The Summit County assessor gave an annual update in mid-August on home sales that have occurred since the last reappraisal two years ago.

Summit County Assessor Lisa Eurich said reappraisals occur every other year in odd-numbered years, and homes are valued based on the market conditions that existed June 30 of the previous year. So, during the 2025 reappraisal, homes will be valued as of the appraisal date of June 30, 2024, Eurich said.

“In the two years prior to June 30, 2024, there’s some different things happening in the market,” Eurich said. “We have higher interest rates. With that, one kind of wonders, is there some pent-up demand in the market?”

With talk that the Federal Reserve could lower interest rates in September, Eurich questioned whether “buyers are going to come flooding out of the gates,” if interest rates were cut to 5.5%, for example. 

Answering her own question, she said, “I don’t know.”

But Eurich said that while experts expect interest rates to be lowered, she doesn’t think that they’ll get as low as 3%, where they were when rates plummeted in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to higher interest rates, the market in the two years prior to June 30, 2024, also saw higher insurance costs, Eurich said. On average, she said insurance premium costs nationwide have increased by roughly 22.7% annually since 2022.

Eurich also noted that short-term rental regulations took effect in Breckenridge and unincorporated Summit County in 2023, after the reappraisal date of June 30, 2022. So the impacts of those regulations on the market will be captured in this latest reappraisal, she said. 

“All these short-term rental regulations took effect in 2023, and we heard all about people (who) couldn’t use their properties last year when they were appealing,” Eurich said. “We are now able to see the market’s reaction to those effects.”

From June 30, 2022, through June 30, 2024, buyers have been pickier compared to the previous two-year reappraisal cycle, Eurich said. That has resulted in properties remaining on the market for longer as well as, she said.

“We’re seeing buyers are more discerning,” Eurich said. “Thank God. During the last reappraisal, they were just scooping up whatever they could.”

While she again noted that it “seems like there is some pent-up demand,” Eurich said that job changes have been what has driven home sales over the past two years as people move around the country for work.  

“A lot more new homes are being sold right now rather than existing homes, which when you think about it, makes sense,” Eurich said. “We’ve all locked in those super-low rates. We’re not going anywhere. But all those new homes, the developers need to sell them. There’s a lot of development happening right now throughout the nation, trying to catch up with the slump that happened after the Great Recession in 2008-2009.”

In the two year period prior to June 30, 2024, there were thousands of home sales in Summit County. Across the board, from single-family homes to duplexes, triplexes, townhomes and condominiums, median home prices increased over the past two years, according to data from the assessor’s office.

Eurich noted that the county-wide data she outlined in her annual update provides only rough estimates for how median home prices changed over this last reappraisal cycle and that, “different areas obviously appreciate at different rates.” She said the assessor’s office is “always working with history,” looking at previous sales to assess property values.

“In the assessor’s office, we don’t assume. We don’t try to project,” Eurich said. “Why? Because we’re questioned on everything we do. It’s the only appraisal you’ll get where it says ‘Hey, this is what we think your value is. Why don’t you tell us what you think it is?'”

Single-family homes

Between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2024, there were 720 sales of single-family homes in Summit County, according to data from the county assessor’s office. Based on that data, the median sale price of a single-family home in Summit County was $1.89 million.

Compared to the previous two-year reappraisal cycle, that is an about 26% increase in single-family home prices, Eurich said. She broke that data down even further, highlighting the single-family median sale prices in the county’s different economic areas.

At Copper, the median sale price for a single-family home was about $3.3 million, compared to about $2.4 million in Keystone, $2 million in Breckenridge and the surrounding area, and $1.7 million in Dillon and Silverthorne. North of Silverthorne, near Heeney, the median single-family home price was $1.14 million during the latest reappraisal cycle.

There were 28 sales of single-family homes in Summit County with a sales price in excess of $5 million between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2024, Eurich said. A ski-in, ski-out home in the Snowy Ridge subdivision near Breckenridge sold for $12 million in December 2023, making it the most expensive sale over the reappraisal cycle, she said.

The second-highest sale during the reappraisal cycle was also in Breckenridge. Located in the Shock Hill subdivision, near where the ski resort’s gondola makes its first stop, the home sold for $8.75 million in February 2024, according to information from the assessor’s office.

The two cheapest home sales of the reappraisal period occurred on the opposite side of the county, north of Silverthorne near Heeney, Eurich said. In December 2022, a single-family home in the Dudley Hill subdivision adjacent to the Green Mountain Reservoir sold for $185,000, marking the cheapest single-family home sale of the two-year reappraisal period. Nearby, the second-lowest sale of a single-family home in Summit County during that time period occurred when a home sold in the Green Mountain-Haldorsen Tracts subdivision for about $346,000.

Duplexes, triplexes, townhomes and condominiums

In Summit County, there were 113 duplex and triplex sales between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2024, with a median sale price of $1.4 million, according to the county assessor’s department. That is a roughly 25% increase over the previous two year period.

Meanwhile, there were 387 townhome sales in Summit County in the two years prior to June 30, 2024, with a median sales price of $1.24 million, Eurich said. That’s an about 37% increase countywide compared to the previous two year period, she said.

There were 2,476 condo sales recorded by the county assessor’s over the past two years, with a median sale price of $822,000. That is a roughly 13% increase countywide compared to the previous reappraisal period, according to the county assessor’s department.

The most expensive condominium sale in the two-year reappraisal period occurred in April 2024, when a penthouse unit at a ski-in, ski-out condo at One Ski Hill Place in Breckenridge sold for $4.95 million. The cheapest condominium sale price in the county during the reappraisal period occurred in May 2023, when a deed-restricted unit at the Telemark Lodge at Copper Mountain sold for $260,000, she said.

“Condos, they’ve gone up the least amount,” Eurich said. “We’ve really seen condos, this property type, get hit with the higher insurance rates and the short-term rental regulations. Condos up in Wildernest. It’s hard to offset those higher insurance rates, taxes if you can’t short-term rent your property.”