Aspen Gets Creative With Not One, But Two Exchange Deals This Month and Closes $35 Million in Real Estate Sales in 2011 Including Celebrity Sales

ASPEN, Colo… In a world where cash has always been king but is now super scarce, buyers and sellers in this luxury market still have a burning desire to make deals – especially when there are so many great deals to be had.   So what’s an Aspen dealmaker to do?  Trade on the Aspen Exchange.

In the last three weeks, there have been two multi-million dollar deals made on the Aspen Exchange by Aspen broker Steven Shane of SDS Real Estate, Inc.  In fact, Shane has perfected the Aspen Exchange with three exchange deals in this year alone.

“The hurdle most buyers must overcome is selling an existing property before they can buy another,” said Shane.  “But that doesn’t stop a deal maker from wanting to make deals, so this is where I can help by bringing buyers and sellers together to make something happen.”

In the first exchange, the buyer wanted to buy on Aspen’s famed Buttermilk Mountain.  The only way the buyer was comfortable getting a $6 million home was to sell 8 acres of land he already owned just outside of Aspen. So, Shane created a deal in which the buyer paid $6 million for the new home:  $4 million in cash with an exchange of 8 acres of land valued at $2 million.

Three weeks prior, Shane represented a seller with a home just outside of Aspen in Snowmass listed for $1.9 million. An interested buyer came along who had a condo in downtown Aspen he needed to sell before he could purchase the Snowmass home.  The exchange:  $1.25 million in cash and a $700,000 condo.

Earlier this year, Shane pulled out all the stops last May in structuring a six-sided exchange transaction that closed simultaneously and involved buyers from the United Kingdom, California and Colorado.

And what about all those celebrities who buy homes in Aspen?  Many of them use Shane, but he won’t kiss and tell.  The latest sale was to Aerin Lauder, yes heiress to the Estee Lauder fortune, who’s Aspen home is featured in this month’s Vogue magazine: http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/mountain-high-aerin-lauders-aspen-home/

Aspen hasn’t missed the economic turndown but Aspen real estate has always been in its own world.  And once again, it is apparent that Aspen marches to the beat of a different real estate drum than the rest of the country, showing strong signs that its luxury market is bouncing back as September 2011 stands as the strongest transaction month this mountain resort town has seen in three years.

Posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Homes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.