The National FabricM · Revealed Preferences
M1M
Ski-Town Feudalists
Owns four bedrooms at 8,000 feet in a town where the ski patrol sleeps in a van.
Reference marketFirst identified in Aspen, Colorado (ZIP area 81611).
Also found inJackson, Wyoming; Telluride, Colorado; Vail, Colorado; Ketchum, Idaho; Big Sky, Montana; Park City, Utah.
Thesis
The household describes the mountain as a way of life and holds it as an appreciating asset occupied nineteen nights a year, which means the revealed preference is the basis and not the skiing.
The house is a position. The town is its staff.
Portrait
In their own words
- Age58
- Income$412K
- Net worth$14.2M
- Education84%
- Home$5.9M
- Ownership78%
- HouseholdMarried, adult children elsewhere, one caretaker on retainer
- VehicleDefender 110 that has never left pavement
- DebtNone on the mountain house; a mortgage on the Dallas one
- Vice
- Calling nineteen nights a year living here
- Most likely to
- Oppose employee housing from a Zoom window in another time zone
- Signals
- Private club ski lockers, transfer-tax filings, a caretaker's phone number
Who they are
Owns 4,900 square feet at 8,000 feet and occupies it nineteen nights a year, eleven of them between December 26 and January 2. The house is not shelter, it is a position — held at 42 times the income of the valley that maintains it, and up 9.4 per cent last year while empty. He describes the mountain as a way of life on the same call in which he instructs the caretaker to run the taps so the pipes do not split. The patroller who sleds him off the groomer commutes seventy-one minutes each way from a town he has never driven to. At the last hearing on employee housing he attended by Zoom and raised a concern about density.
Our neighborhood
A valley where 68 per cent of the housing stock is dark on a Tuesday in October and almost none of it is for sale. Median home value $5.9M against a median household income earned by the people who plow it. The grocery carries three grades of Wagyu and closes at seven, because the staff live an hour and eleven minutes downvalley and the last bus is at 7:40.
Shopping
Buys at the mountain outpost of a brand that also has a store four blocks from his primary residence, at a 22 per cent altitude premium he files under supporting local. The club ski locker runs $14,000 a year and holds equipment used nineteen days.
Spending
$1,850 a month to the caretaker, $38,400 a year in property tax, and an initiation fee he calls a deposit because it is technically refundable to his estate. The empty house out-earned the entire ski patrol last season.
Media
The town paper, read online for the zoning calendar and the real-estate transfer page, checked at the frequency other people check a brokerage. One podcast about mountain-town housing policy, listened to in the Defender on the way to object to some.
Interests
Skiing, in the sense that the equipment is stored at altitude and the calendar is not. Otherwise the transfer tax, the airport expansion, and whether the new lift will be visible from the deck.
Where they live
Darker is more of them.
M1 · SKI-TOWN FEUDALISTS
ZIP CODES
—
How thick on the ground
$96K
Median household income
1.33× the national median
$832K
Typical home value
3.12× the national median
8.4×
Home value against income
2.23× the national median
47%
Bachelor's degree or higher
2.03× the national median
74%
Owner-occupied
Share of occupied units
$2,920
Median gross rent
Monthly, contract plus utilities
2.21
Average household size
Persons per occupied unit
51.9
Median age
Years
How they compare
Against the average American household.
Median household income
1.33×
$96K here$72K everywhere else
Typical home value
3.12×
$832K here$267K everywhere else
Bachelor's degree or higher
2.03×
47.3% here23.3% everywhere else
Home value against household income
2.23×
8.40× here3.77× everywhere else
Who lives next door
Household types that turn up on the same blocks.
M4Medicare MogulsOn a fixed income, in the sense that the dividend arrives on a schedule.
M11Remote-Work InvadersA San Francisco salary, a Montana address, and a firm view on who ruined the valley.
H4Boat-Poor Wealth CosplayersLooks like HH2, financed like DD1. The yacht is leveraged; the marina knows.
M2Equity BoomersBought it for $92,000 in 1977. Calls the appreciation luck. Defends it as policy.
B3HOA Karen CommandRetired or remote, armed with a tape measure and bylaws, patrolling mulch.
M9Cargo-Bike CapitalistsA $2.1 million townhouse, a $9,000 electric cargo bike, and a structurally sophisticated critique of the system that produced both.
The receipts
- 01Held for seasonal or occasional use91st26.9%
- 02Home value against local income92nd8.44×
- 03Recent repricing of an amenity market89th1.91
- 04Typical home value90th$832K
- 05Vacant housing units84th33.9%
- 06Income arriving as dividends, capital gains or partnership91st29.1%
- 07Willingness to build74th21.3%
- 08Foreign-born residents73rd11.3%
- 09Paying 30 percent or more in rent68th47.3%
- 10Wildfire risk71st75.60
SourcesFigures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, Zillow, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and MoneyHole Research. Everything else is observation.