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.
$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
