If you’ve ever had to move to another city for a job, you’ll know just how difficult relocating your life can be.
But some parts of the country may be better suited for a fresh start — places like Buffalo, New York; Minneapolis; Salt Lake City; and Austin, Texas; are among some of the most receptive, a new study by online lending exchange LendingTree indicates. Read more on inman.com >
Concert season is upon us, here is Red Butte's Concert Series line up for 2018 >
Are you a millennial? Looking for a new place to live? Well, you may want to consider the following cities.
Personal finance site WalletHub put together an analysis of the top cities for millennials (Pew Research Center defines millennials as being born from 1981 to 1996) based on rankings that didn’t include which cities have the best avocado toast or the most Instagrammable neon signs.
The study looked at job earnings, unemployment rates, voter-turnout rate and affordability (the cost of a Starbucks latte was factored in) as well as education and health. So which states got the best ratings? Read more on theladders.com >
A new report from Niche, which ranks the best and worst places to live across the country, identified the Greater Avenues neighborhood as the No. 1 spot to live in the Beehive State.
Park City finished second on the list, followed by Yalecrest (located on the east bench of Salt Lake City), Kaysville and North Logan. Read more at deseretnews.com >
For five years, markets in Utah and Colorado have had strong economic growth and strong in-migration. The population increased 9 percent in Utah, the highest rate in the country, 8 percent in Colorado, putting upward pressure on housing. In the last three years home prices rose 25 percent in Utah, 35 percent in Colorado. Does this mean the best years are over? Read more on forbes.com >
Median days on market: 38.2 Median list price: $372,450
People are flocking to Utah, particularly Salt Lake City, like luna moths to flame.
That’s probably because the economy is booming with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the U.S., ringing in at just 2.7% in December 2017, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's leading to plenty of transplants. The city is expected to gain an additional 600,000 residents over the next 50 years, according to a University of Utah research brief.
Pair that with a relatively low cost of living, compared with some of the other cities on our list, a great public transportation system, and nearby ski slopes, and you have yourself a great big shortage of homes for sale.
Five Tips to Buying in a Fast Market
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Ready to sell your home but not sure what to do with your flex-room? Here are some ways to stage an extra bedroom to fit target buyers.
Here are the top 10 cities where employees are happiest! Do you think anywhere in Utah made the list?
http://www3.forbes.com/leadership/the-top-10-cities-where-employees-are-happiest/
Here are the 5 tasks every homeowner should do in January.
https://www.houselogic.com/organize-maintain/cleaning-decluttering/time-saving-tips/
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In Park City, the mentality is ‘work hard, play hard.’ Here, work-life balance isn’t a goal--it’s a given. Most Parkites engage in some version of the following scenario: bike up a mountain before heading in for a morning product development meeting, get in a gym session at lunch, wrap-up with some email crunching, and get onto the final funtivity of the day. Far from having just a resort economy, Park City is now home to a diverse business ecosystem that includes powerhouse companies like Skullcandy, Backcountry.com, AvaTech, SnoCru, and others. The ‘Silicon Slopes’ effect is very much underway in Park City, as well as Salt Lake. It's an exciting time to witness startup growth in our mountain town utopia. To help grow PC's tech scene, the Park City Angels, a venture capital club, has invested in numerous startups that have matured into successful companies. Whether you are an ambitious millennial, seasoned exec, or keen investor, the local business landscape has a niche with your name one it. |
Park City is a great place to live and do work. People love the mountain life where the mentality is ‘work hard, play hard.’ Here in PC, work-life balance isn’t a goal, it’s a given.
Most Parkites engage in some version of the following scenario: bike up a mountain before heading in for a morning product development meeting; then get in a gym session at lunch. There is a feeling of both accomplishment and empowerment that easily transitions from the play side of life to the work side of life, and those feelings enable business-people to feel like they can conquer the challenges that may lie ahead.
A huge advantage that local businesses have is a close proximity to the ‘silicon slopes’ of Salt Lake City, a hub of technological innovation. Another great advantage of Salt Lake City is the convenient airport access that allows truly global businesses and businessmen to live and work in Park City. Multiple global, multi-million dollar companies are based in Park City, and they use the surrounding areas for the benefits of their business and their employees.
Perhaps Park City’s most attractive feature for local businesses, the Park City Angels invest millions of dollars into startups with promising futures based in and around the local area. Founded in 2008, the Angels have around fifty members who have sixty-five active projects, and they have invested fifty-five million dollars since their founding. Whether you are interested in joining the Angels or need help from the Angels to launch your company, the local business landscape is great for everyone.
Park City is a great place to live and do work. People love the mountain life where the mentality is ‘work hard, play hard.’ Here in PC, work-life balance isn’t a goal, it’s a given.
Most Parkites engage in some version of the following scenario: bike up a mountain before heading in for a morning product development meeting; then get in a gym session at lunch. There is a feeling of both accomplishment and empowerment that easily transitions from the play side of life to the work side of life, and those feelings enable business-people to feel like they can conquer the challenges that may lie ahead.
A huge advantage that local businesses have is a close proximity to the ‘silicon slopes’ of Salt Lake City, a hub of technological innovation. Another great advantage of Salt Lake City is the convenient airport access that allows truly global businesses and businessmen to live and work in Park City. Multiple global, multi-million dollar companies are based in Park City, and they use the surrounding areas for the benefits of their business and their employees.
Perhaps Park City’s most attractive feature for local businesses, the Park City Angels invest millions of dollars into startups with promising futures based in and around the local area. Founded in 2008, the Angels have around fifty members who have sixty-five active projects, and they have invested fifty-five million dollars since their founding. Whether you are interested in joining the Angels or need help from the Angels to launch your company, the local business landscape is great for everyone.
Sales Volume
Sales are up 12% in Park City and 35% in Heber
The total sum of all sold transactions in Park City from the first six months of 2016 suggests steady, but measured growth. The total volume of sales, roughly $800,200,000, is up 12% from the same time last year. This increase in sales volume can be attributed to a 20% increase in Single Family homes during the first six months of this calendar year.
Quick Takeaway: Sales volume is up.
Closings
There have been roughly 400 closings this year in Park City, roughly the same as last year. . There were close to 300 closings in Heber Valley, a 35% increase from last year.
The number of closed properties in Park City showed a recovery from a slight downtick in the first quarter of this calendar year. Looking year-over-year, closed sales have remained fairly flat the last four years with the number of closed transactions at the second quarter benchmark remaining right around 400.
Heber Valley, on the other hand, has experienced tremendous activity.
Quick Takeaway: Number of Sales are steady and have been for the last four years in Park City. Heber Valley and surrounding areas have seen increased interest.
Listings
Listing inventory in Park City, while still a bit constrained, has remained level for the last 12 months. There are currently 1,186 listings as of July 1 of 2016 compared to 1,170 from the same time last year, suggesting a stabilized inventory level.
Quick Takeaway: Listing inventory has remained steady at around 1,000 active listings for the past 2 years.
Absorption Rate
The current absorption rate, which is the rate at which available homes are sold in a specific market during a time period, suggests a much higher demand for anything under $660,000 for condos and anything under $1.6 million for family homes. Condos under $660,000 have an absorption rate of 4.6 months; whereas, condos over $660,000 have an absorption rate of 15.4 months. As the absorption rate is calculated by looking at the ration between available homes and monthly sales, these indicators suggest the importance of accurately pricing with the help of a seasoned professional. Overall, the absorption rate is gradually decreasing.
Quick Takeaway: The absorption rate is decreasing, suggesting the importance of accurate pricing and strong buyer demand at the right price point.
Pricing
Prices are increasing both in and around Park City at a steady clip. Since January of 2012, the median price of single family homes in Park City has increased at an average of 7.2% per calendar year. The rolling median is up 12% from 2015, with the average price of single family homes increasing at a rate of 12.8%, suggesting a bullish local market.
Quick Takeaway: Prices are increasing, but a gradual rate.
Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is expanding globally and our website is making the change, too.
The new website features language, currency and measurement options for prospective buyers both in the U.S. and abroad whose native language may not be English. Global consumers accessing BerkshireHathawayHS.com may search for homes in any city or state serviced by our franchisees. What they’ll find they can’t get anywhere else: full MLS data containing all listings in their search area, including our own Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices listings in their language of choice. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices . . . Good to Know. ®
To complement our international platform, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices now sends your listings to over 35 countries throughout the world!
5/27-5/28 Utah Junior High School State Rodeo Finals at Wasatch Event Center
6/1-6/4 Utah High School Rodeo Finals at Wasatch Event Center
6/3 Commemorative Air Force Swing Dance at Heber City Airport
6/4 Free Fishing Day at Wasatch Mountain State Park
6/4 National Trails Day at State Parks
6/16 Heber City's Farmer's Market on Main Street
6/17-6/18 Ragnar Relay Running Series
6/25 Wasatch Chevy's "Back to the 50's" Car Show Main Street
7/4 Homestead Old Fashion 4th of July
7/14-7/16 IRHA Intermountain Reining Horse Association at Wasatch Event Center
7/16 Fire on the Water at Jordanelle
7/30 Wasatch County Demolition Derby at Wasatch County Events Complex
8/5-8/6 Utah Commemorative Airforce Classic Car Show at Heber City Airport
8/6-8/7 Tour of Utah
8/20 National Ability Center's Summit Challenge Bike Race in Midway
Bob Wheaton & Bill Rock on how their respective resorts and the city all work as one
Park City Municipal Community News Interview Park City Municipal Corporation: Our three entities—the two resorts and the city government—are part of one ecosystem. How do the two of you work together?
Bill Rock: Bob has been an incredible partner, and I’d like to thank him personally. He’s been very helpful in introducing us to the Park City community, at both the personal and company levels. This is what makes Utah skiing really special: everybody sees the big picture and understands that when we all do well we all do well. Bob has been a fantastic proponent of this, and it’s been great working together.
Bob Wheaton: Well, thanks Bill. I agree. It’s been easy for me—for us—because one good thing about the ski industry is it’s a pretty small deal. Everybody knows everybody, so you can get to know people over time and watch their progress. Bill and I have known each other for years through the industry, so, like I said, it’s been easy for me.
PCMC: How about working with the city?
Wheaton: I’ve never been in another ski resort community that functions nearly as well as Park City, in terms of the relationships among the municipality and the resorts.
Rock: Our guests come to Park City as a destination because it’s a complete experience. There’s a reason why our resort’s tagline is “There’s only one”: there’s only one Park City. It has all the right ingredients: airport access, Utah snow, Park City Mountain, Deer Valley, Main Street. These are all components of the vacation. Collectively it’s the most compelling ski destination in the U.S., as far as I’m concerned. The fact that people can sample two different ski experiences is a huge advantage, and I haven’t even mentioned the resorts on the front of the range.
Wheaton: It’s this very thing that brought my wife and me to Park City 36 years ago. Park City is great, and it’s kind of the epicenter: Snowbird, Alta, Brighton, and Solitude are all close by, as are Snowbasin and Powder Mountain. Bill, I haven’t told you this story before, but one of the highlights of my previous ski season was bringing Solitude online. One day I rode the lift at Solitude with three guys who were visiting for a long weekend.
They had skied the day before at Park City Mountain, and they could not stop talking about the terrain. They said, and this is almost an exact quote, “There is no way that we could have skied every lift but we tried to hit all of the areas.” I asked if they were able to make it back to their car, and they said, “Oh no, there was not enough time to do that.” They had parked at Canyons, but ended up on the Park City side. So they said they took the bus back and it was great. This is just a great example of integration and cooperation of everyone involved.
If those guys had had a great time on the mountain but a crummy time getting back to their car, it would have spoiled their entire day. And I might add they had a great day at Solitude.
PCMC: What do you think, then, about the One Wasatch concept?
Rock: I think it’s a great idea. When we linked our two resorts, we essentially made the first connection. We’ve seen firsthand what a connection can do and how people respond to it.
Wheaton: I agree. And the resorts in each of the two canyons on the front of the range— Brighton and Solitude and Alta and Snowbird— are already connected. So it’s really just a matter of canyon-to-canyon at this point.
PCMC: Could Deer Valley and Park City Mountain be easily connected?
Wheaton: Yes, and that’s not by accident.
PCMC: How did that come about?
Wheaton: It was the same year that Empire and McConkies went in. Phil Jones was my counterpart at PCMR, and Billy Gray was their heavy-equipment operator. Chuck English was—still is—our director of mountain operations. The four of us spent a lot of time up on that ridge (where the two resorts abut) because we did not want to design ourselves out of the possibility of connecting in the future. This is why all those lifts are laid out the way they are. Once we put in Empire Canyon (or Empire Express) and PCMR put in McConkies, we actually had to adjust the property lines a little bit so that we could put the lifts where they really belonged, from a mountain-user standpoint. We designed it so that—with half a day and a decent-sized dozer—we’d be connected. It goes back to the whole idea of cooperation—it didn’t just start with Bill and me.
PCMC: How did your resorts do this past season, numbers-wise?
Rock: Park City Mountain had double-digit growth, double-digit skier day growth.
PCMC: What about Deer Valley.
Wheaton: Same deal.
PCMC: That’s pretty impressive. To what do you attribute it?
Rock: The return of good snow conditions certainly helped. We also spent $50-million over the summer to create the largest resort in the country. I think that message resonated around the world, and people wanted to come check it out.
Wheaton: I just want to pick up on something Bill said that’s kind of ironic: the return of “good” snow conditions. We ought to keep in mind that this past year’s snow was average. Average is not something either resort strives for, but when it comes to snow conditions…
Rock: We’ll take it.
Wheaton: When we’re talking about snow conditions, average is just fine.
PCMC: Do you each have a personal highlight from the past season?
Rock: Mine was cutting the ribbon on all the improvements, particularly the gondola. That day was really special. Our whole team took a lot of pride in it, and it was a fun day.
Wheaton: I have two highlights—one at each end of the spectrum. The first was the amount of powder days that we had and just the great ski season overall. The other was the windstorm during President’s Day week. Thousands of trees were downed—from one end of the resort to the other, across ski runs and everywhere else. My highlight was watching the staff focus on guest service, and observing the cooperation and integration among all the departments. We were able to fire some of those lifts back up by 2:00 pm. It was incredible to watch—it really was.
PCMC: The City has recognized three critical priorities of the community: housing, transportation, and energy (reduction, renewables, and net-zero carbon emissions). How do these align with your resorts’ goals and operations?
Wheaton: These are three of our highest goals as well. And we need to recognize that the best solution for any of them is a collective one— between Summit County, Park City, Park City Mountain, and Deer Valley. If the community can unify behind them, we can make a hell of a difference.
Rock: We’ve rolled out several company-wide initiatives that align with the city’s priorities. Housing is, for sure, front and center in our planning. We have very limited employee housing, and we’ve pledged $30-million across our mountain communities for potential housing projects. We’re in the process of identifying partners here in Park City to help us effectively deploy the money. And we’re already working closely with the city and county on transportation. The resorts’ parking staff and city transportation staff did things they’d never done before this past season to collectively address the issues. And I think it made a huge difference. We’ve also developed solutions specific for our employees—remote parking, shuttles, transit, you name it. In terms of energy reduction, we set a companywide reduction goal of 10 percent, which we met in 2011, so we launched another program called the Next Ten. We’re focusing on everything from fuel use to making our infrastructure more efficient.
PCMC: Summit Community Power Works, a local nonprofit, has made a big push to have businesses and residents switch out their light bulbs for LEDs. Are you doing this in your operations?
Rock: Yes, we’ve done pretty aggressive LED switch-outs. We also launched a program supporting SCPW and their goal of meeting the Georgetown Energy Prize. We partnered with Rocky Mountain Power to provide each employee with four free LEDs. We’re also helping fund smart thermostats: between the manufacturer rebate and our rebate, our employees can purchase them for less than halfprice.
Wheaton: The LED switch is a great program. The bulbs cost money upfront, but with all of the incentives through Rocky Mountain Power, they become affordable. And that’s not even considering the labor savings—especially for businesses with larger facilities. In bigger buildings, it’s not just a matter of standing on the floor and reaching up to change a bulb. You often need a ladder or lift, so doing it once and forgetting about it for 20 years is attractive. And the energy savings are immediately noticeable and trackable: that’s what makes them a prudent investment.
PCMC: Your single biggest use of energy is probably snowmaking, but this is essential to the customer experience.
Rock: Absolutely. One of the things our guests look forward to is consistency, especially with conditions. The good news is that snowmaking technology has gotten very efficient, so a key part of our energy-reduction plan is upgrading our equipment to keep pace with the state-of-the-art technology. Bob’s the real expert on this.
Wheaton: Snowmaking technology has just boomed, especially in the last five years, so new equipment will be our single biggest capital investment this summer.
PCMC: How has the technology improved? Wheaton: Both inputs—gallons of water and kilowatts—have gone down, which means the guns can create more cubic feet of snow with the same amount of energy. Beyond that, pumping efficiencies and compressed air technology in the guns themselves have also come such a long way. And the engineering has improved so much that the water particle actually explodes: you get more cubic feet of snow per particle of water. This means you get a bigger snowflake, which means better ski conditions. The more efficient guns are a sound business decision, but they are also the right thing to do for the environment.
PCMC: Some people worry that snowmaking wastes water.
Rock: This is a common misconception: it actually keeps the water in the watershed longer, releasing it back over an extended period of time.
Wheaton: It essentially acts like a reservoir. Folks should also remember that we are making snow before the occupancy rates in town spike, so it isn’t as if we’re diverting water that would otherwise be used to do dishes or wash laundry.
PCMC: Are you planning to relax in these few short weeks before things ramp up for summer?
Wheaton: We’re both going to Nashville next month for the NSAA—National Ski Areas Association Conference. Shelbyville, which is the center of the Tennessee walking horse community, is only about an hour away. My wife and I are going tack on a few days to go horse shopping.
Rock: And I think I’ll tour the Jack Daniels Distillery while I’m there. PCMC: Horses and whiskey—two things Tennessee and Park City are both famous for. I can’t let you leave without asking what your favorite locals runs are.
Rock: Now that we’ve combined, people tend to gravitate toward the center of the resort, but I like skiing off Condor—it’s fantastic. And with the Mother Lode lift being fast now, people are realizing that all that terrain under there had been under-appreciated. It’s really good skiing. It’s been especially fun for me as a newcomer, but I think everyone can rediscover some runs that may have been hard to access. Wheaton: For me, it depends on the day. On a powder day, I like Red Cloud lift. And, as far as groomers go, Stein’s Way.
PCMC: Well, you can’t go wrong on either mountain.
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