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Home values buck national trend

By Wyatt Haupt Jr.  The Daily Sentinel    Tuesday, February 12, 2008

A resilient Grand Junction housing market bucked a depreciation trend that has swept through other parts of the nation to notch an increase in home values last year.

Zillow.com, an online real estate services firm, reported Tuesday the median value of a house for the Grand Junction metropolitan area increased 9.6 percent to $212,836 in the year ending Dec. 31.

The Grand Junction metropolitan area is more generally defined as Mesa County.

That was the third-highest percentage gain of the 125 markets tracked in the zillow.com survey. Tulsa, Okla., ranked first with an increase of 11.4 percent to $115,114 last year.

Binghamton, N.Y., ranked second in the period with an increase of 9.8 percent to $114,000.

Nationally, the median value of a home decreased 3 percent last year, Zillow.com reported in its year-end index. The index measures the “value of all homes in an area,” the company said.

“I think that was pretty close,” said Mark Abbott, a broker associate at Colorado Properties on Rood Avenue on the median value of a house for the Grand Junction area last year.

“I would say a lot of people had priced their homes at the very top end of what they perceived or wanted to get out of them. But with so many homes on the market, buyers were more selective … and some sellers didn’t get what they thought they were going to get.”

He said some of the best bargains were found in unincorporated areas of Mesa County. Abbott pointed toward Clifton, where the median value increased 11.6 percent to $167,000 in 2007. “A lot of people don’t like Clifton. … I think there are some really red-hot deals out in Clifton,” Abbott said.

The neighboring town of Palisade also fared well, as the median value of a home rose nearly 10.9 percent to $218,000 last year, the Zillow.com data showed.

That was slightly higher than the median value for a home within Grand Junction city limits, which was $217,000 last year. That represented an increase of 9.4 percent from the previous year.

Other real estate agents and brokers said that despite the strong increases in year-end home values, buyers seemed to have the upper hand in the final months of the year.

“When you put your home on the market at that time of the year, they (the sellers) are probably pretty motivated,” said Ron Sechrist, a broker associate with Bray Real Estate.

He added, “It was probably a pretty good time for buyers.”

Looking ahead, the first quarter of this year seems to be shaping up a lot like the final three months of 2007.

“I would say it is lending itself to buyers,” said Erika Doyle of Doyle & Associates Real Estate Services.

She pointed to two reasons: inventory levels; and long-term mortgage rates that have been averaging below 6 percent for the first part of the year.  “It’s a great time to buy,” Doyle said

E-mail Wyatt Haupt Jr. at whaupt@gjds.com