Aspen, Colorado’s prominent real estate firm Aspen Sotheby’s International Realty closed their doors to business ^[1] on Feb 13th and have now been taken over by Morris and Fyrwald Real Estate ^[2].

This comes as a huge shock in the industry. With major player like Aspen Sotheby’s ^[3] going bust people are starting to get worried. After the demise of Coates, Reid and Waldron ^[4], another big player that was acquired by Joshua & Co ^[5], was announced earlier this month, the Sotheby acquisition is proving to be the second major shake-up in the glittering resort town of Aspen, Colorado.

Aspen is particularly known to be a playground of the rich and famous and seeing major real estate companies go bust is an indication of the current state of Aspen’s real estate market.

First signs of trouble ^[6] in the Aspen real estate market were seen last year which resulted in job cuts at Aspen Sotheby’s to prevent further losses and preserve funds, but the situation became so bad that the company lost over $60 million in deals that were under contract to sell toward the end of year.

The Aspen Sotheby franchise will not be taken over as a package or a merger. Instead, Sotheby’s will clear their name and Morris and Frywald will purchase the franchise.

Since Sotheby’s International Inc. has huge marketing power, the new group sees this new acquisition as a benefit to their growing stable of brokers. Having started out in 2000 they increased sales from $41 million in 2001 to $242 million last year.