The town where a trailer costs $559,000: By the numbers

With eager foreign buyers pushing average home prices well into the millions, Aspen, Colo., has become America's most expensive town

Aspen, Colo.'s growing housing market has hit even the less-coveted trailer park homes; the cheapest single family home is priced at $559,000 (not pictured).
(Image credit: Corbis)

Across America, homeowners have felt the harsh effects of the burst real estate bubble. But one picturesque mountain town has remained relatively untouched: Aspen, Colo. The luxurious skiing mecca has actually seen a steady increase in housing prices since 2006, and even a home in a trailer park might still set you back more than a million dollars. Here, a brief guide, by the numbers:

$559,000

Price of the lowest-priced single family home on the market in Aspen. The house is located in a trailer park.

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$4.6 million

Median sale price of an Aspen home, the highest in the country

$5.4 million

Average home price in Aspen in 2006

$6 million

Average home price in Aspen in 2010. "While most housing markets in the rest of the country continue to struggle with anemic demand and foreclosures," says Nancy Keates in The Wall Street Journal, "Aspen has forged its own orbit."

$73,200

Average home price in Detroit in late 2010, the lowest in the nation

31.2 percent

Decline in home prices from their peak in 20 major U.S. cities

4.1 percent

Decline in those cities' home prices in 2010

11

Number of cities in the index, out of 20, that recently posted their lowest home prices since the bubble burst

25 percent

Additional drop that the market is at a "substantial risk" of seeing, according to Robert J. Shiller, a Yale economist and the author of Irrational Exuberance

5,000

Approximate population of Aspen

1/5

Share of Aspen real-estate transactions during a week in late January involving buyers from other countries. "Sales of luxury Aspen estates — the sorts of over-the-top places with leather walls and outdoor heated infinity pools — have remained remarkably healthy, thanks in part to foreign buyers," says Keates.

$36 million

Amount Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich paid for a 14,300-square-foot house on 200 Aspen acres in 2008

Sources: Wall Street Journal, AP, KJCT, New York Times

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