A buyer comparing Telluride and Mountain Village this summer will run into the same number in three different places: Mountain Village averages roughly $1,510 per square foot, while the historic Town of Telluride averages closer to $2,115. It reads like a clean discount, the kind of gap that lets a buyer feel they're getting the same mountain, the same gondola, the same San Juan views, for a third less money.
That gap is accurate as of mid-2026. It is also describing a market that barely exists anymore in the form the number implies.
The Number Everyone Repeats
The $1,510 versus $2,115 comparison shows up across enough sources that it has become a kind of shorthand for the Telluride area: town costs more because it's landlocked and historic, Mountain Village costs less because it's newer and has more room to build. That logic isn't wrong. The Town of Telluride sits in a fixed box canyon with a National Historic Landmark core, and there is no meaningful path to new supply inside it. Mountain Village, built as a purpose-designed resort community on the mesa above town, has always had more room and a younger building stock, which shows up in a lower blended price per square foot for both single-family homes and condominiums.
What the number doesn't tell you is what's actually setting the price in Mountain Village right now, and that matters more than the average itself.
The average you're reading is a blend of two products that don't behave the same way, and one of them is about to outnumber the other.
The Condos Actually Under Contract
The most recent published tally, from March 2026, put forty condominiums under contract in Mountain Village. Thirty-five of those forty were tied to one of two projects: the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Telluride, or Highline.
That is not a market where a handful of new developments are competing alongside a healthy resale base. That is a market where new construction accounts for the overwhelming majority of what's currently moving. The resale condos that generate the $1,510 average are still trading, but they are a shrinking share of actual contract activity, while the units that will eventually reset the comps are sitting in escrow, years from closing.
Two Projects, One New Benchmark
The Four Seasons broke ground on October 7, 2025, on a 4.4 acre site adjacent to the gondola station in Mountain Village. The development is led by Merrimac Ventures and Fort Partners, with architecture by Olson Kundig and interiors by Clements Design, and it is financed by a $417.5 million construction loan from JPMorgan Chase alongside additional mezzanine financing from CanAm Enterprises. When complete, it will include 26 Private Residences, 43 Hotel Residences, and 52 hotel keys. Completion is targeted for 2028. Roughly 30 percent of the residences were already reserved as of the loan closing, with private residence pricing starting near $4 million and average pricing approaching $4,000 per square foot.
Highline, the second Mountain Village project absorbing that condo contract volume, adds to the same wave. Combined, the two developments represent more than $300 million in future real estate sales that will not show up in monthly closed-sale statistics for another one to two years, because presale contracts don't register as closings until construction finishes and title transfers.
| Segment | Approx. price per square foot | Status as of 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Mountain Village resale condos | ~$1,510 | Trading now, shrinking share of contract volume |
| Town of Telluride resale | ~$2,115 | Trading now, constrained by fixed historic footprint |
| Four Seasons private residences | Approaching $4,000 | Under construction, targeting 2028 completion |
The gap between the top row and the bottom row of that table is the real story. It's not town versus Mountain Village. It's old Mountain Village versus new Mountain Village, and the new figure is roughly two and a half times the old one.
Why the Average Doesn't Describe Either Market
A blended average is only useful when the things being blended are similar enough that the middle number means something. That's not the case here. An older resale condo in the Village Core and a not-yet-finished Four Seasons private residence are not two points on the same curve. They're two different products that happen to share a zip code.
For a Q1 2026 snapshot, average sale prices were up 18 percent countywide, 38 percent in Mountain Village, and 46 percent in the Town of Telluride, year over year. Those growth rates are themselves a signal that both markets are being pulled upward by the same forces: a small number of large, high-quality transactions doing most of the work, while the broader resale base moves more slowly underneath them. In Mountain Village specifically, that pull is about to get stronger, because the wave of Four Seasons and Highline closings hasn't started yet. When it does, over the next one to two years, the comparable sales used to calculate that neighborhood's average price per square foot will include units priced at a new, higher benchmark, and the blended number will move toward it.
None of this means today's $1,510 resale average is fake. It's an accurate description of what's closing today. It's just not a stable baseline to plan against, because the composition of what's closing is changing under it.
What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods
If you're evaluating an existing Mountain Village property, the fair comparison is another existing property, not the presale average and not the Town of Telluride's landlocked, structurally different market. A well-maintained resale condo or home in Mountain Village today is being priced against a resale universe that is quietly getting smaller as more of the market's attention and capital moves toward Four Seasons and Highline. Whether that supports the current pricing or eventually leaves resale product looking underpriced relative to a new benchmark depends on how quickly those projects close and how the market treats the older stock once they do. There's no way to know that with certainty today, but it's the right question to be asking rather than treating the current gap as fixed.
If you're drawn to Four Seasons or Highline itself, you're not buying at a discount to Mountain Village. You're buying into a new price tier that doesn't have a trading history yet. The value of that tier will be established by the first wave of closings and resales once the project is finished, not by comparison to what an older resale condo down the road is doing today.
Buyers who treat the $1,510 figure as a permanent ceiling on what Mountain Village property is worth are reading a snapshot as if it were a rule. The more useful question is what closes in 2027 and 2028, and how that changes the comparison set for everything built before it.
Two Questions Worth Asking Before You Compare
Does the price gap mean Mountain Village is currently undervalued? Not necessarily. It means the neighborhood's average blends two products priced very differently. A specific existing property should be compared to other existing properties of similar age, location, and condition, not to the presale average pulling the overall number in one direction.
When will Four Seasons and Highline closings start showing up in the comps? Neither project has closed units yet. Four Seasons is targeting completion in 2028. Until construction finishes on both projects, the resale market and the presale market will keep behaving like two different neighborhoods that happen to share an address.
If you're weighing a property in Mountain Village or the Town of Telluride and want to understand which side of this gap it actually sits on, Lars Carlson can walk through the comparable sales that matter for your specific situation, not the blended averages built for headlines. Request a confidential consultation to talk through the numbers before you make a decision based on one.
