A newly built five bedroom, 5.5-bathroom house with three stories on Trailside Drive sold for a record breaking $3.75 million on Oct. 31.
The 6,048 square-foot home with ski-on,ski-off access to the Great Eastern trail, was listed for $3.5 million on March 1 and sold above asking price on March 10. The home sits on just under an acre of land.
“It had three offers and they were all sight unseen,” said Bret Williamson, the broker and owner of Killington Valley Real Estate.
“When I listed it, it was under construction and the sellers didn’t want the public walking around with tools and machinery,” he said. “They wanted to wait until it was more presentable. That didn’t stop anybody.”
The sale reflects a trend in rising home prices that occurred during the home buying frenzy during the pandemic. The last highest price home sold for $3.47 million on March 28 after multiple offers. The 2004 home, also on Trailside Drive, was the first single-family home in Killington to sell for more than $3 million. Before that, a ski-on, ski-off $2.65 million home broke a record in March 2021.
“It’s still a seller’s market,” Williamson said. “There’s not a lot of inventory right now. Properties generally don’t last long once they’re listed. With everything that’s going on in Killington, I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon.”
The home sold in October has a seven-person hot tub, a sauna, a wood-burning natural stone fireplace in a great room (with vaulted 24-foot ceilings and timber beams). Other amenities include a mudroom with built-in boot drying system, a basement bar and billiards room, a clawfoot tub and a heated oversized two-car garage.
Williamson said the seller is in the construction business and originally planned to build the house for themselves.
“Once they started building, those plans changed,” Williamson said. “They decided to shift gears and sell it.”
Williamson had three offers before it sold.
“When I listed it, the walls and the framing and foundation was in,” he said.
Construction of the home was finished a couple weeks ago, after the July rainstorm caused delays.
“We wanted it to be done right,” Williamson said. “Toward the finish line we had that rain storm which put a monkey wrench in stuff with the roads and delivery. Luckily, the buyers are skiers so it wasn’t really a problem as long as it was ready for ski season, and it is.”
Williamson said the new buyers are planning to use the house as a second home.
“They’re ski enthusiasts and very familiar with the area and ski area in general,” he said.
The high price reflects the lack of homes caused by the buying frenzy of the pandemic. In all the years preceding 2021, there were just 20 sales in Killington over $1 million, but in 2021 and 2022 alone, there were 20 luxury sales above $1 million, including three sales in the mid-to-upper $2 million range.
Williamson said with the lack of housing inventory, more people are interested in buying land.
“The residential, single family home market is strong and inventory has been thin for a long time,” Williamson said. “I’m seeing a trend now shifting toward land, as prices start to elevate, people are looking at land, which not too long ago was a slower market. Now, land prices are starting to increase and people are looking to build. There’s a lot of new construction I think Killington’s going to see in the future.”
Williamson said home prices in Killington have been too low for too long, lagging other resort towns in Vermont for high-end real estate.
“We’ve caught the best skiing in the east and the real estate is catching up to that,” he said.
“I’ve seen other resorts with really expensive resorts and I don’t think the mountains compete with Killington. I think our infrastructure and resort is the best. Now we can command those higher prices.”
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By David Young
A new five bedroom, 5.5-bathroom home on Trailside Drive in Killington recently sold for $3.75 million, breaking a record.
