- By Amy M. Peters Times Contributor
- Jan 22, 2026
“Intentional, inspired, resilient, pragmatic” are words Compass Founding Broker Bill Fandel used to describe the Telluride region’s 2025 real estate market.
Noting that the overall 2025 market was down by 13.4% in sales dollars with a 7.2% drop in closed sales, the executive director of Telluride Properties, TD Smith, said there are over $300 million in “hard” contracts with 50% non-refundable deposits on units at Mountain Village’s Highline project, which won’t close for another 18-24 months, and at the Four Seasons Telluride project, which won’t close for another two and a half to three years.
“If you add those as sales back into our year-end production, the market in 2025 outproduced 2023 and 2024 sales,” he explained.
Smith sees the market as driven by higher-end homes and condos, citing fewer sales and higher dollars with more movement in Mountain Village due to more upper-end product.
“The $2 to $5 million mid-market is languishing in part because of lower supply,” he added.
Director of the O’Neill Stetina Group Brian O’Neill said town of Telluride prices “seemed to overheat” in 2025, so buyers retreated to Mountain Village, where money went further.
“Mountain Village will remain more active than town of Telluride in 2026, driven by its values,” he predicted.
The director of Shimkonis Partners, Mike Shimkonis, said the market transitioned from “velocity at any cost” to “deliberate precision,” offering buyers more choices and “the best leverage they’ve seen in five years.”
He said the fastest-selling market segment in the county is deed-restricted properties.
According to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), 20 deed-restricted properties sold last year; the lowest for $265,000 in the town of Telluride and the highest for $2.4 million in Mountain Village.
“Improved deed-restricted properties took 73 days from listing to sold with an average sold price of $789,000,” Shimkonis reported.
The MLS indicates 113 free-market single-family homes sold in 2025; the lowest at $220,000 in Norwood and the highest at $39 million in Mountain Village. There were 88 free-market condos sold in 2025; the lowest for $400,000 at the Peaks Resort and Spa and the highest for $7.7 million in Telluride.
“Mountain Village condos saw a meaningful jump in price per square foot to $1,475, while Telluride single-family homes reached $2,353 per square foot average,” Shimkonis said.
Fandel noted that newer or core-location properties in the town of Telluride achieved close to $3,000 per square foot.
Kiplynn Smith, president of the Telluride Association of Realtors and Mountain District vice president for the state, said “median sold price” better reflects typical values as they’re less affected by ultra-luxury outliers.
“The median single-family home price in the town of Telluride was $4.4 million compared with $7.6 million in Mountain Village,” she noted. “Dated or less-desirable properties are taking longer to sell while updated and thoughtfully designed homes continue to move quickly.”
Vacant land, secondary locations and outlying tracts across the county moved more slowly, in part, Shimkonis said, because buyers want turnkey.
“Elevated construction costs and increasingly complex permitting requirements continue to weigh on that segment,” Fandel added. “Labor, construction and permitting costs continue to rise year over year across the region, and these pressures have proven difficult to offset through efficiencies.”
In a recent industry memo, Land Title Vice President Robin Watkinson noted a 51% increase in gross volume this December over last, citing a 14% increase in transactions totaling $83.5 million.
“This brought our year-end gross volume to $878.5 million, slightly surpassing our 2023 figures,” she reported.
While noting a slight correction in residential values from their peak in 2024, Watkinson reported that December residential values significantly outperformed the year-to-date average.
“Overall, 2025 values remained higher than those recorded in 2023, and price-per-square-foot metrics continue to hold steady,” she concluded.
Moving forward, Smith cautions that buyers shouldn’t count on deflation in area house pricing.
“At worst, we’re going to see prices hold,” he predicted.
Despite the dry start to the season and closure of the Telluride Ski Resort due to its now-resolved dispute with Telluride Ski Patrol, LIV Sotheby’s International Realty Associate Broker Teddy Errico, who also serves as mayor of Telluride, remarked: “The people who want to buy into Telluride still will.”
