In April, this column made a call: the slowdown at the top of the market was a presence problem, not a value problem, and the buyers were about to come back. June is the first month of data that tests that call. The short version: the middle of the market never blinked, the pipeline is filling fast, and the winter forecast that was a possibility in April is now official.

Data source: Vail Board of REALTORS MLS (FlexMLS) Summary Statistics, pulled July 15, 2026. Residential, Entire MLS. June 2026 vs. June 2025, plus year to date January through June, both years.

The middle of the market never blinked

June closings came in at 64, down about 10% from last June's 71. That is the only soft-looking number on the page, and it is the least interesting one. The median sale price rose 13.5% to $1.59M. Homes sold in 65 days on average, three weeks faster than last June. Sellers collected 96.2% of list price, the strongest number in the dataset. Year to date, 415 homes have closed, up 7.2% over last year.

A market where things sell faster, closer to ask, at a higher median is not a market losing its footing. It is a market clearing efficiently.

The pipeline is the loudest number on the page

Ninety-four homes went pending in June. Last June it was 62. That is a 52% jump in the metric that becomes closings sixty to ninety days from now. New listings rose 16% to 235, so this is not a shortage story either. Both sides of the market showed up in June, and they found each other quickly.

The top of the market: closings lag, intent does not

Three homes closed above $5M in June, against seven last June. Resist reading anything into the price columns on a three-sale month; small samples move violently. Read the year instead.

Through April, $5M+ closings were running 35% behind last year. Through June, the gap has narrowed to 29%, with 35 closings against 49. The hole dug by the worst snow winter in recorded history is being filled in, not deepened. Luxury pendings have turned positive year to date, 52 against 51, with 11 in June alone. And what did close in June went under contract fast: 79 days on market against 130 a year ago.

Where the slowdown actually lives: above $10M

Split the market into three bands and the year-to-date picture stops looking like a luxury slowdown and starts looking like a staircase. Below $5M, closings are up 12.4%. From $5M to $10M, they are down 23.5%. Above $10M, they are down 40%, with 9 closings against 15. The winter's missing buyers were not luxury buyers generally. They were the top of the top, the $10M+ buyer who comes for the season, skis with the family, and writes the contract in the spring that never happened.

Now look at the same $10M+ band's forward numbers, because they invert the story. Pendings are up 11.8% year to date. Active $10M+ inventory is up 29.7%, the deepest selection in the valley's highest tier in years, and 35.7% deeper in June alone. What did sell went faster, with days on market down 16%. And the median sold price held at exactly $13.5M, both years. No repricing. The tier that fell hardest is also the tier reloading fastest, on both sides of the table: sellers positioning ahead of winter, buyers quietly going under contract before it.

That is the cutoff that matters. The $5M to $10M market slowed; the $10M+ market paused. And a pause at $13.5M medians with rising pendings is not weakness. It is a spring wound tighter.

The selection at the top is the deepest in years

There were 163 active $5M+ listings in June, up 26% from last year, and 117 new luxury listings have come to market this year, up 16%. Sellers are positioning ahead of winter. For a buyer, this is the practical meaning of a slow luxury year: more genuine choice above $5M than this valley has offered in recent memory, before the competition returns.

By the numbers

Residential, all price points

$5M+ luxury segment

June 2026 luxury price and percent-of-list figures reflect three closings; treat monthly moves in that segment as noise and the year-to-date columns as signal.

El Nino stopped being a forecast

In April, the language was careful: forecasters favored a developing El Nino, likely strong and possibly a super one. Here is what has changed since.

On July 9, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center placed the Pacific under an official El Nino Advisory. The event is no longer developing; it is here and strengthening, with equatorial waters already running 1.2 degrees Celsius above average. NOAA now puts the odds of a very strong El Nino this October through December at 81%, and gives it a 97% chance of persisting through early spring 2027, which is to say through the entire ski season. In NOAA's own framing, this event could rank among the largest in the historical record going back to 1950. Only five events of that class have occurred in the last 75 years.

What matters for this market is what those winters have actually done at Vail. In the modern 14-season snowfall record, the super El Nino winter of 2015-16 ranks second-snowiest at Vail, at 313 inches. The strong El Nino winter of 2023-24 also came in above Vail's 250-inch average. Go back further and the pattern holds: 1982-83, still the strongest El Nino ever recorded, delivered an above-average winter on this mountain.

No forecast guarantees snow totals, and El Nino's flashiest gains historically land in Colorado's southern ranges. But read Vail's own El Nino history and one fact stands out: normal to above, every time. Nothing in that record looks remotely like the 164-inch season Vail just endured, the lightest in the modern record. And that is the real mechanism here. Last winter's problem was never two fewer powder days. It was that winter effectively did not show up at Vail, and the buyers who follow it stayed away. An El Nino winter at Vail has never been a no-show winter. At 81% odds and strengthening, the risk that kept the top of this market on the sidelines is collapsing.

The window, revisited

Put the two halves of this report together. The top of the market is carrying the deepest selection in years, held by sellers who carried their properties through a lost season. High-end new construction purchase options exist right now, some bundled with long-closed private club memberships. Meanwhile the pipeline metrics, pendings up 52%, luxury pendings back in positive territory, days on market falling, say the repositioning has already begun.

If the winter arrives on the scale NOAA now assigns 81% odds, next spring's buyer will be negotiating against the crowd that waited for the snow to prove it. This summer's buyer negotiates against a quiet room.