Spring/Summer 2010 Business Travel Guide

Real Estate Prices

“The great recession is now well over a year behind us,” says Realtor Tom Heney, broker and vice president of Lang McLaughry Spera Real Estate, Vermont’s largest agency.

“The first four months of 2010 were dominated by the First-time Homebuyers Tax Credit that then became the Homebuyers Tax Credit, which gave us a very specific spike in sales that closed right before the deadline in April.”

This generated entry-level sales activity, he says, so in the last six months of 2010, there was less action in number of sales. This was balanced, however, by greatly increased action in the sale of homes in the executive price ranges — above $400,000 — which, in Chittenden County in 2009, had almost no activity. “The average sales price is up something like 11 percent over the prior six months.”

“People who buy those executive rate homes buy not because of their weekly paychecks, but on the basis of their assets, which include investment,” Heney says. “As the stock market’s good news continued — it’s been on a 10-month run now — confidence returned to those people and they returned to the market.”

A lot of businesses ended 2010 with good bottom lines; if they’re confident that it will continue, they start to invest in business and start hiring, Heney says.

He cites his own company, which employs 21, as an example: “We just hired a person for an entirely new position.”

Prices, too, have begun to recover, he says. We’re seeing good momentum going into 2011. •

Data compiled with the generous assistance of Thomas P. Heney, Realtor, Broker, CRB, CRS, of Lang McLaughry Spera Real Estate; 846-7825. *Some counties and towns were omitted because in tiny markets, one very large or very small sale can render the averages useless.