An idyllic estate for sale east of Aspen on Independence Pass has seen its listing price drop from $25 million to $14.5 million.

Motivated seller in distress? The first wave of price meltdowns that are sure to hit Aspen’s market? A complete fluke not indicative of anything?

Could be any or all of the above. The 11,500-square-foot home on 5 acres is owned by Alan Potamkin, who along with his brother Robert heads a billion-dollar chain of more than 50 car dealerships, including Manhattan’s largest dealership, a seven-story midtown structure selling Chevrolets, Cadillacs, Hummers, GMCs, Saabs and other makes of cars. Reports out Tuesday revealed that General Motors sales slipped 41 percent in November from November of 2007.

Potamkin is also involved in a divorce and the listing notes that the sale price is subject to approval by a divorce court judge.

“The owner wants it priced to sell immediately,” said listing broker Joshua Saslove, of Joshua & Co.

Potamkin purchased the home in 1997 for $3.75 million, according to public records. The most recent assessed value, calculated two years ago, put the property’s worth at $12.1 million.

The home has been on the market at least since 2007. It was originally built in 1981, and the previous owner spent years redesigning and remodeling the property.

“Maybe it was priced aggressively to begin with,” Saslove said, “as many are.”

There is other anecdotal evidence of slipping prices in the Aspen market, including a 5,300-square-foot home on Smuggler Mountain that went under contract in November for $5.8 million after being listed as high as $7.9 million. A one-bedroom Hunter Creek condo also sold this week for $625,000, when the free market part of that neighborhood for the last few years has been a million-dollar club.

But Aspen real estate broker Rob Ritchie said the fire sale is not on. In fact, the median home price in the Aspen area has actually spiked 15 percent this year — from $3.6 to $4.1 million — thanks to slower sales and a few extremely large transactions.

Ritchie said he has two clients right now who are looking to buy a discounted property in the $10 million to $30 million range, but nothing has yet come up to satisfy them.

“[The two would-be buyers] are absolutely dismayed the prices are not coming down,” Ritchie said. “They have been holding out since last summer waiting for prices to drop and they haven’t.

“If that were happening, I would happily have sold two homes this month because I have two buyers who are ready to pounce,” Ritchie said.

As Ritchie tells it, the Aspen market is not subject to the price drops seen elsewhere in the country — nationwide, home values are down 18 percent since their peak in 2006 — because so few of the homes here are bought with credit. The wealthy can afford not to sell their homes in a bad economy, Ritchie said.

But homes that are selling right now are not moving for any more than 5 percent more than the last sale price or comparable sales prices, he said.

And when the recession ends, Ritchie predicted that listing prices will do what they have done at the end of previous recessions. Once sellers feel the economy has righted itself, they will increase their list prices 10 percent to 20 percent, he said.

Aspen broker Tim Mooney took a different view, saying the bad economy has only started to rear its head in Aspen.

“This is just the beginning of the bleeding,” Mooney said. “Every sector across the board in economic life is being devalued at a rate that can’t be measured.”

While Aspen will always be populated with unleveraged wealth, there are sure to be properties owned by victims of the global financial crisis who will need to sell their properties fast, Mooney said.

Considering the mind-boggling increase in Aspen real estate values from 2003 through 2006, it could take awhile for things to settle down, Mooney said.

“We ran the market up to such an overpriced value, it’s going to take years before it starts building back up to the new value of the dollar,” he said.

As for comparable sales, there really aren’t any right now, since so few properties have moved in the last year, he said. Since there isn’t much to compare a home’s value with, buyers and sellers can only guess what their home is worth.

“That’s why it’s in free fall,” he said.

So for those with the cash, now may be the best time in years to score some deals on a previously overpriced multimillion-dollar home.

curtis@aspendailynews.com