Aspen, on and off the record.
About 83% of Pitkin County is federal public land, and the transfer tax that measures the market has run continuously since 1979. Aspen's top increasingly trades off the MLS — so the single-family median we lead with counts the off-market sales above $10 million that the listing service never records, not just the listed market. The two published 2025 medians differ by 32.6%; that gap does not measure the share of sales that closed off market, because the reports use different inclusion rules.
- Median, 2025
- $17.5M
- Price / sq ft, 2025
- $3,472
- Federal land (county)
- 83%
- Seasonal units
- 24.4%
Forty years against a fixed boundary.
The long view is FHFA’s annual all-transactions index for Pitkin County, which compares single-family homes to their own earlier sales and refinance appraisals. That limits, but does not remove, the effect of which properties happen to trade, and it covers only homes with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgages. It shows the 2008 peak, a drawn-out 34% drawdown to 2013 — later than Miami or the Hamptons, because resort markets clear slowly — and then a long climb well above the prior peak. It is an index, not a price: it has no dollar sign.
Single-family, counting the off-market sales above $10M that never reach the MLS — the way the market actually traded at the top.
The listed market alone — the consistent 14-year spine, unbroken since 2012. The gap to the wider median reflects different inclusion rules; it is not an off-market share.
Single-family per-foot, off-market included.
The recorded condominium median — a separate, deeper market than the single-family trophy tier.
The gap between the two Aspens.
Aspen's largest trades increasingly close privately, above $10 million, and never reach the multiple-listing service. That leaves two honest single-family medians for the same year: the recorded MLS figure, and a wider figure that includes those off-market sales. We headline the wider one — leaving those trades out understates the very part of Aspen that sets the market — but the two are never spliced and neither is averaged into the other. The distance between them is published as its own measure, but it is a relative difference between two medians: it does not measure the share of transactions, dollar volume or top-end sales that closed off market.
In 2021 the two were 2.4% apart. From 2022 the gap opens — and by 2025 the wider median, at $17.5M, sits +32.6% above the recorded MLS median of $13.2M.
$9.47M recorded MLS
$13M recorded MLS
$12M recorded MLS
$12.5M recorded MLS
$13.2M recorded MLS
Fixed land, a tax that counts it.
A hard supply ceiling and a transfer tax that measures it. Aspen has levied a real-estate transfer tax since 1979 and now runs 1.5% combined; in 2024 it raised $23.9 million on 638 free-market transactions. That is a market where the number of deals is small, the average deal is enormous, and the constraint is geological rather than economic.
Federal public lands make up about 83% of Pitkin County, the county reported in 2012, and county open-space purchases have conserved thousands of acres of private land on top of that. The buildable base is tightly limited, so demand meets a constrained supply.
Aspen's 1.5% combined transfer tax raised $23.9 million in 2024 on 638 free-market deals — a continuous, public measure of a market where the number of trades is small and the average trade is enormous.
Five land sales in the second half of 2024 averaged $13.41 million, per the source's half-year table; this is not a full-year count. When the houses are gone, the land itself becomes the trade.
Nearly a quarter of the roughly 13,400 housing units are held seasonally, tightening what actually reaches the market in any given year.
Forty years, in five moments.
- 1989The transfer tax that defines the market
Aspen's 1.0% housing real-estate transfer tax takes effect on 1 July 1989, layered on the 0.5% Wheeler Opera House RETT first levied in 1979. Forty-five years of continuous transaction-tax data is, in effect, forty-five years of dollar-volume data — and the reason the constraint is visible at all.
- 2008–2013A five-year drawdown
The cycle peaks in 2008 and troughs in 2013 — down about 34%, and later than Miami or the Hamptons because resort markets clear slowly. 2011 alone falls 13.5%.
- 2020–2021The year the inventory disappeared
The recorded single-family median gains 52.6% in 2020 alone, from $5,725,000 to $8,737,500. The valley records 747 combined Aspen and Snowmass unit sales in 2021 against 345 in 2022 — a market that transacted twice in one year what it would manage the next, and then stopped.
- 2022Off-market becomes the market
From 2022 the record begins folding in off-market Pitkin County sales above $10 million, because leaving them out had stopped being defensible. This is a methodology break, not a price move, and it is the single most important footnote in the Aspen data: the inclusive series puts the 2025 single-family median at $17.5 million, the recorded MLS series at $13.2 million. Both are correct.
- 2023–2026Land, not houses
The source's second-half 2024 table reports five Aspen land sales at a $13.41 million average and a $12.0 million median; its annual land count needs reconciliation before it can be read as a full-year figure. The city collects $23.9 million of transfer tax on 638 free-market deals. The market gets fewer, bigger, and increasingly about the dirt.
The neighborhoods, honestly labelled.
Place-level detail is the thinnest layer of the record — most Aspen neighborhoods rest on a single publisher and a reading a few years old, so these are directional, not a current quote. Each figure is shown for the year it was actually published. The immediate Aspen neighborhoods link through to their write-ups; the wider Aspen–Snowmass and down-valley places are carried for context and are separate markets.
The record, and the decisions it informs.
- The Aspen research library
Neighborhoods, corridors, guides and architects.
- Aspen neighborhoods
West End, Red Mountain, East Aspen and the rest.
- Real-estate transfer taxes
The 0.5% RETT levied since 1979, and the 1% housing RETT added in 1989.
- Property taxes & assessments
How Pitkin County values and bills the trophy tier.
- Ownership forms
Why the condo median is a different market from the houses.
- The Roebling Index · Jackson Hole
The other federal-boundary resort market, read the same way.
Sources & method
The Roebling Research Desk maintains this record from published market reports and public data — the Pitkin County FHFA repeat-sales index for the forty-year cycle; a market series that folds in off-market Pitkin County sales above $10 million (recorded in the public deed record but never on the MLS) for the single-family median, per-foot and dollar-volume reads we lead with; the recorded MLS series carried alongside as the consistent spine; the condominium figures; the county's transfer-tax records; and federal land and Census figures for the scarcity context. Counting the off-market top is how the national brokerage reports effectively work too — they draw from recorded deeds, not just the listing service.
Every figure is shown as published for its stated year, with the base year noted wherever a change starts later than its label. Nothing is averaged across sources, chained to look longer than any one record, interpolated or estimated. The recorded and inclusive medians are carried as two honest series and the gap between them is published as its own measure — it is never spliced into a single number. Place-level figures rest on the thinnest layer of the record and are shown as directional, with a quiet single-source marker where a neighborhood rests on one publisher.
Buying or selling in Aspen?
The recorded market is only half of Aspen — the trades that set the top increasingly close off the MLS. A Compass Aspen specialist fills in what the public record can’t: the off-market comparable, the parcel and jurisdiction, and the closing and transfer-tax math. A 30-minute consultation gets you the framework and the right introduction.
The Roebling Team at Compass is led by Corey Cohen, a New York licensed associate real estate broker. For a purchase or sale in Aspen, we introduce you to a licensed Compass agent there by referral and handle the New York side of your move ourselves. This page and its calculators are research, not an offer of representation.
To plan a move between Manhattan and Aspen, schedule a consultation; where appropriate we’ll introduce you to a vetted Compass agent in the local market.