Spring/Summer 2008 Business Travel Guide

Real Estate Prices

Chittenden County had “kind of a flat, stable year,” in 2007 according to Tom Heney, a Realtor with Lang McLaughry Spera Real Estate. That’s pretty much business as usual, he says.

“Most of the challenges we saw were from a real downturn of activity in August, when all the bad economic news began to hit about the subprime mortgages. Closings are usually two to three months later than the news that affects them, and our October and November closings were way low because of the earlier news.”

The good news, of course, is that Vermont’s foreclosure rate is the best in the country, “meaning the lowest — we’re Number 50!” Heney says. “So we’re in first place, New Hampshire is in third place, and everybody else is worse off. That’s because the terrible economy that drove the horrible news last year isn’t our economy.”

For example, the average sales price for Chittenden County was up 1 percent, and the median price was down 1 percent, “so plus or minus 1 percent a year for us no matter how you look at it,” Heney says.

The study that most of the larger media are using, he continues, including the recent Vermont economic forecast, comes from statistics garnered from 20 large metropolitan areas around the country, “but we aren’t one of them,” he says. “In the large metropolitan areas, subprime in a lot of cases was the only way people could buy houses when prices went through the boom.”

We just rode it out, says Heney. “It goes up and down on a seasonal average, but for the most part, plus or minus 1 percent a year for us no matter how you look at it.” •

*Note: It’s important to remember, when looking at average prices, especially in tiny markets, that one very large or very small sale can skew the numbers.