Park City Wall Street Journal Review
The Wall Street Journal recently ran a big feature on Park City, and since I live and work in this market every day, I thought it was worth fact-checking. Some of it they got right. Some of it deserves a closer look.
The "no condos under $2 million" claim
The article suggested you can't find a condo here for under $2 million. At the time I filmed this, there were 43 condos listed under $2 million inside the Park City limits and 137 in the greater Park City area. Now, the buyers they profiled wanted five bedrooms, and to be fair, five-bedroom homes under $2 million inside the city limits are genuinely scarce. But if you widen the lens to single-family homes with five bedrooms in the broader Park City area, there were around 50 under $2 million. Watch out for cherry-picked data — controversy sells newspapers.
What they got right
The Journal is absolutely correct that demand for Park City is spilling into the surrounding towns — Kamas, Heber, and Midway are all seeing luxury growth. Their phrase was that the interest is "creating new million-dollar towns," and that matches what I see on the ground every week.
They also correctly reported the Deer Crest estate that listed at $65 million — a state record — and went under contract. And their coverage of Deer Valley East Village is on point: 17 new lifts, 130 ski runs, nine hotels, roughly 1,800 residential units, and a full base village, with the Grand Hyatt and the first chairlift opening this season. That expansion is genuinely reshaping the east side of the market.
Where the numbers slipped
The article claimed home prices rose 35% from 2022 to 2023. The MLS data actually shows the median dipped about 10% over that stretch — largely because the high end paused while more affordable homes made up a bigger share of sales. To give them the benefit of the doubt, 2021 to 2022 did climb around 25%, so the direction of the story is right even if the year is off.
They also pegged Park City's median home price at $4 million. The real number pulled from the MLS was $3,737,500. Utah is a non-disclosure state, so outside sources are always going to be a little off — but that's a meaningful gap.
On Heber City, they cited a median of $982,863, up more than double from 2019. My MLS pull showed a $775,000 median, up about 80% from 2019's $429,500. Still remarkable growth — just not double. Kamas at $1.015 million they got essentially right.
The bigger picture
Park City has about 8,500 full-time residents and sees roughly 8 million visitors a year, so the town lives much larger than its population. Skier visits across Park City Mountain, Deer Valley, and Woodward hit a record 2.79 million last season, up from 1.7 million a decade ago. The article also touched on the developments driving the next chapter — Marcella's ski and golf communities, Velvaere's ski-in/ski-out homes, SkyRidge, the Talisker Club at Tuhaye, and the early-stage Wohali golf community near Coalville.
My takeaway: it's a solid piece that highlights real demand pushing outward from Park City as prices climb. And for perspective — Aspen's median sits around $14 million. Park City would have to more than quadruple from here to reach that. Do I believe there's room to grow? I do.
Thinking about buying, selling, or investing in Park City? Reach out anytime — call or text (801) 837-4445.