Aspen’s Market Is So Crazy That Buyers Shop for Homes That Aren’t Even for Sale

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.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.