By Tom Ross Sunday, Steamboat Pilot, April 4, 2010

February real estate sales of $32 million represent 267 percent of February 2009 and bring the year-to-date total to $82 million, almost 230 percent of where that number stood at the same time last year.

Perhaps more telling, according to the statistics compiled by Bruce Carta, of Land Title Guarantee Co., is that year-to-date sales narrowly surpassed those posted for the same period in 2005, about a year before Steamboat’s market began a rapid ascendancy that preceded the decline of the past two years.

Totals for the first two months of 2010 still are being influenced by closings of sales that went under contract in 2007, but significantly, One Steamboat Place closed a $3.8 million condominium sale Thursday that represented new business.

As transaction and dollar volume in the Steamboat market grow, Carta said, it’s clear that interval and fractional deals are providing some of the steam — they represented 55 percent of the transaction volume.

Although dollar volume and units are up, he said the number of loans originated here is down. Another possible reflection of consumer interest in interval ownership is that a significant portion of those sales are at low enough prices that people may be paying cash for them.

The Hayden market­ per­ked up a little in February with five transactions, one more than downtown Steamboat saw. Old Town had the advantage in dollar volume though — $2.58 million to $275,000 in Hayden.

The Steamboat mountain area saw 16 transactions in February, bringing the year-to-date total to 38 transactions with an aggregate value of $42.8 million.

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