Valley Real Estate Market Booms in Pandemic

Ketchum, Sun Valley skyrocket after slow start to 2020!

Home sales are up in the Wood River Valley as city dwellers looking to relocate to a more sparsely populated place flock to the Sun Valley area, local real estate agents say.

The number of home sales pending in Blaine County in the first three weeks of June was 75 percent higher than it was at the same time last year, data from the Sun Valley Board of Realtors shows, after a drop in sales following COVID-19’s arrival in Idaho. As the number of new cases in Blaine County has flattened and Idaho businesses have reopened, local real estate brokers say they are now seeing an unusually high demand for land and homes, especially in the northern part of the valley.

Ketchum has seen the largest boom, with 34 sales pending between June 1 and June 23—a 277 percent increase from the same timeframe in 2019. Sun Valley saw a 90 percent increase in pending sales, with 19 homes under contract, and Hailey experienced a 36 percent increase from last year.