Two listings can sit a quarter mile apart in Empire Pass, both marketed with the same phrase, "ski access," and mean two different things. One means you can walk out your door in boots and be on snow in under a minute. The other means a shuttle picks you up. Both showed up in the Park City MLS this year carrying similar language. Only one of them delivers what most buyers picture when they hear "ski-in, ski-out."
That gap is not a marketing slip. It is baked into how Empire Pass is built, priced, and sold, and it is the single detail that explains more about what you're actually paying for than the community's headline median ever will.
The Word Buyers Skip Past on the Listing Sheet
Empire Pass is not one neighborhood. It is a 1,600-acre master-planned enclave containing 20 distinct communities, from condo buildings like Empire Residences and Silver Strike Lodge to single-family enclaves like Nakoma and Bannerwood. Every one of them sits inside the same gate and gets described in marketing copy with the same handful of resort adjectives. Their MLS records tell a more specific story.
Take Moonshadow. Every one of its seven MLS records, six closed sales and one pending as of early 2026, carries only a "Ski Shuttle" designation. None of them show a project-level or unit-level ski-in/ski-out feature. That's a meaningfully different product than Empire Residences, where 21 of 23 MLS records list true "Ski-to-Door" or "Ski-Out-of-Door" access, the highest rate among the condo-tier buildings in Empire Pass.
Here's the part that should stop a buyer mid-scroll: Moonshadow's own recorded median sale price since 2023 sits at $14,521,250, close to the top of the entire enclave. It is not a discount property. It commands a price that assumes proximity and privilege, without the one feature most buyers assume comes standard at this address. Whatever is driving that number, it isn't a chairlift outside the door.
Twenty Communities, One Zip Code
Once you separate Empire Pass into its actual parts, the range gets wide fast. Since January 2023, closed sales across the enclave have run from $2,308,334 to $23,497,845, with an overall median of $5,750,000 across 91 transactions. But that blended figure hides the spread between the communities that make it up.
| Community | Median Since 2023 | Ski Access Designation |
|---|---|---|
| Arrowleaf | $3,162,500 | Varies by unit |
| Shooting Star | $4,034,500 | Varies by unit |
| Empire Residences | Condo-tier, $3.2M–$4.7M band | Ski-to-Door (21 of 23 records) |
| Moonshadow | $14,521,250 | Ski Shuttle only (all 7 records) |
| Red Cloud | $16,644,000 | Ski-to-Door / Ski-Out-of-Door |
Cash purchase rates track a similar split. Across Empire Pass, cash transactions have ranged from 40 percent in Ironwood to 83 percent in Moonshadow, which tells you something about who is buying where. A higher cash rate at the top end typically reflects a second-home buyer pool less tied to financing timelines, while the lower rates in communities like Ironwood suggest a mix that includes more primary-use or leveraged purchases. Neither number is better or worse. They describe different buyers making different decisions, inside what looks from the street like a single gated community.
One more detail worth confirming before you write an offer: every property in Empire Pass carries a master HOA fee on top of its individual community dues. It's a small line item that gets lost in a glossy brochure and shows up fast in a closing disclosure.
What's Driving the Appreciation Gap
Since 2020, median price per square foot has climbed across nearly every Empire Pass community, but not evenly. Grand Lodge leads at roughly 76.8 percent, followed by Silver Strike Lodge at about 76.3 percent and Nakoma at 71.6 percent. Red Cloud, Shooting Star, One Empire Pass, and Flagstaff each posted gains in the 52 to 67 percent range over the same window.
The buildings posting the steepest gains share a pattern: newer construction, modern finishes, and in several cases post-2017 completion dates. Post-2020 median price per square foot floors range from $1,465 at Argent to $2,077 at One Empire Pass, and that spread is really a proxy for vintage. Buyers paying up for newer stock aren't just buying square footage. They're buying away from the deferred maintenance and dated systems that come with buildings finished a decade or two earlier, and the market has been pricing that difference more aggressively each year since 2020.
That matters for anyone comparing an older Empire Pass unit to something in Sommét Blanc's price range. The number on the listing sheet isn't just square footage times a market rate. It's square footage times a rate that depends heavily on when the concrete was poured.
The Wave That Hasn't Hit the Comps Yet
Empire Pass has one more piece of unfinished business, and it is about to change the math for the entire enclave. Sommét Blanc, designed by Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig, sits on what's described as the last ski-in/ski-out parcel in Empire Pass, adjacent to the Ruby Express chairlift. The project spans three buildings with three- to five-bedroom residences between roughly 2,544 and 5,290 square feet, listed between $4,834,500 and $17,610,000.
As of early 2026, Park City MLS records showed 39 units under contract at Sommét Blanc and zero closed sale history. That's the detail that matters most here. Every community median discussed above, Arrowleaf's $3.16 million, Moonshadow's $14.5 million, the enclave-wide $5.75 million, was calculated without a single Sommét Blanc closing in the data set. Anticipated delivery runs into 2026 and 2027, which means those 39 presale contracts are on a path to become closed comps sometime in the near future, all at once, at prices already locked in months or years ago.
When that happens, the per-square-foot benchmark for new construction at Empire Pass will shift in a single reporting period, not gradually. A buyer pricing an offer against last year's comps in mid-2026 is pricing against a data set that is about to get a large, new-construction correction. That's not a reason to wait. It's a reason to know which comps you're actually standing on before you commit to a number.
How to Actually Price Your Search
A few practical moves follow directly from all of this:
- Confirm ski access at the unit level, not the building or community level. A listing that says "Empire Pass" or even names a specific building doesn't guarantee ski-in/ski-out. Ask for the specific chairlift proximity and walk it yourself if you can.
- Treat community-level medians as a starting point, not a ceiling or floor. Arrowleaf and Red Cloud sit inside the same gate and are not comparable products.
- Ask when your comps closed and what's still pending. If a building has significant presale inventory still working through construction, today's median may not hold once those units close.
- Budget for the master HOA fee on top of any building-specific dues before you compare monthly carrying costs across communities.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly
Does every address in Empire Pass have true ski-in/ski-out access? No. Access designations vary by building and sometimes by unit within the same building. Moonshadow's MLS records show shuttle-only access across every listing, while Empire Residences shows true ski-to-door access in the large majority of its units.
When will Sommét Blanc's sales start showing up in Empire Pass market data? As of early 2026, the 39 units under contract had no closed sale history in Park City MLS records. Anticipated delivery runs into 2026 and 2027, so closings should begin appearing in the data over that window.
Why do cash purchase rates vary so much between Empire Pass communities? The rates reflect different buyer profiles building to building. Communities with cash rates near 80 percent, like Moonshadow, tend to skew toward second-home buyers less dependent on financing timelines, while communities with lower cash rates include more buyers using conventional financing.
If you're comparing Empire Pass communities against each other, or against Deer Valley alternatives elsewhere in the resort, the conversation is easier with someone who can pull the unit-level access records and the actual pending pipeline before you write an offer. Jason Jentzsch has spent more than a decade working these exact micro-markets around Park City. Let's Connect.
