January officially went down as the snowiest January on record up here (surpassing the previous record in 1979) and the record snow has brought record crowds.  That’s not great news for traffic, but it’s fantastic news for vacation rentals, the lake level (up 30″ already!), real estate sales, and prices.  Last month there were 100 properties sold and another 166 in escrow.  That brings us down to less than a 4-month supply with only 322 Single Family residences left on the market!!  That’s the lowest number we have seen in at least 10 years!!! Below is the latest average sales price graph for Big Bear Lake going back 10 years.  The last 12 months have shown a significant increase in average sales price and an approximately 11% year-over-year increase in median sales price.  At this point, we’re a little over half-way back between the bottom of the market in 2011 and peak prices in 2006-2007.

As I mentioned in my previous email, Big Bear recently changed MLS providers and, in order to prevent any appearance of spam, buyers need to click on the original “Welcome email” or they will not receive additional listing emails.  In addition, you need to click on listings at least once every 90 days (we got them to increase that from 30, at least), in order to keep your search active.  If you have not seen the new “Welcome to the Portal” email or if you have stopped receiving listings, please check your “junk” or “spam” folder to make sure that they didn’t go there.  You might also want to add *.matrixemailer.com to your safe sender list to avoid Matrix emails from being caught in spam. If you still don’t see them, please let us know and we will make sure to re-send the welcome email manually.