How Does the Park City Median Home Price Compare?

Those of us lucky enough to call Park City home see that our town is changing. As one of my colleagues simply stated, “the money is coming.” Park City is no longer anyone’s “secret”. Like any other desirable location, many people who come for a vacation decide they want to stay.

Park City is not unique. I relocated to Park City from Manhattan Beach, California in 2003. Even before I left, the city had passed rules to keep people from building “McMansions” on the 30×90 lots that were once the home of 1,000 square foot beach shacks. Today, one of those tiny lots, if you can find one, will cost $2.0 million. And with the soaring prices, the neighborhood changed. The city that was once filled with pilots and aerospace engineers is now home to entertainment executives, hedge fund managers, and a few trust funders. The median single family home price in Manhattan Beach is now $2,050,000.

Visiting Manhattan Beach, California, Santa Monica, California and Vail, Colorado provide a peek into Park City’s future. It is my hope that our elected officials will mitigate the potential negative aspects of growth, like traffic, crime and even McMansions. However, they cannot and should not control housing prices. I am not talking about the provision of “Affordable Housing”, which is a separate topic for discussion. I’m talking about the natural rise in the cost of housing that happens when a town is “discovered”, the “money comes”, and demand exceeds supply.

The Park City Median Home Price Compared to 10 Other Desirable Places

At the end of 2015, the median single family home price within the Park City limits was about $1.5 million. The median single family home price in the Snyderville Basin was $900,000. Owning a single family home in the Park City School District is expensive.

How does the Park City median home price compare with the median single family home prices in other desirable locations*? 

1. ATHERTON, CA (94027) – Median Price: $10,564,038
2. SAGAPONACK, NY (11962) – Median Price: $7,416,538
3. NEW YORK, NY (10012) – Median Price: $7,302,117
4. WOODY CREEK, CO (81656) – Median Price: $7,020,893
5. NEW YORK, NY (10013) – Median Price: $6,076,018
6. MIAMI BEACH, FL (33109) – Median Price: $5,560,077
7. WOODSIDE, CA (94062) – Median Price: $5,533,534
8. HIDDEN HILLS, CA (91302) – Median Price: $5,074,231
9. ASPEN, CO (81611) – Median Price: $5,003,783
10. HILLSBOROUGH, CA (94010) – Median Price: $4,951,458

With a median single family home price of $4.5 million, Beverly Hills 90210 didn’t even make this list.

The point of today’s blog post is that change is coming to Park City, just as it has come to other desirable locations. We can accept and embrace that change, we can complain about it, or we can choose to live somewhere else.

*Source, Forbes.com, Schiffman, Betsy, “Full List-America’s Most Expensive Zip Codes 2015”