Aspen’s Market Is So Crazy That Buyers Shop for Homes That Aren’t Even for Sale
Unaffected by rising mortgage rates, wealthy buyers are swarming the tony mountain destination.
6 min
It took three tries for Wes Rogers and Christy Hockmeyer to get an offer accepted on an ultraluxury vacation home in Aspen, Colo.
The engaged couple got serious about buying a property around six months ago, Mr. Rogers said; they wanted to escape the summer heat at their primary home in Georgia and have a place where their four young sons could ski. When they made an offer on a house they were renting near downtown Aspen, it looked like they had a deal—until the owners changed their minds about selling. An offer they made on another home was rejected because it didn’t meet the seller’s “astronomical” price expectations, said Mr. Rogers.
Finally, they found a mountaintop mansion owned by former Priceline.com CEO Richard Braddock. They offered US$40 million, just shy of the US$44.5 million asking price, and promised to close quickly. Even then, Mr. Braddock’s representatives repeatedly reminded them that there was a backup offer to deter them from trying to renegotiate any of the terms, Mr. Rogers said.
“That’s the fastest I’ve ever bought a residential property before. And I do real estate for a living,” said Mr. Rogers, whose company, Landmark Properties, is one of the country’s largest developers of student housing. “We had to get aggressive.”
His experience is typical for high-end Aspen buyers at the moment, local agents say. The luxury market in the affluent mountain destination has been supercharged by extremely low inventory, tight restrictions on new construction and an influx of uber-wealthy buyers. Many of these buyers, spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic and remote work, are looking for a more laid-back lifestyle in an area known for its ski resorts, designer stores and upscale dining, agents said.
Since Covid, a similar narrative has unfolded in wealthy, inventory-constricted markets across the country, such as Palm Beach, Fla., and Malibu, Calif. These markets have only a small number of available homes in the most sought-after locations, and tight restrictions on new construction mean few more will be built. In Palm Beach and Malibu, billionaire buyers are competing for frontage on the beach. In Aspen, which is about 150 miles from Denver with a population of roughly 7,000, they are clamoring for Rocky Mountain views and access. Rather than slowing down as pandemic restrictions have eased, the market for top-tier homes in these locations has only accelerated, as the ultrawealthy benefited from a rise in stocks throughout 2020 and 2021.
As a result, the market for top-tier homes across the country has begun to operate independently from the rest of the market, said appraiser Jonathan Miller, who compared the ultraluxury market to a “circus sideshow.” In 2021, there were 48 sales across the country priced at US$50 million or up, Mr. Miller said, compared with just 29 in 2020. These buyers often have homes in multiple luxury markets—often New York, L.A., South Florida and Aspen—and are largely unimpacted by the rising interest rates that have begun to slow the real-estate market at lower price points, he said.
“It’s fantasy real estate, even if it’s real,” Mr. Miller said.
Housing markets all over the U.S. are experiencing inventory shortages, but the drop in Aspen homes for sale is especially dramatic. There were just 37 Aspen single-family homes on the market in April 2022, a 64% drop from 102 in April 2021, according to data from real-estate agent Carrie Wells of Coldwell Banker Mason Morse. At the same time, the average price for Aspen single-family home sales year-to-date is around US$15.78 million, up from US$10.7 million in 2021, Ms. Wells said.
There have been 39 Aspen home and condo sales over US$10 million this year through May 31, roughly 50% more than during the same period last year, according to real-estate agent Tim Estin of Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s International Realty.
Wealthy Aspen buyers come from all over the country and from an array of different industries, real-estate agents said.
Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield and his wife, Away co-founder Jen Rubio, purchased a roughlyUS $25 million, six-bedroom house in Aspen’s exclusive Five Trees neighbourhood overlooking the Castle Creek Valley in January 2021, records show. Also last year, Patrick Dovigi, a retired Canadian professional hockey player turned entrepreneur, set a new Aspen price record when he paid US$72.5 million to buy a roughly 22,000-square-foot compound from Lewis A. Sanders, founder of the New York investment firm Sanders Capital. Mr. Butterfield, Ms. Rubio, Mr. Sanders and Mr. Dovigi didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Agents say Aspen’s inventory is so low, and demand so high, that they are sending out mailers and cold-calling homeowners to persuade them to sell. As such, many of the major transactions are closing off-market, meaning that the properties were never officially for sale in the first place, creating a shadow market accessible only to those in the know.
Those homeowners who do sell can basically name their price, agents said. Among these recent reluctant sellers was fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, who agreed to part with his ski-in, ski-out Aspen mansion for US$50 million in March. He and his wife, Dee Ocleppo Hilfiger, had purchased it just three months earlier for about US$31 million.
The couple never intended to sell, Mr. Hilfiger confirmed. They had spent years searching for a home to remodel before settling on the roughly 7,150-square-foot, four-bedroom property on the Little Nell ski trail on Aspen Mountain, according to their agent, Steven Shane of Compass, but a buyer brought them an offer that seemed too good to be true. After some debate, Mr. Shane said he advised them not to “look a gift horse in the mouth.” He declined to identify the buyer.
“Right now, we have so many more buyers than sellers,” Mr. Shane said. “So the question becomes, ‘Is there a number by which the property can be pried away from a non-enthusiastic seller?’”
Mr. Shane said he recently closed a deal after a casual conversation with fellow broker Craig Morris of Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s International Realty. Mr. Morris mentioned that his client, GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons, was contemplating listing his home in the Pearl Court area of Aspen. The property, which included a roughly 6,000-square-foot vacant lot next door, never made it to market. Less than a week later, it was in contract to sell to Mr. Shane’s client. The client, whom Mr. Shane declined to identify, had been scouring the market for a house and quickly scooped it up by offering US$42.925 million. Mr. Parsons had paid US$15.32 million for the property in 2017, plus roughly US$4.5 million for the adjacent parcel. Mr. Parsons couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Mr. Morris also recently worked on a US$30.8 million off-market deal for a nearly 33,000-square-foot parcel of land near the edge of Aspen’s Roaring Fork River. The deal represented one of the highest prices ever paid for undeveloped land in the Aspen area. Records show the seller in that transaction was billionaire Walmart heir Rob Walton, who couldn’t be reached for comment.
In May, a trio of deals closing like a chain of dominoes illustrated just how heated Aspen’s high-priced game of musical chairs has become.
Todd Lemkin, chief investment officer at the Dallas-based investment firm Canyon Partners, and his wife, Kasey Lemkin, sold their 19th-century downtown Aspen home for US$32.25 million last month and traded up to a nearby contemporary mansion. The Lemkins paid US$60 million for the roughly 16,700-square-foot house, which has seven bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool, a bowling lane, a golf simulator, a spa, a wine cellar and a garage with a car turntable. The Lemkins didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The sellers of the Lemkins’ new home, real-estate investors Christy Thompson and Stephen Hill, hadn’t intended to sell, but the offer from the Lemkins was one they couldn’t refuse, according to their agent, Liz Leeds of Slifer, Smith & Frampton and REALM. They went on to purchase a US$51 million house from venture capitalist Lawrence F. De George. Mr. DeGeorge had purchased the site for US$16 million in 2009 and built a roughly 15,000-square-foot, 4-bedroom house with a pair of glass elevators positioned near a window to take advantage of the surrounding scenery, and a movie theater inspired by Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Ms. Thompson, the daughter of late Texas oil executive J. Cleo Thompson, and Mr. Hill have properties around the U.S. as well as in Belize and the Bahamas, which they rent to wealthy clients. They use the properties as both personal retreats as well as investments, according to Ms. Leeds.
Price growth in Aspen has been fueled in part by the city’s restrictive development policies, local agents said. The city council severely limits development of new homes within Aspen city limits, agents said, and a moratorium on certain kinds of residential development was reinstated earlier this year.
“The city is making it harder and harder to build and consequently more expensive,” said real-estate agent Tal Alexander of the Alexander Team at Douglas Elliman.
Aspen Mayor Torre (who does not have a last name) said the moratorium was a temporary measure until the city’s land use code could be adjusted to better align with the community’s goals. He noted that an earlier boom in residential development had led to escalating prices and negative pressure on the local workforce, making it difficult for local businesses, the hospital and even the police force to hire new workers.
“We’re not against the wealthy. There’s no class warfare here,” he said. “We just have to strike a balance where we’re also thinking about the sustainability and longevity of our community.”
In larger Pitkin County, landowners hoping to build new residential homes must buy “transferable development rights,” or TDRs, to expand their properties beyond a certain size. Each TDR allows a landowner to build an additional 2,500 square feet. Driven by a lack of supply, the price of a TDR had risen from US$360,000 in 2020 to roughlyUS$2 million by the end of last year, according to Suzanne Wolff, assistant director of Pitkin County Community Development.
Mr. Rogers said while US$40 million was a high price to pay for his home, he didn’t think it would be possible to build a similar property for even close to that amount.
“We felt that in the long run, it would be a good store of value,” he said.
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Frustrations with China’s autocratic political system and economic slowdown provoke the flight, helping Tokyo’s luxury property market
5 min
TOKYO—Last year, China native Tomo Hayashi, the owner of a metals-trading firm, moved to Tokyo. He quickly adopted a Japanese name, spent the equivalent of about $650,000 on a luxury waterfront condo and, in March, brought his family to join him.
The 45-year-old, whose two boys just started in a Japanese elementary school, is one of the many wealthy Chinese driving a boom in high-end Tokyo properties and reshaping the city.
Frustrations with Beijing’s autocratic political system, which flared during abrupt pandemic-era lockdowns and have only grown since then, have helped drive the wave, according to real-estate agents and others watching the exodus. China’s economic slowdown and its struggling stock market are also motivating wealthy people to leave the country, they say.
Hayashi, who like many Chinese buyers avoids discussing politics back home, said the move to Tokyo was a challenge. “But we like Japan—food, culture, education and safety,” he said.
Japan isn’t the only haven for Chinese people seeking a Plan B. The U.S., Canada and Singapore are among the countries drawing Chinese migrants, while Hong Kong residents often head to the U.K.
But Japanese cities that are just a few hours’ flight from China are a leading choice for better-off Chinese people. Japan’s real-estate prices are low for foreigners thanks to the weak yen and it is fairly easy for them to purchase property. And the Japanese writing system uses Chinese characters in part, so new arrivals can more easily find their way around.
A report last June by Henley & Partners that tracks worldwide migration trends estimated that a net total of 13,500 high-net-worth Chinese people would migrate overseas during the year, making China the biggest worldwide loser in that category.
Japan had about 822,000 Chinese residents as of the end of last year, up 60,000 from the previous year in the biggest jump in recent years.
Tokyo real-estate broker Osamu Orihara, a naturalised Japanese citizen who was born in China, said his revenue has tripled or quadrupled compared with 2019 before the pandemic, driven in large part by Chinese buyers.
“What is different from the past is there are more who want to get a long-term visa,” Orihara said.
About one-third of the condos on the floor of the 48-story building where Hayashi lives are owned by individuals with Chinese names or companies whose representatives have Chinese names, according to real-estate records. People in the neighbourhood next to Tokyo Bay, a forest of high-rise condominiums, say the typical building has a quarter or more Chinese residents.
Hayashi said a Chinese friend recommended the building. He described the price for the 650-square-foot, two-bedroom unit as reasonable compared with Hong Kong, where he briefly lived after leaving his hometown of Shenzhen, China, and he said the value has already gone up by some 10% to 15%.
The average price for new apartments in central Tokyo was up nearly 40% last year to the equivalent of about $740,000, according to industry figures. The rise was influenced by a flood of new properties appealing to affluent Chinese buyers who are concerned about a steep slump in their own market, market watchers say.
Brokers said Chinese buyers were also eager to buy resort properties. On the northern island of Hokkaido, a town named Furano that is near ski slopes saw residential land prices rise 28% last year, the fastest rate nationwide. Hideyuki Ishii, a local broker, said wealthy Chinese from the mainland, Hong Kong and Singapore were looking for vacation homes.
“A red tsunami is coming with the Chinese flag in tow,” he said.
Chinese people who want to move to Japan and buy an apartment or house generally face two challenges: getting their money into Japan and getting a visa.
China restricts how much its residents can take out of the country, but many Chinese buyers own companies with international operations or have overseas investments. Orihara, the broker, said his clients usually have a bank account in Hong Kong or Singapore from which they can wire money.
One exception, he said, was a client who bought a $190,000 property and mobilised friends and relatives to carry cash little by little over a few months.
As for the visa, people who invest the equivalent of at least $32,000 in a Japanese business that has a permanent office and two or more employees can get a business-management visa.
Other Chinese obtain a visa for what Japan describes as high-level specialists in business, technology or academia. The number of Chinese with the technology version—software engineers and the like—rose 30% between 2019 and 2023 to more than 10,000. Holders can apply for permanent residency in Japan in as little as one year under a point system that favours those with high salaries and advanced degrees.
Tokyo visa consultant Wang Yun, who is originally from China, said most of his clients were Chinese, often business owners or corporate executives in their late 30s to 50s from big cities such as Shanghai or Beijing.
Once settled, many Chinese opt to use a Japanese name, including on legal records in Japan. Some turn to Japanese readings of their name’s Chinese characters, while others pick an entirely new name.
In addition to convenience when dealing with Japanese people, using a Japanese name allows people of Chinese origin to keep a lower profile back home, where they typically still have family. That may be helpful because Chinese authorities tend to frown on the trend of people moving out with their assets.
Popular Chinese social-media platforms such as Weibo , Little Red Book and WeChat buzz with talk of purchasing real estate in Japan. There is some censorship: Citing government regulations, Weibo blocks searches using a hashtag that translates as “Chinese investors are flooding into Tokyo to buy houses,” though users can search for that subject without the hashtag symbol.
Satoyoshi Mizugami, another broker in Tokyo with roots in China, said he hoped to triple his staff to 300 people in five years to handle all the new business from Chinese buyers. A new office building is under construction to accommodate them, he said.
One of Mizugami’s clients is a 42-year-old Chinese man who was educated in the U.K. and started a restaurant business in China and the U.S. He had been living in China since the pandemic and, when he decided to leave, chose Japan because he thought the business environment was better than that of the U.S. Last year, he bought an apartment in central Tokyo, using the money from selling his U.S. business.
This buyer said he was opening a food-trading business in Japan and applying for a visa to move to Japan with his Chinese-American wife and their 4-year-old son.
On a recent morning in Tokyo, Hayashi, the buyer of the waterfront condominium, was busy helping his boys, 9 and 7, learn Japanese and English online and watching them play outside. His wife had briefly returned to China to see their 15-year-old daughter, who is staying to finish high school there.
Hayashi said he intended to stick with Japan for the long haul. He said one attraction was the high level of medical care, which he expects would be valuable when he gets older. He was careful to note that he has been paying Japanese taxes since last year. As a holder of a high-level specialist visa, he said “I’d like to get permanent residency in four or five years.”
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
