March 2020 Big Bear Real Estate Stats

We hope everyone had a great week, either safe at home or at their cabin with the family!  With all the craziness of the past few weeks, we have seen more and more people escaping to their cabins in the mountains.  You have probably seen the articles about residents of big cities fleeing to the mountains and deserts (especially apartment/condo-dwellers who have been stuck inside with the spouse, kids, dogs, etc. and nowhere to go outside).  In the beginning of the lockdown, we were actually seeing more and more rentals (even after the slopes closed), with almost every rental occupied as we drove around.  They finally came out and announced “no more vacation rentals until the end of the month”, so only owners have been allowed to come up to their cabins, which we have seen much more of than usual (and for longer stays, since many people are working remotely). There have also been a lot more requests for rentals of 1-3 months from people wanting to escape the cites and have a yard for the kids/dogs to play in. Still, with hotels closed and no vacation rentals for the last couple of weeks, it has definitely been quieter around town than usual and the number of showings has been down because of it; so even though the number of sales was still relatively high in March (mostly escrows that opened in January and February), we will expect that number to be considerably lower in April (although, with people feeling more and more cooped up, we had several showings this weekend and received 3 buyer requests within the last 24hrs just from one of our online sources). On a brighter note, depending on where you are in the Big Bear Valley, we received about 2-3 ft of snow last week (we are already almost 3ft above the seasonal average) and the Lake is filling up nicely (especially since the slopes haven’t been using its water to make snow); so it should be a fantastic boating season, when people are finally allowed to leave their houses!!

Below are the monthly Big Bear Real Estate stats for March.  As mentioned previously, sales remained strong for the last month of winter, with average $/sqft up in all areas that we track, with the exception of Sugarloaf and the one small Lakefront.

Area	#Sales	Avg. Sale	Avg. $/sqft	SP/LP	DOM
BBC	28	$283,516	$232.86	97.6%	98
BBL	21	$409,300	$296.74	98.4%	81
BBL-Lakefront	1	$798,000	$445.81	99.9%	53
FAWN	2	$407,500	$221.82	96.6%	138
FAWN-Lakefront	0	NA	NA	NA	NA
FOX	7	$666,486	$264.74	96.5%	129
MOON	18	$414,118	$290.48	95.8%	98
SUGA	15	$197,067	$214.70	98.4%	123

Have a great, safe weekend!!