Ten years after the fact it's easy to forget about The Great Recession. The sub prime mortgage crisis that led, in 2008, to the collapse of investment houses, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. The shuttering of banking giants IndyMac, Countrywide, and Washington Mutual and hundreds of smaller banks. The near panic that prompted the Troubled Asset Relief Program and bailouts of financial institutions, the auto industry and insurance companies. The tens of thousands of homes sold in foreclosure. The millions of jobs lost. The slip slide of real estate and the stock market. The Great Recession of 2008 was like being grazed by a gigantic life ending asteroid.
It took 7 years for most of the country's real estate values to fully recover. But in May of 2015 median home prices in the United States topped pre-recession highs. The trend since 2015 has been mostly upward. Some premium markets—including San Francisco/Silicon Valley, and Southern California beach cities—have even entered what some are calling "bubble" territory.
Mammoth's real estate recovery has been on a much slower trajectory. Property values in Mammoth began to decline after peaking in late 2005. By 2012 most condominiums had lost over 40% of their value. It wasn't until 2015 that real estate prices showed a clear move upward and not until the Fall of 2016 that listing inventories started to tighten.
Today there are just 64 condos and 31 homes listed in Mammoth. By contrast during the summer of 2016 condo listings topped 150; homes, topped 80. Now listings are being snapped up faster than they can be replaced.
Strong demand last year pushed condo sales to 386 units—an increase of 30% over the number of condos sold in 2016. The median condo price in Mammoth Lakes jumped
17% to $350,000. Single family residential sales, bedeviled by even tighter inventories, climbed 3% from the previous year to 91 homes, while the median home price reached $770,000, a 7% increase from 2016. Although property values have recovered in the last 2 years they are still 20-30% below 2005 peaks.
No single factor is responsible for our real estate market's recovery. Pent up demand; a record breaking, drought breaking winter; the strengthening economy; pure, runaway exhilaration at the prospect of making America truly "great again". Okay, maybe not that last one.
The acquisition last July of Mammoth Resorts by KSL Capital Partners and Aspen Skiing Company added another catalyst. Visions of vast inflows of cash, massive capital improvements, and exciting new commercial developments may be premature, but someone saw big value in Mammoth Resorts and parted with a reported $850 million to buy them.
