HSC real estate sales, availability changes

For the past two years, property prices and their availability in Hot Springs County have experienced a significant change. There is a very high demand of buyers seeking to purchase properties here in Hot Springs County and yet there is now a low supply.

Cenus data shows Wyoming’s population grew by 1,536 people between July 2020 and 2021. That’s an increase of 0.3%, above the nationwide average of 0.1% in the same time period. Based on real estate sales and availability, Hot Springs County is now home to many of the state’s newest residents.

According to some of the local real estate agents, the reasons for this are multifaceted. Realtors voiced their optimism and spoke about the affects to the future of Hot Springs County. This will be a two part article.

The Independent Record sat down with Kerri Manig from RoundTop Real Estate and Christine Johnston and Steth Daniels of Properties West Real Estate to discuss the situation.

Steth Daniels started out by saying, “Well, obviously the market has changed a lot in the last two years. The date I always refer to when things made this really big, like an almost instant shift that I always thought would be a lot more gradual over time, really happened a lot more instantaneously than I thought it would starting in August of 2020.” 

Christine Johnston added, “If we have had this same conversation in March of 2020, it would have been much different. We had no idea what the landscape of real estate, or the world for that matter, was going to look like. Being something that is a very consumer-driven market business, we didn’t really know what that was going to do to our business and if we were going to be able to survive it. And we obviously were quite pleasantly surprised that it had the opposite effect.”

Daniels continued, “In that time frame, late summer, early fall of 2020, we had these listings that were on the market, and then it was like all of a sudden here came the buyers that we just didn’t know were out there and were ready and willing to buy. That’s when we started to see the quicker turnaround on how fast it was taking things to get under contract and sell. I would say that fall was kind of like a taste of it and then last year was where I put it to the test. If we get these listings, how fast and for how much will they go for?”

Kerri Manig also sees the same situation and said, “Well, I think prices are up, definitely up. Availability is down so it’s definitely a seller’s market.” 

Johnston said, “We used to have [properties] months on the market. A lot of times people from larger markets would come and say, ‘What are your days on market?’ Theirs would be 30 or 45 days and ours were like three months, 120 days to more than that. We used to not take listings for less than a year because it would truly take sometimes that long to be able to sell them.”

Johnston also provided more details to the timeline and how it unfolded and said, “I think the August date was when that first wave of COVID kind of maybe settled down a little bit and people were… I don’t know, maybe it’s kind of the calm before the storm. That was the second wave in the winter and whatnot. Like maybe that’s what triggered that sort of activity or something. We noticed there were a lot more, obviously, there were a lot less in-person viewings and things like that, but there were a lot of requests coming from outside of our area.” 

Most of the eager prospective buyers were coming from out of state. Manig said “Buyers have came from all over the place. We’re getting not so much from back east, at least I’m not. I was maybe a little bit last year, but it’s mostly coming through California, Oregon, some Texas even, lots of Colorado, Idaho people.”

Johnston said, “We’ve always seen some influx from California. I think that we’re getting some overflow from people from Idaho, not people moving from Idaho, but an overflow from people moving from elsewhere that didn’t get in Idaho and in Montana. I’ve noticed a market, an uptick in people from the Pacific Northwest, Washington.”

Johnston and Daniels were hesitant to say why and didn’t want to speculate if it were because of the riots or for political reasons. Daniels said, “When we get the calls from people, it’s really varied about how much detail they give us. We always get the general information of, this is where we’re from, but not everybody will give you the same level of detail as this is why I have to move from whatever location.” 

Johnston added, “I think that people have generally, though, searched out a more conservative area because where they are coming from has tended to shift. 

Daniel’s continued and said, “I think it’s been a combination and I’m always the last person to be specific about stuff I like to kind of be conservative on it but at this point, I don’t think we can really put off the economic, political and COVID reasons that people have decided that they want to go someplace that matches more with how they feel.”

Manig provided her observations and said, “When COVID hit, when we were at home concerned, when the riots hit, it’s like there’s this influx of people just running out of these cities.” 

Manig agrees that it’s mainly urban escape and told a story. “Well, something interesting is there was this Nevada couple, and they live in a very small town in Nevada. And California people started coming to their small town and so they jumped to our small town… Which I don’t know specifically, but that’s what they said it was California people, but they came into their little town and they had a big city mind... And that’s why they came up to this town.”

Johnston provided a contrast of the reason why people were leaving other areas and talked about the positive attributes of why people should come to Wyoming.

“I think all three factors are very important, not just one over the other, I don’t think it’s a left shift politically. I think in response to those things, it’s been with the COVID thing where people are realizing, I think with so many people working from home now, I think they’re looking more for quality of life. And who doesn’t have the best quality of life to offer besides us?” said Johnson.

She added, “For example, the clean air, we’re seeing some shift from businesses, not necessarily to Thermopolis, but in Wyoming, we’re seeing shifts of businesses moving from areas that have very restrictive corporate law, rules, and tax and stuff like that. I think tax-wise people look to Wyoming because it’s probably a good place to do business. I think that’s why we’re seeing some shifts for bigger corporations that are looking here because of our landscape, our taxes.”

“Wyoming is just a good place to do business,” Johnson said. 

Daniels added, “Thermopolis’ economy hasn’t changed. We’re the same three, four or five factors that drive our little tiny economy. It’s not like we have a big new company that’s all of a sudden changed us. But people who can work from home are like, ‘Well, why don’t I keep my good paying job that I used to have to live in Denver for? Now I can keep that same salary, same job, but I can live in Wyoming?’”

With the high increase in demand to purchase properties, the issues of availability cause the prices to rise, but how much? The jump in prices didn’t really happen until the recent two years. All the realtors said the price increase ranged from as low as 10% to as high as 20%. They all agreed the average prices increased by approximately 13%-15%.

Daniels added a caveat and said, “Some people in selling their property well surpassed a 15% gain, but I would say across the board 15%, especially on just our average single-family, three-bedroom house.” 

The availability of properties for sale, however, is another factor. Johnston said, “As of today, there are 16 residential properties listed in Hot Springs County. Active listed residential properties between the real estate agencies that participate in the MLS because that’s where we can pull them from. Of those 16, eight of them have contracts pending on them.”

Daniels added, “We have eight active listings right now that aren’t under contract. So that number, I’d say, it’s still half of what it should be as far as active listings. So let’s just use the 16 number, we should be in the 30, 35 range for listings right now for this time of year.”

Manig said, “Some of it is availability. We had so many listings at the beginning of 2021 or in 2020 and then they just decline and people aren’t moving out as much.”

Johnston said, “We are still in a seller’s market.” Daniels added, “Inventory is half of what it should be and the demand still surpasses the supply.” 

Johnston added more detail to the situation and described the pursuit of the buyers is not waning during the off-season and said, “Traditionally we slow down in the winter a little bit. That’s normal. But we still have buyers that weren’t able to secure property last year that we’re still communicating with that are still looking. So I foresee that we’re going to have… I’m hoping that we’ll have a similar year to what we had last year just based on that we’re a little slower to slow down than other places, but we were a little slower to pick up.”

Daniels added, “It seems that the buyers that were serious buyers last summer-fall that did not get a property purchased are still here, still looking. And we’ve been lucky to have four new listings in the last month that have been beneficial for them and each time we put those up we’ve got a new wave of new activity, people we’ve never met or spoken to and when the other offices show our stuff they’re working with new people too. 

Daniels continued and said, “We still have some buyers from last fall on the hook and now we’ve got new people we’ve never talked to before, it seems to be that the buyer activity is still above average.”

In next week’s part two story, realtors provide information about how properties differ when it comes to residential, rural and commercial, opportunities involving short-term rentals and they will share their optimism on what the future of Hot Springs County might look like.