Phil Castle, The Business Times

Real estate activity continues apace in Mesa County with gains in transactions and dollar volume.

“It’s a good way to start the year out,” said Annette Miller, senior vice president of Heritage Title Co. in Grand Junction.

Robert Bray, chief executive officer of Bray Real Estate in Grand Junction, expects low inventories to hamper residential sales, but said he remains optimistic overall about the coming year. “I still see a fairly healthy real estate market for 2021.”

Miller said 391 real estate transactions worth a combined $116 million were reported in Mesa County in January.

Compared to the same month last year, transactions increased 22.6 percent and dollar volume rose 12.6 percent.

Five large transactions worth a total of $7.3 million bolstered dollar volume, Miller said including the sale of 12 acres of vacant commercial property near the Interstate Highway 70 exchange at 22 Road for $2.6 million, an industrial building on U.S. Highway 6 & 50 for $1.4 million and a residence on North Deer Park Circle for $1.1 million.

Still, seven transactions accounted for a total of $18 million in January 2020, she said.

The momentum with which 2020 concluded has carried into 2021, Miller said.

Buoyed by a strong finish in December, real estate activity reached record levels in 2020 with more than $1.75 billion in dollar volume, she said. The 5,658 transactions in 2020 remained well short of the 7,198 reported in 2005.

The outlook for 2021 will depend, Miller said, on the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccines in reopening the economy, whether people remain on the job and what happens when moratoriums on foreclosure activity come to an end.

“Employment is key,” she said.

According to numbers Bray Real Estate tracks, 238 residential real estate transactions worth a collective $80.4 million were reported in Mesa County in January.

Compared to the same month last year, transactions decreased 3.6 percent even as dollar volume increased 13.6 percent as a result of higher sales prices.

For all of 2020, 4,022 residential transactions worth a total of more than $1.275 billion were reported. Bray said the year-end numbers were among the highest he’s seen in his 46-year career in real estate in the Grand Valley.

The numbers would be even higher, he said, were it not for low residential inventories. There were just 223 active listings at the end of January, less than half the 557 listings at the same time last year.

The combination of low supplies and high demand has pushed up prices, he said. The median price of homes sold in January increased 13.8 percent to $296,000.

New construction has helped to take up a bit of the slack, Bray said. For January, 52 permits for single-family homes were issued in Mesa County, up from 35 for the same month last year. “That’s encouraging.”

Bray said he expects low inventories to continue hamper sales, but interest rates on mortgages also remain low. Moreover, the uncertainty associated with a presidential election has passed.

In the meantime, property foreclosure activity continues to slow in Mesa County.

No foreclosure filings or sales were reported in January, Miller said. For the same month last year, 25 filings and five sales were reported.