Gretchen Hudgens, president of the Park City Board of Realtors, said something earlier this week that undercuts the headline she was there to deliver. Talking through the board's second-quarter 2026 numbers on KPCW's Local News Hour, she noted that "less and less people want the single family home with the yard and the four bedrooms and the 3.5 bathrooms," and that the industry may be "missing the mark" in what it keeps building. In the same conversation, she was explaining a report showing land sales up 46% in units and 74% in dollar value across the Wasatch Back. Buyers are buying more raw ground than they have in years, at the exact moment the board's own president says fewer of them want the traditional single-family product that raw ground is usually bought to build.
That gap is worth sitting with if you're comparing an existing Deer Valley home against a lot in the East Village. The land number is real. What it's measuring is not what most coverage of it assumes.
The Number Everyone Is Repeating
Park City's second-quarter 2026 real estate sales topped $1.35 billion, according to the Park City Board of Realtors, with transactions running about 7% ahead of the same period in 2025. Inside that total, land sales did the heavy lifting: the number of land plots sold rose 46% year over year, and land sale revenue climbed to $180.5 million from roughly $89.4 million in Q2 2025, a 74% jump in dollar terms. The board's read, as reported, was that luxury buyers increasingly want to build their own home on undeveloped land rather than buy something finished.
That explanation is plausible. It's also incomplete, and Hudgens said so herself in the next breath.
The Contradiction Sitting Inside the Board's Own Report
If demand were genuinely shifting toward more custom single-family construction, you'd expect the board's leadership to describe that as the market finding its footing. Instead, Hudgens described a mismatch. She thinks buyers increasingly want a condo or townhome lifestyle built around skiing and biking, not a bigger yard, and that current development hasn't caught up to that preference.
Two things can be true here without one canceling the other. Buyers can be scooping up land while genuinely preferring a lower-maintenance lifestyle, if what's driving the land purchases is not a change in taste but a change in what's available and for how long. That's the more useful lens for the East Village specifically, where several of the earliest lot releases, including Marcella's estate lots and the Grand Hyatt residences, have already sold out. When a limited early-phase pool starts closing, the remaining lots don't need broader demand to sell faster. They just need fewer of them left.
What Happened to Deer Valley Condos Earlier This Year Is the Same Story, Run in Reverse
The clearest precedent for this pattern sits one quarter back. The Park City Board of Realtors' first-quarter 2026 report showed condo transactions inside Park City city limits falling from 80 in Q1 2025 to 40 in Q1 2026, a drop of 50%. Almost all of that decline traced to a single area: Deer Crest, where condo sales fell from 29 transactions in Q1 2025 to just 4 in Q1 2026. The board attributed this to supply, not demand. Twenty-nine of those 2025 sales had come from the new Founders Place development, and once that inventory wave sold through, there was less new product behind it to replace it.
The board's own framing matters here: read the rolling twelve-month numbers instead of the single quarter, and Park City Limits condo volume was actually up 12% with median price rising 17% to $2.25 million. A quarter that looked like a demand collapse was really an inventory story that resolved itself once you widened the window.
The land numbers deserve the same scrutiny before anyone reads them as a verdict on what buyers want.
| Segment | Period | Change | What's likely driving it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Land plots sold | Q2 2026 vs. Q2 2025 | +46% in units, +74% in dollar volume | Early-phase East Village lots (Marcella, Grand Hyatt residences) selling out, shrinking the remaining pool |
| Deer Crest condos | Q1 2026 vs. Q1 2025 | -86% in units (29 to 4) | Founders Place inventory wave sold through, less new product behind it |
| Park City Limits condos, rolling 12-month | through Q1 2026 | Volume +12%, median price +17% to $2.25M | Smooths the single-quarter supply gap |
The Village Behind These Numbers Is Still Two Winters From Finished
Buying land in the East Village today means buying into a project that is real, funded, and actively under construction, but not close to complete. The timeline is worth knowing before you compare it to buying an existing home in Deer Valley proper.
- The Grand Hyatt Deer Valley opened for the 2024-25 season with 381 rooms and sold out its 55 private residences, priced from $2.3 million to $6.9 million, according to Utah Business.
- The 2025-26 season, which wrapped this past spring, was the largest phase of the expansion so far, adding new lifts and dozens of runs on Park Peak, Big Dutch, and neighboring terrain.
- Park Peak Lodge, the mountaintop gathering space tied to the new gondola, will open only its first floor for the 2026-27 season, with full completion expected for 2027-28.
- The 88,000-square-foot East Village Lodge, meant to house ski school, retail, and guest services, is under construction now and also targeted for the 2027-28 season. Until then, an 8,000-square-foot temporary structure is standing in for it.
- Coromont, the Four Seasons, Marcella Landing townhomes, and the Waldorf Astoria are all under construction, none finished yet.
- Utah's first Canopy by Hilton, sited near the East Village, was targeted to open by the end of July 2026, meaning it should be welcoming guests by the time you read this.
- The resort has already announced its next phase: a 2026-27 focus on Hail Peak, adding seven new trails and about 200 skiable acres served by a new high-speed quad.
None of this is a warning sign. It's the normal shape of a multi-year build-out that Deer Valley Resort and Extell have said all along will run through 2028. But it means a lot purchased today is a bet on a finished village that doesn't fully exist yet, priced against comparable products, like the Grand Hyatt residences, that already sold out and set the ceiling.
What This Means If You're Weighing Land Against an Existing Home
If you're deciding between an existing home in established Deer Valley and a lot in the East Village, the land-sales headline shouldn't be read as "everyone wants to build now." It's closer to "the specific lots that were available got scarcer, so the ones left are trading at a premium." That's a different question to bring to a purchase. It means asking which phase a given lot belongs to, what's already sold in that same release, and what amenities you'd actually have access to the first winter you own it versus the winter the village is supposed to be finished.
It also means the math on land versus a finished home isn't just about price per square foot. It's about carrying a construction timeline, coordinating with a builder inside a development that's still pouring roads and running utility lines, and knowing which lots sit closest to lifts that are already spinning versus ones tied to Hail Peak Express or Park Peak Lodge, both still a season or more out. That kind of sequencing, contract review, and builder coordination is exactly the work Melissa Goff's team does for buyers moving from raw ground to a finished custom home, and it's a different skill set than negotiating on an already-built listing.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign
Is Deer Valley land actually scarce, or does it just look that way this quarter? Both, depending on the pocket. Early-release products like Marcella's estate lots have genuinely sold through. Later phases tied to Hail Peak and the still-unfinished East Village Lodge have more runway before the same scarcity applies.
Why did Deer Valley-area condo sales fall so sharply earlier in 2026? Mostly Founders Place in Deer Crest selling out, not buyers losing interest. The board's own rolling twelve-month numbers showed condo volume and pricing both moving up over that same stretch.
If I buy land now, when will I actually be able to use village amenities? Plan around 2027-28. That's when both Park Peak Lodge and the East Village Lodge are expected to fully open, even though lifts and terrain have been coming online each of the last two seasons.
If you're trying to figure out which phase of the East Village build-out actually fits your timeline and budget, or how a lot purchase compares to buying an existing home nearby, Goff Luxury Homes can walk through the specifics with you. Request a private consultation to start the conversation.
