The valley’s best addresses rarely reach a portal, and almost never in December. A note on timing a mountain search.
Aspen looks like a winter market and behaves like a spring one. The houses that matter tend to change hands between March and June, when the season has ended and the owners have just spent three months deciding whether they still want the place.
Why December is the wrong time to look
In December everyone is in the valley, prices feel firm, and nothing good is available. By April the same houses are quietly in play and the buyer pool has thinned to the people who are serious.
How the good ones move
Between people who already ski together, usually. A house on the better side of the valley will have been mentioned at three dinners before it is ever described as being for sale.
If you want to buy in Aspen, be known there a year before you intend to buy. That is the whole strategy.
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