If you have been watching the Jackson Hole market from a distance this year, you have probably run into two headlines that cannot both be true. One says condo and townhome transactions in the valley collapsed in the first quarter of 2026, down 54 percent in trades from the same period a year earlier. The other says the median sale price across Jackson Hole hit a record $2.995 million in the first half of 2026, up 27 percent year over year, with condo and townhome prices pushing to new highs even as the number of condo sales kept declining.
Both numbers are accurate. Neither one tells you what is actually happening if you are looking at a condo in the Town of Jackson right now. The gap between them is the story, and it changes how you should read every price you see on a listing in this segment.
The Math That Makes Both Numbers True
A falling sales count and a rising median price are not a contradiction when the pool of buyers making it to the closing table has changed shape. Fewer transactions plus a higher median means the transactions that did happen skewed toward the expensive end. That is not speculation about Jackson's market, it is arithmetic, and the local reports back it up directly: single-family home sales increased 38 percent in the second quarter of 2026 and vacant land values continued to strengthen, while condo sales declined even as higher-end deals pushed condo and townhome prices to new highs.
Read that plainly. The condo segment did not get more expensive because demand surged across the board. It got more expensive because the buyers who kept transacting were buying at the top of the range, while the transactions that used to happen lower down the price ladder mostly stopped happening.
It also matters whose numbers you are reading. Some Jackson Hole market reports pull only from the MLS, which by one estimate captured just 63 percent of valley-wide sale prices in 2025. Others track every recorded transaction, on and off market. When you see two sources quote different medians for the same quarter, that is often the reason. Neither is wrong. They are counting different universes of sales.
What Sold, Segment by Segment
Here is the first half of 2026 broken out by property type, which makes the divergence easier to see than the headline median alone.
| Segment | 2026 Trend | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| Single-family homes | Sales up 38% (Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025) | Broadest demand, most stable segment |
| Vacant land | Values continued to strengthen | Limited supply keeps pushing prices up |
| Condos and townhomes | Sales declined, median price hit new highs | Fewer deals, richer buyers, thinner middle |
| Overall valley median | $2.995 million, up 27% | Record high, driven by luxury concentration |
The luxury concentration is not subtle. Although only 15 percent of transactions in the first half of 2026 qualified as luxury sales, they generated roughly 45 percent of the valley's total dollar volume. A market can look like it is accelerating in the aggregate while the segment a first-time or move-up buyer actually shops in is quietly starving.
One more caveat worth naming here: some of the dollar-volume swings this year trace back to a single outsized transaction, the roughly $350 million sale of the Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole. That deal skews total volume figures for the valley but has nothing to do with condo transaction trends in town. Strip it out and the underlying story in the condo segment does not change: fewer trades, higher prices, a shrinking middle.
Where the Entry-Level Condo Went
The Town of Jackson is the volume leader for condos and townhomes in the valley, historically accounting for something close to half of all condo and townhome sales in Teton County, with the rest concentrated in Teton Village and the Aspens and Teton Pines. That in-town share matters because it is also the only part of the valley with anything like a consistent supply of condos in the $1 million to $3 million range. Everywhere else, the segment either does not exist at scale or starts much higher.
But "consistent supply" does not mean growing supply. Active condo inventory valley-wide sits roughly 36 percent below pre-2024 levels, and what is coming to market in the Town of Jackson increasingly clusters at two extremes rather than filling in the middle.
On one end, you have the valley's older in-town stock. Ponderosa Village on Powderhorn Lane, for instance, is a Town of Jackson complex within walking distance of the community bike path and the trails at Snow King and Josie's Ridge, the kind of unit that represents what an attainable in-town condo has looked like for years. On the other end, new construction is being built for a buyer with a very different budget. New high-end builds along Glenwood Street are commanding upwards of $6.4 million, and developments near the National Elk Refuge like Hidden Hollow are listing three-bedroom units between $4.4 million and $5.8 million. Farther out, projects like the Sylvan Lodge at the Snake River Sporting Club are marketing fully furnished, professionally managed condo-hotel units built explicitly for a rental-income buyer, not a first-time owner.
There is very little being built in between. That is the mechanical reason a shrinking number of condo sales can still push the median higher: the units entering the transaction mix skew toward one of those two poles, and the cheaper pole is aging inventory, not new supply.
Who Is Actually Closing
The buyer profile has shifted along with the inventory. Condos in this price range sit at what one local analysis called a psychological sweet spot for cash buyers, who are far less sensitive to mortgage rate movements than the broader national market. That insulates the segment from the rate-driven slowdowns showing up elsewhere in the country, but it also means the buyers still active here are not the same pool that was shopping in 2021 or 2022.
A meaningful share of current condo buyers are using the purchase strategically. Wyoming has no state income tax, no estate tax, and no gift tax, and a growing number of buyers from higher-tax states are not simply purchasing a vacation unit, they are establishing a Wyoming condo as a foothold toward meeting the state's 183-day residency threshold and shifting their legal domicile. For that buyer, price sensitivity works differently than it does for someone shopping to live in the unit full time. The purchase is doing double duty as a tax strategy, which changes what they are willing to pay and how quickly they are willing to move.
What This Means If You Are Looking at a Jackson Condo
If you are comparing Jackson to other Teton County neighborhoods, do not anchor to the valley-wide median. It is being pulled by a segment you are probably not shopping in. Instead:
- Price per square foot is a steadier reference point than the median. It stood near $929 per square foot as of March 2026, and it moves less erratically than a median built from a small, unevenly distributed set of sales.
- Sale-to-list ratio tells you how much room you actually have to negotiate. Condos in the valley have been closing around 96.5 percent of list price, tighter than the 93.8 percent typical for single-family homes, which means the discount buyers are getting elsewhere in the market is smaller here.
- Know which pole a listing sits on before you compare it to anything else. An older in-town unit and a new build on Glenwood Street are not competing for the same buyer, and pricing them against each other using a single median will mislead you in both directions.
- Ask who else is bidding. If a unit is priced to appeal to a residency-motivated buyer, the negotiating dynamic and timeline will look different than a purchase driven purely by lifestyle use.
FAQ
Does the 54 percent drop in condo sales mean prices are about to fall? Not based on anything in the current data. The decline is in transaction count, not value, and it is concentrated in the segment where inventory is thinnest. Prices in the segment that is still trading have gone up, not down.
Is the Town of Jackson still the best place to find a condo under $2 million? It remains the area with the most consistent supply in the $1 million to $3 million range, but that supply is not growing, and older complexes make up a large share of what is available at that price point.
Why do different market reports quote different median prices for the same period? Some rely solely on MLS-recorded sales, which capture a majority but not all of valley transactions. Others track every recorded sale, including those that never hit the MLS. Both are legitimate, but they are not measuring the same set of transactions, and the resulting medians will not match.
A market that looks simple from a headline rarely stays simple once you are the one writing an offer. If you are trying to figure out what a specific Jackson condo is actually worth, and not just what the valley-wide median suggests, JH Living can walk through the comparable sales and inventory that apply to your situation. Let's Connect.
