A condominium in Mammoth costs less today than it did in 2006.
Not in dollars — in dollars it costs far more. But once you adjust for what those dollars buy, the median condominium sale is still below where it stood at the 2006 peak, twenty years later. In between the market lost more than 60% of its real value, and the town never went back to building at anything like its old pace.
Mammoth home prices, 1971–2026
log scale · 2026 dollars · pale segments carried by the FHFA repeat-sales index for 93546 · shaded years are documented declines
Building collapsed, and came back at a fifth of the pace
Across 2000–2008 the town approved 1,560 residential units, about 173 a year. Across the seventeen years since, it approved 524 — about 31 a year. Building did resume: 118 units in 2022 and 100 in 2024, largely the Parcel and other deed-restricted housing. But whole years in between ran to fewer than half a dozen. Supply is the part of this market that never recovered, and it is why prices move the way they do when demand comes back.
Housing units authorised, 1991–2025
US Census Building Permits Survey · square-root scale, so the small years stay legible
Every shop and restaurant we can account for
Two thousand businesses, assembled from liquor licences, chamber directories, the newspaper archive and forty years of broker reports. It is the closest thing that exists to a record of what has been open in this town, and it is unavoidably uneven: the further back you go, the more a business had to do to leave a trace.
Operating spans, longest first
A bar runs from the first time a business appears in any source to the last. That is a floor, not a lifespan: a place that never advertised and never made the paper leaves no trace between its two mentions.
Openings and closings each year
Counted only from sources that reported a change as news. Directory snapshots cannot date an opening — the first time a directory is archived, every business already in it looks new — so they are excluded here and the record starts in 2009, where coverage steadies.
What visitors spend
Mammoth taxes the people who sleep here, which means the Town has been keeping an unbroken account of its own visitor economy since 1987 — longer than it has kept one of its housing market.
Transient occupancy tax collected
What visitors pay to sleep here, and the closest thing the Town has to a continuous measure of its own economy. Only complete twelve-month years are shown — monthly receipts are violently seasonal and a February figure means nothing beside a September one.
Tourism district assessments, by sector
The business improvement district charges by sector, so its receipts split spending into lodging, restaurants, retail and the mountain — a decomposition nothing else we hold provides.
How the market is behaving
Price says what a home costs. These say how the market is behaving — how fast it moves, how much is for sale, and who has the upper hand. Several are published for Mono County rather than the town; each says which.
How long a listing sits before it sells.
How long the standing inventory would last at the current pace. Under four is a seller's market.
What sellers actually get against what they asked. Above 100% means bidding above asking.
The share of active listings that dropped their price this month.
Active condominium listings. The record reaches back to 1979.
Condos coming onto the market each month.
Who is buying
Who is actually closing. Cash buyers do not need a mortgage rate to cooperate, which is why Mammoth can keep transacting through a rate shock that stalls an ordinary market.
Foreclosures reaching the market. They set the floor after 2009.
Income moving in and out of Mono County
From IRS county-to-county migration: the average adjusted gross income of households arriving, against those leaving. The gap is the clearest measure we have of who the town is being exchanged for.
Snow
Season snowfall at the Main Lodge
A snow year runs July to June and is labelled by the year it ends, so the 2023 season is the winter of 2022–23. Worth saying plainly: we tested this against prices and found nothing. Snowfall correlates at +0.14 with lodging tax and −0.27 with the following year’s prices — which is to say a big winter does not make the market. Paul Oster reached the same conclusion in January 2025 from the other direction.
By complex, and by sale
Individual transactions recovered from broker reports — a sample of what got written about, not a complete register. A complex needs at least five recorded sales to appear.
| Complex | Units | Sales | Years | Average | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Snowcreek | — | 71 | 2011–2025 | $821k | $50k–$3.7M |
| The Westin Monache | — | 33 | 2011–2025 | $636k | $140k–$1.8M |
| The Village | — | 33 | 2011–2025 | $823k | $25k–$2.4M |
| Westin Monache | 238 | 26 | 2011–2025 | $403k | $64k–$1.1M |
| Sunstone | 78 | 19 | 2012–2023 | $533k | $43k–$1.6M |
| Juniper Springs Lodge | 178 | 19 | 2011–2024 | $474k | $212k–$880k |
| Grand Sierra Lodge | — | 19 | 2011–2025 | $583k | $100k–$1.4M |
| White Mountain Lodge | 90 | 18 | 2011–2025 | $680k | $240k–$1.4M |
| The Bluffs | — | 15 | 2012–2025 | $1.3M | $260k–$6.0M |
| Aspen Creek | 79 | 14 | 2013–2023 | $418k | $100k–$701k |
| The Summit | 211 | 13 | 2011–2025 | $371k | $145k–$720k |
| Eagle Run | 37 | 13 | 2011–2025 | $598k | $30k–$1.2M |
| The Lodges | — | 12 | 2012–2022 | $1.0M | $200k–$1.6M |
| Creekhouse | — | 12 | 2012–2024 | $1.2M | $495k–$2.1M |
| Solstice | — | 11 | 2012–2025 | $548k | $230k–$900k |
| Lincoln House | 78 | 11 | 2011–2024 | $673k | $415k–$1.3M |
| Stonegate | 15 | 10 | 2013–2021 | $1.2M | $800k–$2.0M |
| Mountain Shadows | 131 | 10 | 2011–2025 | $424k | $133k–$600k |
| Courchevel | 61 | 10 | 2014–2023 | $548k | $170k–$925k |
| Mammoth Green | — | 9 | 2011–2022 | $540k | $240k–$910k |
| Horizons Four | — | 9 | 2017–2025 | $565k | $225k–$1.4M |
| Bigwood | 109 | 9 | 2018–2025 | $734k | $20k–$2.4M |
| Sierra Park Villas | 103 | 8 | 2013–2024 | $515k | $128k–$735k |
| Mammoth Ski & Racquet | — | 8 | 2012–2024 | $507k | $195k–$705k |
| Sierra Manors | 150 | 7 | 2011–2023 | $367k | $86k–$750k |
| Seasons Four | 51 | 7 | 2012–2023 | $550k | $129k–$879k |
| Mammoth Estates | 82 | 7 | 2014–2025 | $1.0M | $429k–$2.4M |
| The Trails | — | 6 | 2012–2023 | $690k | $205k–$1.4M |
| Sierra Valley Sites | — | 6 | 2014–2023 | $720k | $65k–$1.0M |
| Mountainback | 122 | 6 | 2014–2025 | $692k | $265k–$1.4M |
| Mammoth Slopes | — | 6 | 2015–2022 | $894k | $255k–$1.5M |
| Juniper Ridge | — | 6 | 2012–2024 | $1.8M | $225k–$5.0M |
| Hidden Valley | — | 6 | 2017–2021 | $483k | $100k–$1.1M |
| Gray Bear | — | 6 | 2015–2017 | $1.3M | $828k–$1.6M |
| Discovery Four | — | 6 | 2011–2014 | $185k | $130k–$300k |
| Canyon Lodge | — | 6 | 2013–2022 | $964k | $255k–$1.8M |
| Viewpoint | — | 5 | 2011–2022 | $292k | $175k–$600k |
| The Westin | — | 5 | 2014–2025 | $878k | $195k–$2.4M |
| The Pointe | 14 | 5 | 2020–2022 | $921k | $500k–$1.3M |
| The Bridges | 48 | 5 | 2013–2019 | $395k | $100k–$549k |
| Obsidian Villas | — | 5 | 2020–2022 | $2.0M | $1.3M–$2.6M |
| Meadowridge | — | 5 | 2013–2018 | $456k | $240k–$645k |
| La Vista Blanc | — | 5 | 2015–2021 | $376k | $298k–$449k |
What people said was happening, at the time
Earthquakes, recessions, the mountain changing hands, the Village going up, a pandemic. Where somebody wrote down what they thought was going on, their words are here with their name on them — including where two of them flatly contradict each other about the same year.
“This increase is attributed to a number of new condominium sales in “Obsidian” driving the condominium market.”Matthew Lehman Report ↗
“Most local condominium projects have already seen major escalations in the their insurance premiums”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“individual drought winters, or a more prolonged period of drought, don’t appear to have any significant or direct impact”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“The TOT increasing Measure L passed by a 63% margin.”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“The long anticipated September Federal Reserve rate drop has had the opposite effect than what was expected.”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“The RMF-2 zoned condo I have listed had more showings in the last few days than in the past two months.”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“5 were released and spoken for within 8 minutes of their release”Matthew Lehman Report ↗
“Purchase price reduced $52,000 and commissions reduced to 5% to keep buyer from cancelling”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“California has seen an increase in the number of insurance companies unwilling to write new insurance policies in the state”Matthew Lehman Report ↗
“the added costs (special assessments) and hassles as a result of this winter may shake-out additional condo owners”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“the banking unease alone could drive buyers into the Mammoth market looking for a place to park money”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“one-third of the condo inventory are properties at the Westin Monache. This is a huge imbalance.”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“Skyrocketing mortgage rates are clearly impacting the market but Mammoth is also experiencing low inventory.”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“Demand for vacation homes was still up 13% from pre-pandemic levels, but it’s declining after a pandemic-fueled second-home boom”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“All of the recent new construction and infusion of capital is clearly a byproduct of this Alterra affiliation.”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“The hazardous air quality and lack of inventory are all clearly impacting the sales activity.”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
“the Covid lockdowns froze the market and there was incredible uncertainty as to what would happen”Paul Oster Broker Report ↗
Where every number came from
This is the whole record, assembled from newspaper archives, adopted Town documents, broker reports and public data. Most of it has never been in one place before, and nothing before 1998 exists in any digital housing dataset. Nothing here is modelled or filled in: where sources disagreed the disagreement was resolved by a stated rule, and where the record is thin the page says so rather than smoothing over it.
| Publisher | What it is | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| CA Dept of Insurance / CA FAIR Plan / CAL FIRE | FAIR Plan policies and exposure, non-renewals, fire hazard severity zonesFAIR Plan is California's insurer of last resort; growth in its policy count is the clearest available signal that ordinary insurers are withdrawing. Fiscal-year reporting. Note that an active non-renewal moratorium suppresses observed non-renewals, so a low count during one does not mean the market has recovered. | — |
| CDEC / NOAA GHCN / Mammoth Mountain | Snow course, snow pillow, climate station and ski-season recordsMixed sources by design. CDEC snow courses are monthly manual measurements from 1928; CDEC pillows are automated daily; NOAA GHCN are daily climate observations. Resort snowfall is measured at Main Lodge ~8,900 ft — the resort's own table averages ~352 in/season, not the ~400 in they market, and Summit totals run 25-30% higher. Never mix elevations. | 1924-11–2026-08 |
| CFPB / FFIEC | Home Mortgage Disclosure Act loan register, Mono CountyEvery reportable mortgage application and origination. Comparing originations against total sales gives an estimate of the CASH share, which is large in second-home markets. | — |
| Federal Housing Finance Agency | House Price Index — annual, developer files (zip5 / zip3 / county / tract / CBSA)Weighted repeat-sales index built from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conforming mortgage transactions and appraisals. It is an INDEX (base 100 at series start), not dollars. Two caveats that matter in Mammoth: it excludes cash purchases and jumbo loans — a large share of a second-home resort market — and it includes appraisals, which damp volatility. Expect it to understate both booms and busts here. | 1975–2026 |
| FHFA via FRED (St. Louis Fed) | All-Transactions House Price Index & macro contextRepeat-sales index from Fannie/Freddie conforming mortgages. Index (1995 or 1980=100), NOT dollars. Excludes cash sales and jumbo loans — meaningful caveat in a second-home market like Mammoth. | — |
| Freddie Mac | House Price Index (FMHPI)Monthly repeat-sales index. Published for states and metros — there is no Mammoth or Mono series, so this is California-level context, useful for separating local moves from statewide ones. | 1975-01 |
| IRS Statistics of Income | County-to-county migrationCounts of tax returns, exemptions (a proxy for people) and aggregate AGI moving between counties, by tax-year pair. Captures filers only, lags by roughly two years, and — critically here — records where someone's TAX HOME moved. A Los Angeles owner buying a Mammoth second home never appears in it. | — |
| Town of Mammoth Lakes / Mono County | Housing Elements, Needs Assessments and Community IndicatorsTables in adopted public documents. Generally the most reliable figures we hold for their years — published, dated and methodologically stated — but they appear only every few years. | 1980–2024 |
| US Census BPS / CA HCD / Town of Mammoth Lakes | Building permits, housing production, STR permissionsCensus Building Permits Survey counts housing UNITS AUTHORISED by building permit, broken out by structure size (1-unit, 2-unit, 3-4 unit, 5+ unit) — the 5+ category is the closest available proxy for condo construction. Authorised is not built: permits can lapse, and the gap widens in downturns. THREE FIGURES EXIST FOR EACH YEAR AND THEY MEASURE DIFFERENT THINGS. For 2019: Census annual says 40 units authorised; HCD's APR, self-reported by the Town, says 41 permitted (metric `rhna_permitted`); and the Town later restated RHNA CREDIT to 23 (metric `rhna_produced`). The first two agree within one unit and are genuine permit counts; the 23 is a policy accounting figure, not a measurement, and the restatement corrected RHNA bookkeeping rather than revising how much was built. Use `units_authorized` (Census annual) for supply. Separately, the Census MONTHLY place series does not reconcile with the annual one for a place this small and must never be summed to a year. | 1980–2026 |
| California Association of REALTORS® | Monthly county median sale price, DOM, unsold inventory indexMedian price of EXISTING SINGLE-FAMILY DETACHED homes only, county-wide. Two limits that matter here: it excludes condos entirely — and Mammoth is a majority-condo market — and it covers all of Mono County, not just Mammoth. Use it for long-run shape and as an independent check on the local archives, not as a Mammoth condo series. | 2005-01–2026-06 |
| Mammoth Lakes Board of REALTORS® (RPR®) | RPR market statistics reports, ZIP 93546Realtors Property Resource reports generated off the MLBOR MLS, scoped to ZIP 93546 and split by property type. Charts carry both a current and a 'prior year' series — the prior-year points are restatements, not new observations, and are labelled by the period they describe. | 2001–2022 |
| Realtor.com Economic Research | Inventory Core Metrics (zip & county history)Derived from active LISTINGS on realtor.com, not closed sales. No condo/SFR split at zip level. | — |
| Redfin Data Center | Market Tracker (city/county/neighborhood)Derived from MLS closed sales where Redfin has coverage. NOTE: zip-level file has NO 93546 coverage. | — |
| The Sheet | Weekly market columnsMarket figures printed in The Sheet, most attributed to Matthew Lehman Appraisal Services or to Amber Woodruff. Attribution is preserved per row so the underlying analyst stays creditable. | 2009–2026 |
| Town of Mammoth Lakes | Community Indicators ReportOfficial Town report. Annual median SOLD prices, but only the figures quoted in narrative paragraphs are recoverable — the 2004-2024 chart is vector line art with no data labels, table, or embedded data, so those years were deliberately left blank rather than digitised into estimates. | 2014–2024 |
| Town of Mammoth Lakes / Mammoth Lakes Tourism / FAA | TOT & TBID revenue, visitation estimates, airport enplanementsTOT/TBID figures come from the Town Finance department's own revenue-history workbook. Baseline TOT excludes later voter-approved add-ons (Measure L etc.) — check the note on each row before comparing across eras, or a rate change will read as a demand change. Datafy visitation is modelled from mobile-location data, not counted, and is not comparable to the TOT series in levels. | 1987–FY2025-26 |
| Zillow Research | ZHVI / ZORI / inventory public CSVsZHVI = smoothed, seasonally adjusted measure of typical home value (35th-65th percentile tier); not a median of closed sales. | — |
| Destination Real Estate (Mammoth Lakes) | Monthly market update postsMLS-derived (MLBOR), self-published monthly. Reports a rolling multi-year comparison table, so a single post carries several years of history and later posts restate earlier years. Rows are explicitly tagged SOLD vs ACTIVE LISTING in the source tables. | 2013-07–2026-06 |
| Los Angeles Times | Real-estate and news archive, retrieved via ProQuestFigures hand-extracted from article prose and scanned tables, 1971-1997. The Times covered Mammoth as a second-home market for Southern California buyers, so its reporting is broker-sourced: prices are usually ASKING prices at the time of writing and are stored as list-side unless the text states a sale. Every row keeps its evidence quote and article URL. | 1971–1997 |
| Mammoth Lakes brokerages | Published market statistics (Resort Realty, Jodi Melton, others)MLS-derived statistics published by individual brokerages; definitions vary by publisher. | — |
| Matthew Lehman / homesmammoth.com | Monthly Mammoth Lakes market reports (text)MLS-derived (MLBOR), self-published. YTD figures are often compared against prior FULL-year figures — not like-for-like. Pre-2022 reports sometimes quote ACTIVE LISTING prices rather than sold prices; check provenance note. | 2013-12–2026-08 |
| Matthew Lehman / homesmammoth.com | Chart values recovered by pixel measurementBar-top and gridline pixel positions measured with PIL, converted via a per-chart linear fit anchored on years whose exact values are known from printed tables. Leave-one-out calibration error 0.07-0.4% on high-resolution charts. This is the only source for Mammoth single-family medians before 2006. | — |
| Newspaper archives (various) | Historical price mentionsPrice figures recovered from newspaper coverage outside the LA Times run. | 1971–2010 |
| Paul Oster / Mammoth Real Estate Blog | Bi-weekly broker sales reports (narrative)MLS-derived (MLBOR), written as prose, not tables. Reporting windows are nominally two weeks but vary. 'Back-up' was renamed 'Active Under Contract' ~2019 — concatenate those series. sale_price_low/high span ALL property types and can include garages, lots and mobile homes. | 2006-04–2025-10 |
| US Census Bureau | American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B25077 value, B25064 rent)Survey estimates of median OWNER-REPORTED home value — what owners believe their home is worth — not observed sale prices. Each 5-year estimate is a rolling window, so consecutive years overlap and are NOT independent. Town-level margins of error for Mammoth run $60k-$257k, wide enough that year-over-year moves are often statistically meaningless. Use for level and long-run shape only, never for short-run change. | 2009–2024 |
| Matthew Lehman / homesmammoth.com | Market report tables & charts (extracted from images)Values transcribed from spreadsheet screenshots and charts by an LLM vision pass. Each row carries a confidence flag; 'low' means read off a chart axis rather than a printed number. | — |
| RE/MAX of Mammoth (Paul Oster) | Broker's Report, recovered from the Internet ArchiveNarrative broker reports, 1998-2008. Pre-2006 content is chiefly MLBOR ACTIVE-LISTING inventory counts by property type, plus median and average ASKING prices — list side, never sold. Some figures are qualitative ('less than 50', 'around 60') and are stored with an upper-bound or approximate flag in provenance. | 1997-04–2008-03 |