A fully furnished, mint home in Aspen, Colorado, has changed hands after the developer chopped nearly one-third off the original asking price. But at $24.4 million, it narrowly surpassed last year’s most expensive single-family home sale in Aspen.
The eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom house first came on the market in August 2015, with a price tag of $36 million. It went into contract last December and closed earlier this month, according to public records.
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Situated on five acres on Sunnyside Lane, the 14,000-square-foot house features spacious entertaining rooms, family rooms, a home theater, indoor pool and spa. Outdoors, there is a pool, a full kitchen and a cabana, according to the original listing by developer and seller Bowden Properties.
Coldwell Banker Mason Morse, which represented the buyer, confirmed the $24.4 million sale price for the modern-style mansion, but declined to identify the buyer. The sale hasn’t recorded by the city agencies yet.
The highest sale price in 2016 was by a home on Willoughby Way, which was sold last November for $24 million but was previously listed for $32.5 million, according to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, a brokerage that tracks the Aspen market on a monthly basis.
Although it’s considered one of the world’s top ski destinations, Aspen’s real estate market struggled at the end of 2016. In the final quarter of the year, the 25 single-family homes that were sold had a median price of $4.775 million, representing a 11% and 29% year-over-year decrease respectively, according to a market report released last month by national brokerage Douglas Elliman and real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel.
By comparison, 28 homes were sold for a median price of $6.725 million during the last three months of 2015.
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The markets have appeared to show signs of recovery, though, so far this year, according to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. Seven single-family homes were sold in Aspen in January for a total value of $32 million, compared with two sales for $5.2 million in the same month of 2016. On average, the sales price increased 74% from $2.6 million to $4.6 million.
For the luxury sector, which the brokerage defines as property priced over $7.5 million and nearly always limited to single-family homes, there are 13 sales pending in January with an average asking price of $13 million, although none of the contracts has closed yet.
To put that in perspective, there were altogether 26 luxury sales throughout the entire 2016. The average asking price was $12.4 million, but average sales price was $11.2 million, representing a 9% discount overall.
The Developer Bowden Properties didn't immediately respond to requests for comments.
Elsewhere in Aspen, billionaire industrialist William Koch’s Elk Mountain Lodge is still for sale for $80 million. The founder of Oxbow Corp. first put the 26-bedroom, 31-bathroom mansion on the market for $100 million in 2015.
Write to Fang Block at fang.block@dowjones.com