FREE SKIING!

Main Lodge

Stump Alley

Mammoth Mountain is offering free skiing Friday, December 9, just to prove that  mostly man made snow conditions can be really, really good. Sign up for My Mammoth on the Mountain's website and you'll be qualified to pick up your free lift pass at any ticket booth.

Canyon Lodge

Eagle Base

The Mountain is also committed to opening Canyon Lodge and Little Eagle on December 14th. Night time temperatures this past week  averaged below 20 degrees and the snow making guns have been blowing  full tilt.

Still, I cruised Eagle Base and Canyon yesterday and discovered they're really going to have to open the nozzles to lay down enough base to make Little Eagle viable. But with forecasters calling for overnight temperatures in the sub-teens for the coming week, I wouldn't bet against it.

October Newsletter

Mammoth Real Estate: Third Quarter Results

After an early October snow storm Mammoth has been granted a reprieve. An interlude of quiet grace. Gilded low angled light sets the countryside aglow. Temperatures arc into the 70's. Aspens and willows, cottonwoods and birches turn out in luminescent golds and shocking reds.

Fishing, by some accounts, has gone off, like a pre-holiday two hour sale. One local tells of bolting down 395 on his lunch break, clomping through a mile of boggy meadow in waders to a Crowley Lake glory hole, making two casts, catching and releasing a 23 inch broad girthed 4 pound rainbow and returning to work without anyone being the wiser.

It's a swell time to be in Mammoth.

It's not a bad time to be looking for real estate either. Mortgage rates hover near 4%. Sellers are eager to move before the real snow hits, and marked down prices, paced by short sales and REOs, haven't looked this cheap since, well, since 2001.

80 condos changed hands in the third quarter of 2011, up 11% from last year's third quarter. The median price eased 16.6% to $223,000 from the same period in 2010. Bank and developer negotiated transactions accounted for 55% of sales while just 17.5% of the current 215 active condo listings are short sales, auction offerings or bank owned. One lucky Mammoth Realty Group client snapped up an 1849, 4 bedroom/3 bath condo for the pre-historic price of about $380,000.

20 homes sold in the third quarter, a 150% increase over last year, leaving just 66 active home listings. The median price slid about 10% to $530,000. Just 10.5% of the home market is made up of REOs or short sales. If you hurry you might still catch the glory of Mammoth's Fall and maybe even a piece of Mammoth real estate.

For the latest listings please contact me at: dphillips.dpbp@verizon.net.

606 INCHES! MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN SNOWFALL RECORD SHATTERED.

Maybe we should have seen it coming. After all the Mammoth ski season got off to the best possible start, a record 209 inches in December. But this was a La Niña year, unpredictable as a three year old at a petting zoo. January was subdued. February marginally above average. Then wham, this petulant March, that has weary locals reaching for liquor and analgesics. Snow piling beyond the seldom seen 500, snowballing toward the never seen 600 inches.  


My Mammoth Neighborhood

This morning, after 12 feet of new in the last 8 days, the record set in 2005-2006, a seemingly insurmountable 578.5 inches, is a goner. Mammoth Mountain Ski Area is reporting a season's snowfall total of 606 inches. Fifty feet, five stories, over two feet more than the previous high mark. Now March, at 178 inches, joins December in the record books. But wait, it's only March.

Five stories! The big five-o, the magic 600. Come on, don't be intimitdated. The streets are clear, ski patrol is setting charges to open up the whole mountain and the forecast is for warmer temperatures and clear skies. So grab your gear, pack up the car and don't forget your camera. It's gonna be great!

HEATING SYSTEM FAULT CLOSES THE WESTIN FOR A WEEK

Temporary Boiler On Line Thursday Morning

The Westin Monache, Mammoth's lone 4 star hotel, was closed Wednesday, January 19, due to smoke coming from the heating system's flue. The exhaust flue of the hotel's propane fired boiler overheated causing insulation material to smolder inside the nine story flue chase. Smoke was sucked into the building's ventilation system and circulated to many of the rooms. The boiler had to be shut down and guests were relocated to neighboring lodging.

After a week of cleanup and air filtering, the heating system was coupled to an industrial looking boiler chugging away outside the hotel entry. By the evening of Thursday the 27th, the Westin was ready to receive guests again.  An investigation is underway to sort out the cause of the malfunction.

2010 MAMMOTH REAL ESTATE SALES CLIMB

Sales were up last year as buyers discovered value in Mammoth real estate. 371 condos changed hands in 2010, a 25% jump over the 295 sold in 2009. The total value of sold condos climbed 15% to $131 million from 2009's total of $114 million.

Single family transactions were also higher. Escrows closed on 72 homes worth nearly $62 million in 2010 compared with 62 homes transacted in 2009 valued at $50 million.

The median price of sold properties eased last year, 14% for condos ($279,750), and 6% for single family homes ($625,000). Of more interest, the percentage of sales attributed to motivated sellers of "distressed" real estate shot up. Bank owned properties (REO's), short sales and auctioned real estate constituted 36% of condos and 39% of sold homes in 2010.

The flow of distressed properties to the market can be erratic and their shelf life brief. For instance, REO's and short sale listings comprise only 9% of homes and 17% of condos currently listed. These bargains often fall quickly to nimble buyers who've scouted the market and know what they're after.  So, while more troubled real estate assets are on the way, buyers should research the market, line up financing and enlist the aid of a REALTOR®.