By: Mike Kennedy mkennedy@railey.com 301-616-6106 January 15th, 2009 Category: Deep Creek Lake Buyer Info, Deep Creek Lake Market Update, Deep Creek Lake Real Estate, Wisp Real Estate

The Deep Creek Lake area real estate market continued to show steady performance in 2008. As you can see from the chart below the total of number of sales continued to decline but the average sold price continued to go up.  All data was obtained from our local mls and these are residential properties only - consisting of lakefront, lake access, Wisp Ski Resort, and lake area homes, condos, townhomes.

Why does the average sold price keep going up in this market? This certainly goes against conventional thinking when most other real markets are showing declining values. The reason is probably due to the nature and financial make-up of the majority of sellers and property owners we currently have in the Deep Creek area. Most of our sellers “want” to sell but don’t necessarily “need” to sell.  What we hear most when approached to help an owner sell their Deep Creek Lake property is “We don’t use the property that much anymore. We can’t justify owning it anymore.” That is a “want” but not “need” type of motivation level. In fact, the motivation level of most sellers in our market is probably much lower when compared to other markets.  Every seller has their own unique reason for selling and, yes, there are distress selling situations in our area such as divorces, property owners in financial trouble, short sales, and foreclosures - but those are few and far between in this market.  Maybe we’ll see more distress situations in 2009 that could put downward pressure on values? We certainly saw more distress situations in 2008 than in 2007- but those types of transactions still make up just a small part of our entire market.

Why does the number of sales continue to decline? Like most other real estate markets across the country  it’s a large collection of many things  - it’s much harder to get a bank loan now, the equity in many people’s primary residence has probably gone done in value, job losses, and it was finally revealed that the country is in a recession causing much fear and anxiety.  Our resort market certainly isn’t immune to these types of things. We certainly lost those buyers who got caught up in the real estate boom earlier this decade, the flippers, speculators, and those that may have been stretching themselves financially to buy a second home. Not many of those people are around anymore looking to buy. The types of loans those buyers were using to purchase a few years have dried up as well and are all but gone - probably for good.  But what our market hasn’t lost is the buyer who wants to purchase a vacation or second home and has the financial means to do so. Those buyers are still very much around.

Is there a value correction coming to Deep Creek Lake? No one can predict the future one way or the other. But the numbers have shown that demand has decreased as evidenced by fewer sales - but average sold prices have gone up. How many other real estate markets can say this over the past two years!?!?

If you are looking for advice on what to do in this current market - that’s easy. If you are a potential buyer - take your time, study the market, find out what is currently available, how much has sold, what are current inventory levels compared to the past, ask about any new factors or developments  that could affect your value should you need to sell, ask many, many questions!  -  find a knowledgeable, experienced real estate agent who can provide this information and one who can educate you about the Deep Creek Lake market. Then once you find a property you may want to purchase - have that real agent show you similar properties that have sold and find out when they sold and for how much they sold for. A good real agent should be able to educate you enough and provide the necessary information for you to make an informed decision! When you are ready, give us a call, or shoot us an e-mail - we have the most knowledgeable and experienced real estate agents in the Deep Creek Lake area.

Tags: Deep Creek Lake Real Estate

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Deep Creek Lake Buyer Info, Deep Creek Lake Market Update, Deep Creek Lake Real Estate, Wisp Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.