The Mammoth Lakes real estate market has always followed the trends of what Southern California is doing, but typically about six months behind.  There are several factors that feed into this pattern, but the key one is the fact that Mammoth Lakes is a small resort town sitting at the base of the well-known Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. And with this comes local real estate ownership being heavily dominated by second homeowners.

For those of you who live in Southern California, or are just familiar with how that market has performed, you are well aware of the significant amount of real estate appreciation that homes have seen over the last several years.  The market is hot and buyer demand seems to outweigh current listing inventory, therefore creating many multiple offer situations and prices being driven upwards.

It’s not only just the southern part of CA that is experiencing this!  Take a look at the below infographic provided by the California Association of Realtors.  11 of the of the top 20 hottest real estate markets in the US are currently in CA.   This information was recently gathered by the National Association of Realtors.

But despite what California as a whole is doing, and our historical trend of being just behind the curve of the SoCal market movement, Mammoth real estate really seemed to flatten out this summer.  Last winter we were seeing healthy low level appreciation of approximately 1-3% and then once spring hit our values went stagnant.  If anything, I think we might have even rolled back a percent or two over the summer months.

So why did the Mammoth real estate market appreciate the way so many areas of CA have recently done?  Well that’s a good question.  There are perhaps several ideas and theories, but I personally feel it has to do with our four back-to-back draught years.  Water is such a hot topic of discussion in the west (and especially in CA), and for those who are familiar with Mammoth’s average snowfall of over 400 inches a year, you know we were well below that these last four seasons.  So I sense that many buyers decided to take a back seat on a second home purchase here in the mountains until they have a chance to see how this winter seasons pans out.

Well so far so good!  With a base depth of 2-4 feet, that’s a decent start for it only being November.  And as we have all heard, this is supposed to be the El Nino year of great magnitude.  So with great optimism that we the 2015/2016 winter ski season at Mammoth Mountain will be one of above average snowfall, I sincerely feel this will be the delayed catalyst to a pop in our real estate values and demand.  And especially with interest rates forecasted to be on the rise in 2016, I sense that any folks that have sitting on the fence about a second home in Mammoth will start draping their legs off the buying side and make that jump by the end of the season.

So call your local Mammoth Realtor soon, and start getting familiarized with our market and what’s available in your price range.  And for an up-to-date “Propportunity List”, please call or email me!

Written by Eric Leach
Broker/Owner of Resort Property Realty, Inc.
800-921-6520
Eric@ResortPropertyRealty.com