Spring/Summer 2010 Business Travel Guide

Real Estate Prices

For the vast majority of our markets, the last six months of 2009 showed market improvement over the first half of ’09 and the second half of ’08, says Tom Heney, Realtor, broker, and vice president of Lang McLaughry Spera Real Estate, Vermont’s largest agency and one of the largest in Northern New England.

“For those counties that finished the year ahead of 2008, all of those gains were achieved in the second half,” he says.”

In most instances, he continues, “we are talking about gains in terms of the return of the pace of sales activity and the moderating of supply.”

Chittenden County in particular is in a very balanced supply-and-demand position with about six and a half months of inventory. This is healthy, Heney says, “and we have been in that general position for several months now.”

Although prices have stabilized in general, local markets around the state are experiencing diverse levels of recovery based on local economies.

“Regarding the buzz word ‘foreclosure,’” he says, “according to RealtyTrac, the rate in Vermont in December was, I think, the lowest in the country at 0.05 (or 1 in 18,300 households) as compared to the remaining hot spots in the country — for example Nevada, 1 in 93 households; Arizona, 1 in 132 households; or California, 1 in 165 households.

“Those hot spots still make the news, because disaster sells, but our local markets are largely out of the fray in that area.”

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