For most of the past twenty years, Vail’s playbook was simple. Buy resorts, put them on the Epic Pass, and use the pass’s ever increasing value to get skiers to commit their money before the snow even falls. It worked. It made Vail the largest ski resort operator
The first in a new series, tracking the weather setting up our winter, region by region, all season long. I’ve been skiing for over 45 years, and every one of those seasons started the same way, with me squinting at a NOAA outlook map trying to figure out if
Vermont Housing Finance Agency just published its 2025 to 2029 Housing Needs Assessment, and if you operate, invest, or lend anywhere near a mountain resort, you need to read the housing stock numbers closely. I’ve spent 25 years building and lending in these markets, and the Vermont data is
A mountain I could not name, a plan I could not share, and the build that starts this winter. By Daniel Kaufman | Dan Ski & Build If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed the breadcrumbs. Back in May I wrote about a place
There’s a profile making the rounds right now on Erik Mogensen — the Entabeni Systems founder who’s become the unofficial face of independent ski areas fighting back against Epic and Ikon. The framing in most of the coverage is cultural: small hills, mom-and-pop charm, “skiing shouldn’t
I spend a lot of time thinking about the ones that didn't get built. Not just ski areas — all of it. The subdivisions that stalled in permitting. The resorts that broke ground and ran out of money. The mixed-use developments where the vision was right and the
Posted to DanSkiAndBuild.com | June 2026 There’s a particular kind of real estate that makes my brain light up: distressed assets with a story, underutilized land with bones, and places where someone else’s abandoned ambition becomes someone else’s opportunity. Last week, I came across a listing that
By Daniel Kaufman My dad called today and asked why I hadn’t posted in a while. It was a fair question, and one that deserved an honest answer. Life has been full lately. Changes personally, changes professionally, a season of figuring things out. But here’s what I told
By Daniel Kaufman | Dan Ski & Build I can’t tell you where I was. Not yet, anyway. More on that in a future post — and trust me, it’ll be worth the wait. What I can tell you is this: I recently visited a place that called itself a
DANSKIANDBUILD.COM · SKI REAL ESTATE · MAY 2026 One conversation with an independent ski area operator changed how I see the mountain. The slope is about to get steeper for developers willing to build where the big resorts won’t. I had a conversation today that I can’t stop thinking
The numbers are in, and they’re ugly — at least if you ski west of the Rockies. The National Ski Areas Association just dropped preliminary data for the 2025-26 season: 52.6 million skier visits nationally. That’s down roughly 9 million from last year, a 9.1% drop
While Boyne and Vail were pulling the plug in March, a small resort in the Pennsylvania Poconos was skiing into May — and drawing guests from Cleveland, Chicago, and Nashville to prove it. By Daniel Kaufman · @DanSkiAndBuild On May 5th, 2026, there was exactly one ski resort open on the entire