Sandpoint, which counts on good snow years at Schweitzer Mountain Resorts ski area to help drive its economy, is receiving a blizzard of business from recreation-home buyers after Sunset magazine covered the Idaho city in a glistening story in its January issue.


The attention has strengthened demand for homes in the picturesque lake-side community, where prices are up, inventory is down, and houses are selling quickly, says Margie Stevens, owner and broker of Sommerfeld Realty and the broker at Sandpoint.com Real Estate, a Web-based real estate business.


We had a great year last year, especially in waterfrontwaterfront was crazy, Stevens says. As soon as January hit, we had record visits to our Web site. Its been over 100,000 visitsnot hits. The visits have been from people all over the nation.


Stevens, a 16-year veteran of Sandpoints real estate industry, says professional athletes and actors have been among those whove called. She declines to identify any of the celebrities, but says at least one is a household name, especially after the Academy Awards.


Demand for recreational property has been strengthening since Smart Money magazine reported two years ago that Sandpoint was one of the best places in the U.S. to buy a second home, says Erin Maher, director of business development at Hidden Lakes Golf Resort, which is eight miles east of Sandpoint on state Route 200.


In its report, Smart Money said of Sandpoint, If you missed buying in Aspen or Steamboat Springs, where prices have gotten unspeakable over the past 15 years, consider this ski area 50 miles from the Canadian border. its not just another Swiss Miss copy of the Alps. Come year-round to swim, fish, and sail on the Pend Oreille Lake (140 square miles) and River.


In its December issue, Sunset described the skiing and other activities at Schweitzer Mountain Resort in an article headlined Sky-high on Schweitzer. Then, in its January issue, Sunset plopped a dollop of whipped cream on Sandpoints generous helping of publicity by naming the city the Wests Best Small Town. The lifestyle periodical gushed that Sandpoint residents, already fortunate, also make their own luck by doing things such as saving the downtown Panida Theater.


Additional valuable exposure might be coming.


Sports Illustrated was at Schweitzer last weekend, Stevens said last week. They were looking for the best young skier and snowboarder athletes. They interviewed one of my salespeoples sons.


All the ink has made phones ring at Sandpoints real estate agencies.


Were experiencing calls from all over the United States, Maher says. We are being circled by helicopters every day. Its just crazy.


Weve had walk-ins from Georgia, New York, Chicago. Were accustomed to seeing people from the West Coast, but this whole deluge from the East Coast is new. None of us has the budgets to advertise into the East Coast markets. This is all press generated.


Since Harbor Properties Inc., of Seattle, bought Schweitzer Mountain Resort at the end of 1998, it has marketed the ski area and its surrounding real estate heavily in the Seattle area, and that marketing is paying off, says Stephen Fina, a Seattle-based vice president with Harbor.


Weve been having a great year, with sales strong, time on market shorter and shorter, and price appreciation good, says Fina, whos in charge of planning and development of Schweitzers land.


Jennifer Fortune, office manager and lead sales agent at the Schweitzer office of Evergreen Realty, of Sandpoint, says, This year especially, the market is picking up. Its amazing how many people are calling up and saying, Send me some information about Schweitzer. Weve had a ton of that.


Fortune, who is married to Schweitzer Mountain General Manager Tom Fortune, lives at Schweitzer and does business only there. She says that while she has had two clients from Florida in recent months, Seattle-area customers interest in property on the mountain has picked up tremendously.


A recent announcement that McCall Aviation, of McCall, Idaho, will launch regular passenger air service between Seattle and Sandpoint in May has helped fuel that interest, Fortune says.


The current inventory of condominiums and homes for sale on the mountain, where there are 627 residences, is down to about 40 from the high 50s to low 60s usually, and sales are brisk, Fortune says.


If its ski in, ski out, it sells really fast, she says.


Many clients are interested in buying sites to build homes, and price appreciation is especially strong on building lots, which have risen 10 percent to 40 percent in selling price in the last 12 months, while condominiums have gone up by a more modest 10 percent to 20 percent, Fortune says. She expects that 35 to 50 residences will be built on the mountain this year.


When it comes to seeking residential properties at ski resorts, everybody is looking for the next Colorado, Fortune says. Theyre comparing Schweitzer to Vail and Jackson Hole, where the prices are just ridiculous.


One recent Jackson Hole real estate publication included homes offered for sale for $5 million to $15 million, Fortune says. Property is available for far less than that at Schweitzer, and buyers who know how much homes can appreciate at ski areas are looking to double, triple, or maybe quadruple the value of their property, Fortune says.


Weve never had a $1 million sale on the mountain, she says. We normally have one or two over $500,000. This year, well probably have five or six.


Buyers who are used to waiting in long ski-lift lines at far more well-known resorts find Schweitzers undiscovered feel especially appealing, Fortune says. The biggest thing thats drawing them is the lack of crowds.


The other major category of recreational property in the Sandpoint area, waterfront, also is in demand, says Dick Villelli, president of Villelli Enterprises Inc., which is developing Hidden Lakes Golf Resort. Villelli says he had told Sandpoint-area real estate brokers earlier waterfront property in the Sandpoint area could reach $5,000 a front foot in price this year, and one new development already has reservations at that, he says.


In terms of having an active market with a strong base, he says, It seems like we genuinely, finally have the real thing going on.


Kathie Sullivan, executive director of the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce, says, I do have a sense, from talking with the Realtors and also our members, that things do seem to be busy. There is a very favorable market. The county planning department has mentioned that they have been very busy with land-use planning activity.


The recognition that Sandpoint is attaining has been building for some time, Sullivan says. She says an average of 250 people a day stopped last summer at the visitors center the chamber operates. That heavy flow is expected to continue this year, Sullivan says.


Maher, who worked at Sun Valley more than a decade ago, says that back then, Aspen was known as show and tell, and Sun Valley was hide and seek. Its changed. The billionaires have pushed the millionaires out of Aspen, and now Sun Valley is show and tell, and Sandpoint is hide and seek.


Property at resort communities can go up so much that they become functionally obsolete, Maher says. For example, service workers have been bused to Sun Valley from nearby Shoshone, Idaho, because they cant afford to buy homes in Sun Valley, she says.


Were nowhere near that, she says. Our service people have the income to buy a home here.


While recent Multiple Listing Service statistics on sales activity werent available, a brief perusal of Sandpoint-area listings shows a number of houses are on the market at between $100,000 and $200,000, so residents who arent seeking recreational property have options when it comes to buying a home. Stevens says that in the Sandpoint area, when a certain type of property appreciates, other properties of that type usually will rise, too. She categorizes Sandpoint-area property as in-town, waterfront, secondary waterfront, mountain, and homes in surrounding communities, such as Hope.


Because the inventory of homes in the Sandpoint area has been sold way down, home builders are busy, Stevens says.


One, Mike Cain, who owns Pend OReille Construction, a small, unincorporated home-building company, says, From what Ive seen, its going to be a pretty good year for building contractors.


Permitting activity has bumped up in the city of Sandpoint, where 54 single-family homes and multifamily projects, with a combined value of $5.4 million, were permitted last year. That compares with 22 homes and multifamily projects with a combined value of $2.6 million in 2002.


In Bonner County, of which Sandpoint is the county seat, 844 building-location permits were issued last year, the same number as in 2002. The tally in both years was up from 675 in 2001 and 617 in 2000. Those permits cover everything from homes to rural outbuildings.