real estate values available in the Ketchum/Sun Valley marketplace. And it’s my opinion that neither buyers or sellers in this resort community should panic because the default rate on investment properties nationwide is on the rise. Like I said earlier, second homes and investment properties are two different animals and it’s unfortunate the National Association of Realtors lumps them together.