As the shift to the new normal increases, Americans are discovering the opportunities of working from home, as well as finding more balance in lifestyle. The Telluride real estate market continues to thrive. In the first quarter of 2021 in the Town of Telluride, the average price of single-family homes increased by 50.1%, from $3,342,000 to $5,018,000. The number of land buyers also increased from one to five in the Town of Telluride—a 400% increase from Q1 2020.
During this same time period, Mountain Village saw a 29% increase in average sold price, from $2,305,833 to $2,975,632. Of those properties, sales of single-family homes increased 62.5% while sales of condos and townhomes increased 380%, and land sales increased 1,050% over the first quarter of 2020.
The housing surge experienced by much of the rest of the country also echoes in the box canyon, with properties staying on the market 25.9% fewer days than they did last winter. The trend seems to be people migrating out of the bustle of cities to areas with more access to the outdoors and recreation, serving a more active lifestyle.
San Miguel County closed out the first quarter of 2021 with the largest Q1 dollar volume ever recorded at $287.67M. A main contributor was the surge in vacant land sales (70 sales, $53.2M), the most vacant land sales ever seen in a single quarter. Thirty-three percent of those vacant land sales were in Mountain Village, and 44% located outside the town limits.
After a record-breaking year of real estate sales in 2020, which exceeded $1.1 billion in total dollar volume, the end of the fiscal year along with a significant decline in inventory attributed to an initial downtick in the dollar volume of sales in January ‘21 ($81.9M over 64 sales) compared to the trend over the last 5 months of ’20 in which all months (Aug. – Dec. ’20) exceeded $100M in dollar volume and 90+ total number of sales.
However, momentum increased the remainder of Q1 ‘21, showing that demand is still high for the region. Compared to the prior 5-year average, February ’21 showed an increase of 118% in dollar volume and a 48% increase in number of sales. March showed a 153% increase in dollar volume and a 164% increase in number of transactions over the prior 5-year average.