A peek into the upcoming real estate crash

Yesterday, my wife and I stopped at one real-estate open-house in the Thaynes neighborhood of Park City. The 6,000 sq. ft. house, originally built in 1990 had been totally redone for a total price (including the original) of $2.3 million and after being listed for 2.75 was now reduced to just under $2 million. That's not the end of the story though, the owner/agent told us that she owned the house next door, and needed to sell that one to move into some of the “white elephants” that have been build in nearby Promontory. In addition she said that she owned multiple other properties, all in the million dollar multiples.

My first thoughts were “who needs that and what was that woman thinking?” In spite of that she still sounded like she believed in the “multi-generational mountain property concept,” in which an entire family congregates, season after season, around a wealthy patriarch, a fable crafted by some smart Vail developer I know very well, the whole experience sparkled with some artificial, made-believe forms of mountain entertainment that homeowners end up paying very dearly for. Well, all of that delusion sounds to me like the end of an era...