As we're coming down the home stretch for 2014, we have seen continued appreciation in almost all segments of the Big Bear Real Estate market. One market segment which I have not taken a look at lately is the sale of Big Bear luxury homes. So let's take a look!

The graph below shows a sales history of luxury properties in Big Bear. Note that there is no widely agreed upon set definition for "luxury property". But for the sake of compiling numbers, I will use the top 10% of home sales as my criteria as there are several brokerages that use this as a general rule of thumb.

Big Bear Luxury PropertiesYou can see that all four major price measures have risen so far in 2014 and that there seems to be a steady, if not accelerating, rate of appreciation. This trend is consistent across the state of California where sales and appreciation rates of overall real estate have slowed while luxury home sales and values have continued their impressive appreciation rate reaching their highest level since their peak in 2007.

Of these Big Bear luxury home sales, 40% of the sales so far this year were cash transactions. That number jumps to 55% for luxury homes closing at more than 1M dollars.

As mentioned in previous blog posts, Big Bear seems to be moving in the direction of becoming a more upscale resort community. Between the multi-million dollar renovation of The Village last year and the purchase of both local ski resorts by an established and well-backed investment group from Mammoth Mountain, I would imagine our valley will become increasingly appealing to a more affluent demographic. As such, I would expect luxury homes in Big Bear to show greater appreciation than we will likely see in the overall real estate market.