Utah’s Ultraexclusive Mountain Town Where Hard-Core Skiers and Big-Budget Buyers Converge

As the early-morning air turns crisp, hinting at the imminent arrival of fall, winter sports enthusiasts are beginning to prep for the upcoming season—with those truly in the know eyeing the legendary powder of Alta, UT.For a mountain town with a year-round population of just over 200 that started out as a rugged 19th-century silver mining camp, Alta holds an outsized reputation as an elite skiing destination. It boasts an average of 540 inches of North America's deepest, highest-quality snow blanketing 2,600 skiable acres.Alta's real estate market is tiny, highly exclusive, and staggeringly expensive. Deeply tied to world-class skiing, it attracts affluent buyers eager to secure properties with direct access to the slopes."If you pick a place in Alta, you'd better like skiing," Jim Williams, broker and owner of Williams Realty, tells Realtor.com®.A look at Alta's recent housing data shows just how difficult it is to crack this market.In June, there was just one property for sale in Alta, priced at $4.79 million, up from zero listings the year before.Seven years earlier, there were seven properties for sale with a median asking price of $1.59 million."This extreme scarcity of listi...