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‘Boomers' boost Cody real estate market

By Carole Cloudwalker

This document was published online on Thursday, February 07, 2008

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Carolyn and Rudy LaCroix moved to Cody and purchased a home on Longhorn Drive after leaving San Jose, Calif., almost five years ago. They are among many Baby Boomers who are retiring and buying homes in Park County. (Photo by Ken Blackbird)

“Baby Boomers” - commonly thought of as those born 1946 to 1964 - may be the driving force behind Cody's booming real estate market.

Some area real estate agents say up to half of all their home sales in the past year or so have been to people ages 44-62.

Many of the newcomers are retired or semi-retired, have cash in their pockets from the sales of homes in spendier areas, and are on quests to find a new hometown where the air is as clean as the lifestyle.

Their interest appears to be keeping the West in a positive economic time warp where home prices remain strong and sales still are brisk, despite what's happening in much of the rest of the country.

Mike Donley of the Donley Team Real Estate Group says with the average sale price of a home in Cody at about $205,000 at the end of 2007 and the price range of homes in town running from $177,000-$444,000 at the end of last year (based on data from appraisers), Baby Boomers may be the only demographic eligible to purchase property.

“Baby Boomers are the only ones who can afford to buy here,” Donley said. “They are the dominant sector of people coming here.”

He said those who often cannot afford to buy homes in Cody today are “young, first-time purchasers, Forest Service or BLM workers and even oil service people” - the same people who used to be the home buyers that carried the Cody market when prices were more favorable.

Donley compares Cody's present real estate market to that of Jackson, only Cody is a few rungs farther down the economic ladder.

Where Jackson real estate now is selling to billionaires, he said, Cody seems to be drawing Jackson's expatriate millionaires, who need a place to live when they sell their Jackson place, and are casting their eyes to Park County.

“Jackson has billionaires, but Cody gets the millionaires,” Donley said. “We have quite a few (former) Jackson buyers now.”

Maybe that's because with the exception of the spectacular Grand Tetons, “we have everything else, here.”

Primarily, Donley added, “people are here to buy peace. They're paying the price to live in peace.”

Peace comes at an even higher rate in the country around Cody, where Donley says out-of-town property sales at the end of 2007 ranged $108,000-$780,000.

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