Yesterday's Daily News Record featured an article on the short term rental situation at Massanutten Resort. The latest update is that:
"The Rockingham County Planning Commission is scheduled to continue a hearing it began in November about a zoning ordinance amendment, which, if approved by the Board of Supervisors, will allow the rentals and, in theory, end the debate."
It has been an interesting four years (wow --- four years) that this debate has been going on, and it made me stop to think about the state of the Massanutten Resort housing market. Below is a brief summary of changes in that market over the past four years, within the context of the Harrisonburg and Rockingham County housing market as a whole.

As can be seen above, Massanutten has seen a steady decline in the number of home sales taking place in each of the past four years. That said, the Harrisonburg and Rockingham County market have seen a very similar decline. The only deviation here is that the Massanutten market continued to decline rather significantly (35% drop) between 2008 and 2009 while the rate of decline slowed down somewhat in the Harrisonburg and Rockingham County market as a whole (13% drop).

The graph above shows changes in the median sales price of homes in the Massanutten Resort market as compared to changes in median sales price for the market as a whole. The difference is staggering! Harrisonburg and Rockingham County have seen a median sales price decline of 3.4% over the past four years. During the same time period, Massanutten Resort has suffered a 16% decline in median sales price.
It's impossible to know how much of a correlation exists between the soft Massanutten Resort market and the short term rental issue, but I believe this issue has certainly played some role in the changes depicted above.
Also . . . enjoy the second edition of
Harrisonburg Real Estate Radio:
Assessments via
Harrisonburg Real Estate Radio [11:55]