Vails winter glow: area home sales have topped $1 billion for the first time in two years.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: [who owns] COLORADO - Statistical data

The sun over Vail today shines on 18 inches of snow, and the Gore Valley's mountains, chalets, condos, hotels, even its gas stations glow. The whole scene registers as almost absurdly picturesque, like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

A foot-and-a-half is sticking, with more predicted and ski season starting in a couple of weeks. Vail's economy is starting to glow again, or hum, or whatever it is affluent resorts do.

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Early winter snowfall is one reason. The white stuff buoys everyone and everything. A second is the opening of three major Vail Village projects along with ski season: the Ritz-Carlton Residences, with 45 fractional-ownership units and 71 whole-ownership condos at prices of $2.2 million to $9.1 million; the Four Seasons, which Dec. 10 begins offering rooms for $375 per night and up, and ski packages ranging from $675 per night to $2,250 per night; and Solaris Residences, the $300-some million project that replaces the old Vail Crossroads.

Each is a four- or five-star spot. Together, they seem somehow to have timed their investments relatively well. At least, it could be worse. At least Vail's beleaguered restaurants and retailers hope so.

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"The good news is, these are all finished," says Carroll Tyler, branch broker for Slifer Smith & Frampton Real Estate's Bridge Street office. "We don't have skeletons sitting around with plastic waving in the wind. The town looks gorgeous."

A third ground for optimism is the steps toward recovery by Colorado's resorts.

Let's put it this way: In 2007 just more than $2 billion worth of residential real estate sold in Eagle County. In 2008, that number fell to about $1.5 billion, and in 2009, slumped to $532 million, or 35 percent of the previous year's total.

This year for the first time in two years Eagle County residential real estate sales vaulted over the $1 billion mark: $1.1 billion in 926 transactions through September alone.

An impressive $235 million in September sales made it the second-best month recorded since September 2007, according to Vail-based Landmark Title Guarantee Co. Critical to those splashy numbers was the September sale of 45 units in the Ritz-Carlton Residences for $110,890,000.

"It's shocking to me the number of buyers out there and the available funding--that's been the big change" in the past year or so, says Doug Seabury, partner-broker in Eagle-based Eagle Valley Realty. "We've been talking about buyers waiting on the fence...