The new tram opened for business this morning at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, marking the end of a nearly two-year project to make the top of our famous mountain accessible in a single nine-minute ride from the bottom of the resort.  It’s bigger, badder, and faster than the old tram, which now serves as a ticket kiosk at one of the not-so-reasonably-priced parking lots at Teton Village.  Kinda smacks of the retiree working as a greeter at Wal-Mart.

It’s no secret that the real estate business is not doing so well these days, but in order to demonstrate that it’s not quite dead, here’s the quick and dirty on what happened this week in the market:

Only ONE single-family home, priced at $1,375,000 and one vacant building site, priced at $499,000 have gone under contract so far this month.  Six homes closed ranging from $500K for a 1600 square foot condo to $4,685,000 for a 5800+ square foot home on 8.5 acres.  Last year, both of these would have sold for considerably more, further bolstering my position that there are some tremendous buys out there right now.  I’ll try to provide market updates on a more regular basis, but in the event you just cannot wait until I post them here, you’re always welcome to call me toll free at (877) 739-8136 for a live update.
Unless I have a flood of creative juice beforehand, this will be the last post of 2008.  My sincere thanks to all five of you who’ve read these rantings.  I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.  Let’s pray that 2009 is better economically than ‘08 was.

I was asked this question a few minutes ago by a colleague in her early 20s who is looking out for me in helping keep me up to speed on the current vernacular utilized by an ONLY SLIGHTLY younger generation.  Having just returned from a weekend in Las Vegas that was completely devoid of debauchery, I feared that news of my lack of exploits had already spread north to Jackson Hole, threatening to crush my reputation.  Ashley was actually asking me if I had skied the one and only top-to-bottom ski run open at the ski hill, which snakes down the mountain in a obviously lonely fashion.

The Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, the official name of the ski hill in Teton Village, opened at the end of November to anemic crowds of mostly locals due to the fact that we’ve not really received an appreciable amount snowfall YET this winter.  Manmade snow is the only viable and skiable option, unless you care neither for the bottoms of your skis nor the integrity of your knees, and due to the sheer size of the mountain, there is really only one run out of over 100 that can be opened and skied upon without help from above.  I’m not overly concerned, as the quality and quantity of snow this early in the season is far from being at its peak.  Case in point:  last year at this same time, we had only slightly more snow on December 9th (Happy Birthday, Tuffy!), as evidenced by the fact I could drive my truck clear up to the top of a logging road to cut down my Christmas tree without requiring 4 wheel drive or a winch.  Then it began snowing on Christmas Day and really didn’t stop until mid-March.  Last year we ended up with well over 600″ of snowfall and the best and most frequent powder skiing most of us can remember.  Not to worry, the snow WILL come.

For those of you who’d like an update, the new aerial tram opens to the public on December 20th!!!  So, get your skis tuned, keep one eye on the snow conditions and the other eye on the airline websites.  Just like in our real estate market, there are a ton of great deals out there, if you know how to find them.  A last-minute ski vacation to our lovely corner of Wyoming might prove a whole lot easier on the wallet than you might think.