By David Beasley, The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Wyoming’s real estate market is “staying reasonably strong” despite rising interest rates, according to the head of a Wyoming realtor group.
Nationally, the once red-hot housing market is cooling off, the Wall Street Journal reported recently. April sales were the slowest since the housing market boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Journal. The median price for existing homes, however, increased to $391,200.
Wyoming is home to several different housing markets, Wyoming Realtors CEO Steven Beazley told The Center Square, some of which are insulated from the rising interest rates.
“You’ve got Teton County, which is doing its thing regardless of what the rest of the world is up to,” Beazley said. “It’s the highest per capita income, the highest per capita assets, in the state.”
The Cheyenne market also remains strong because of its proximity to the Denver area, he said.
“You’re only a 30-minute drive from a couple of million people,” Beazley said. “They’ve been getting overspill from the Front Range area for a number of years.”
Those hot areas of Wyoming were seeing multiple offers on real estate long before COVID. In areas like Jackson, interest rates are really irrelevant in many cases, according to Beazley.
“Nobody is borrowing money for house loans, so they don’t care,” he said. “In the rest of Wyoming, the market is good, but I have been told that rising interest rates have slowed some things down.”
“Obviously the interest rate is a big deal,” Beazley added, referring to blue-collar workers. “It’s almost doubled. That always puts a little bit of a cramp on the market. But from what I can tell, the market is still staying reasonably strong.”
One factor that has kept the market strong is the ability to work from home, Beazley noted.
“By and large, people moving to Wyoming are bringing the jobs with them,” he said. “They work remotely … It’s not quite as dependent on the local job market. It is dependent on local amenities.”
The Center Square is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on state- and local-level government and economic reporting.
