I published this in December of 2025, as my reflections on the year and true Vail Market Trends. It received acclaim from all my readers, and so you may also be entertained by my candor.
I wanted to start with a “Happy Holidays” and only good news this month, but I’m feeling like you deserve to know. A lot of our industry professionals are touting that the market is only going up. If you’ve been paying attention, what started out as a less than stellar 2025 selling season ended up disappointing both Sellers and Buyers alike with a STALEMATE across the board. In fact, Colorado Mountain Towns had such a boom moment due to the Pandemic that housing prices skyrocketed beyond expectations and wallets, and now we are paying for it.
In whatever part of the country you call home, you’re likely seeing more “for sale” signs sit for longer. And since the Colorado mountains has been a traditional safe haven for the last 50 years because of constant growth and migration and job opportunities, your financial planning has been to buy housing up here to offset losses in the traditionally volatile stock market, right? At least investors and financial advisors with their eye on diversification.
Read ahead to see my predictions, and statistics. The market is currently in no-man's land, with listing prices still sky-high and Buyers waiting to pounce on perceived deals or leave those overpriced listings to dry up.
After all, the average age of the American homebuyer just went up to 59 years old. These buyers have been around the block, and they know about market cycles. Their also advising their children to sit and wait, or they are helping them purchase their first house and demanding a deal. Buyers are still paying on average about $700/square foot here in Eagle County, but it’s been trending downward for about 18 months.
The Average Age of a Home Buyer in the United States is Now 59 Years Old. That's right. Shocking. But not really that shocking. (I had a great chart here, but the Blog doesn't support charts).
https://fortune.com/2025/11/13/average-homebuyer-59-years-old-senior-citizen-housing-market-affordability/ Follow the money in this case, and of course the older generations are still working, still represent the majority of the living American population, and maintain their stronghold on the individual wealth in this country. The average buyer age has increased yearly since 1990 because they were the ones buying 40, 30, 20, and 10 years ago and still today. This statistic will continue to go up until they no longer represent the majority wealth holders in the United States.
LET’S TALK TURKEY
I hope everyone reading this enjoyed their Thanksgiving! I’m giving thanks this year to my loyal clients, friends, and family for helping me reach my financial goals. I hope my honesty and integrity has shown through and I have guided everyone correctly to fulfill their own dreams of home selling and buying this year. I try my best to be open and communicative about the state of the market, and balance your needs with what the market will bear as we navigate this tumultuous time together. Buyers and Sellers now have goals at odds with one another, and that’s tricky to balance but it’s why I’m a professional.
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If you are an ultra-luxury home buyer or seller, mostly everything here does not apply to your situation. Those homes are flying off the shelves in this K-Shaped Economy, and good for you! But expect homes listed for $20 Million to be selling to you for $17 Million, so that’s some savings.
HONESTLY, and you know this, I would rather lose a sale than get a client underwater. That’s bad business.
BUYERS: Only Cash Buyers this year. I cautioned them to wait for deals, but we looked at all the inventory.
Unless a client was ready and willing to purchase their dream home this year, or an investment property with a lower ROI than desired, I didn’t encourage a purchase. I worked very hard with many investor/second home Buyers in the beginning of the year, touring homes in Silverthorne, Breckenridge, Keystone, Vail, Eagle, Edwards, and Eagle-Vail mostly. Of all the time I spent, none of those Buyers decided to purchase this year as the spring progressed though we put in offers. That tells Sellers that qualified buyers are ready, willing, and able, but the prices and unwillingness to negotiate throughout spring and summer made them take a restock and reshuffle their goals away from real estate investments for now.
SELLERS: You’re still in the drivers seat of this market because you have massive equity, BUT how long do you want to sit there? 180 Days On Market avg in Vail.
The price corrections were astounding. We always say that Sellers are 6 months behind Buyers in terms of pricing, and it’s true because Sellers have thought about selling for that time period, and base their asking prices on sales from when they FIRST started considering selling instead of the most recent sales prices around them. Usually, I can educate and avoid big price corrections from the start, but even I was blindsided by the falling market. Spring pricing strategies were outdated less than 2 weeks later, and chasing the market down is no fun. Not to say we crashed this year, but expectations vs reality were shocking.
On average, Sellers were getting 23% LESS than they thought they would. That’s not just me, that’s the entire mountain market.
However, Sellers are still 50% UP from 2020 valuations. It’s good news. It might change quickly in the next year or two, as we return to our baseline growth of 8% per year in valuation instead of the last 5 years of historic house buying frenzy.
TOP 10 COLORADO TOWNS IN “FREEFALL”
The story is the same for all of these Pandemic-Era Boom Towns, and if there is a variation I’ll expand the explanation. Mountain towns traditionally under-build housing due to annoying red tape local regulations and cost to build, not to mention most are stuck in tiny valleys where surrounding land is owned by the government or large entities. That issue came to a head these last 5 years, with investors scrambling to get their hands on even traditionally local neighborhoods further from ski areas just to be in the mountains and away from their cities. Low interest rates of course fueled this buying frenzy, and prices for all housing went up a staggering 73% in 5 years. Locals were pushed out, though some with heavy pockets from sales. Our local industries needed more workers and more housing, but builders are 10 years behind and the cost to build also went up a similar amount due to cost of land, supply chain issues, and lack of housing for even the builders! In fact, the Vail Valley has 3,000 job openings and no one to take them, because there’s nowhere to live. The salaries that Vail Health and Vail Resorts offer are woefully inadequate to support living here in a two-income household. *The following list was comprised by TD World Canvas, and while a little over the top, they paint a clear picture of what’s happening in real estate solely with statistics.
#10 - Pagosa Springs
#9 - Durango
#8 - Silverthorne - Lord or lord, give me strength for Summit County. This place is Ground 0 for oversupply of new construction. Why? Because Denver has run out of money. Silverthorne is the heart of the Rockies, with double the population of surrounding counties and 4 ski resorts. It’s 45 minutes closer to Denver for the same experience as Vail, with EPIC and IKON passes working in the same area. Silverthorne, known as the “city in the mountains,” has built itself out since the installation of the Outlets At Silverthorne. Contrary to the controversial Summit County Government’s strict implementation of across-the-board limitations on short term rentals in 2022, Silverthorne decided to allow the most short term rentals in their district. As a result, New Construction there blossomed 145% YoY! Finally, some housing being built and opportunities for investors, right? Except that the cash buyers were pulling out of Summit County in droves due to the overreaching government laws that stripped private home owners of their rights to STR. Colorado, specifically Summit and Pitkin counties, was no longer an investor friendly state. New laws are being written every day to increase tenant rights, mirroring California’s regulations (surprise surprise, many transplants to these mountain towns ARE from California, and became leaders in the community, and are bringing their policies with them). I saw the writing on the wall, and sold all of our properties in the state that I could and moved money into less regulated areas. I had clients asking where they should invest instead after selling their income properties. They're still going to buy investment properties, but not here, the cash money is gone. The only Buyers left are locals or second home owners (Denver) getting loans, and they don’t qualify for the 2 bedroom new construction with $500/mo HOA dues and asking prices starting at $850,000. As a result, Silverthorne has a lot of inventory, but no Buyers. Average 128 Days On Market and counting.
#7 - Crested Butte - New construction costs mean that even the new housing is on average $900,000 to purchase, while local purchasing salaries support a $400,000 purchase. There’s simply nowhere to find housing that qualifies. This same formula and almost exact same pricing disparity is devastating the housing market.
#6 - Steamboat Springs - Local housing regulations to build need to be expanded, and higher density housing areas must be established. The long-term locals and homeowners don’t want that (Not In My Backyard, or NIMBY HOA’s are putting stops to applications for new housing with higher density).
#5 - Breckenridge - Again, it’s in Summit County, and the local town council passed the strictest of the STR laws here in 2022 in an attempt to regulate the housing crisis that they helped create! Properties in the same complex but separated by a street and the arbitrarily drawn lines demarking where the “Resort Overlay Zones” STR’s allowed from absolutely NO STR’s allowed meant that for the same HOA dues each month, one owner could make bank and one owner was stuck renting to locals long term or choosing to leave their property vacant unless they used it themselves. The Town was hoping for the long term rental for locals, but guess what? Those owners decided to high tail it out of Breckenridge, as well as locals who have no chance to build wealth through real estate purchase and sale. For the 1st time in 2 decades, there is a population in decline. Altitude MLS, Summit County Realtors Association, warned Town Council that to put this STR regulation in effect would decimate the market, vaporizing 30% of market valuation. They were proven right. Breckenridge for sale inventory is up 90% YoY, with some price drops as much as 70% for those Sellers desperate to get out of their mortgages. Mortgages based on an ROI with STR’s, by the way. It’s the little investor who is hurting, good job Summit County. Land Title Guarantee Company states that transactions have fallen for 6 straight quarters there. The quaint downtown also now boasts 45 EMPTY storefronts on main street. The visitors last winter and this summer were mostly day trippers from Denver, hoping to hike and have lunch or dinner and spend as little as possible. The week-long renters from around the country have dried up, because there’s nowhere to stay besides the pricey hotels. FAIL. In the short term for sure. In the long term? Maybe Town Councils are onto something, and we will see the return of the local housing market after this devastation. Slash and burn is in effect. But it’s hurting everyone, especially the locals who run those stores.
#4 - Telluride - Do I have to go into this one? Tiny gorgeous town, billionaires flocked there, locals pushed out, difficult to get to unless one has a private jet, impossible build and remodel pricing.
#3 - EDWARDS - WHAT? My stomping grounds? Crazy. But I’ve experienced the decline this summer. The creator of this list claims that the neighborhoods of unincorporated Edwards historically represent where the “real people live,” and the rise and fall mark this area as the mountain town’s red rover death of the local. I argue that it’s not just the last 5 years though; Edwards has been a preferred buying location for out of town Buyers for at least 10 years, as locals sold their homes and moved down valley into new construction and bigger locations in Eagle and Gypsum. What’s an extra 15 minutes of driving to work when you can get a 4,000 square foot home built in this century for LESS than you can sell your 1980 2,000 square foot duplex to a second home owner? In Singletree, a premier neighborhood in Edwards, homes were flying off the shelves regardless of their condition. A price increase of 15% YoY for 5 years meant that the same home selling in 2020 for $750,000 is NOW worth on paper and by county taxed as $1,312,500. However, you won’t see a duplex or single family home in this neighborhood listed for less than $1,500,000 right now. The Vail Valley Partnership states that spending in Riverwalk, the Edwards shopping center, is down 20% in 2025. The inventory of homes listed over $2 Million is up 100%! The average days on market is creeping up above 100. Original List Price to Actual Sales Price differential is almost 20% in the entire area.
#2 - VAIL - You knew it was coming! For 50 years, Vail was considered an investment safe harbor due to the ski industry and growing population. The younger generation thinks of Vail as “old” now, old money and old buildings and an aging owner population. The average condo was built in 1984, and there’s an average holding cost of a condo at $2,000/mo for insurance and upkeep. If a qualified Buyer has $5 Million to spend, they can get a brand new second home in Jackson Hole or Salt Lake City instead. Those states share something in common, yes? (Hint, it’s a color on the presidential race map). The Vail Board of Realtors states that the amount of transactions are down 70% in the last 18 months, and the Town of Vail is similarly down in their real estate transfer tax income from those missing transactions. As a result of that loss of revenue, and the NIMBY lawsuit against Vail Resorts in East Vail, the Town of Vail is now in a debt crisis of $20,000,000. In a desperate attempt to make up this loss, the Town started charging for summer parking, and raised the winter parking rates to $50/day for this ski season. You can imagine what happened to local Vail storefronts as a result. My family didn’t venture into Vail this summer because I refuse to pay for summer parking on principle. The retail numbers aren’t officially in because they don’t want to be. The average Days on Market in Vail is 180 and climbing, with an average price drop of 12% or $600,000 before going under contract.
#1 - Aspen - Need I say more? With the stock market performing perfectly for the ultra wealthy, why waste income on real estate? We will see this change if stocks start to fall. There’s been no local housing there since the mid 90’s.
SO WHAT’S A GIRL TO DO?
Hold on homebuyers! Your time is coming, if not already here. If you want that second home, or your first dream home, and it’s not for sale at the price you can afford to keep it profitable and/or comfortable, the time is coming. Time for my PREDICTIONS!
1 - Housing prices will stabilize by 2028 to where they should have been without a Pandemic Boom. That means that the 73% over-inflated value will lower further than it’s 23% correction already, down another 20-25% in market value.
$827,500 was the median house sales price in 2020. That same home median sales price in 2024 was $1,600,000! Correction will continue as sales trend down to meet historic averages over time, so that same house will be worth $1,158,500. How long? I don’t know. It might not happen and I’m completely wrong. Time will tell!
2 - Insurability will become even more of a hot button, and condos will take the brunt of the price hit compared to single family homes. I highly recommend you look into what your home insurance is covering for displacement and replacement costs before the end of 2025.
California Regional MLS has led the charge against Zillow and had the giant eliminate “climate risk scores” altogether. Read more here: https://www.fastcompany.com/91452411/realtors-just-forced-zillow-to-hide-a-key-piece-of-information-about-buying-a-home-heres-why