page_title: Aspen, Colorado
section_title: Real estate market
hierarchical_section_title: Aspen, Colorado / Real estate market
caption_attribution_description: English: The John Denver Sanctuary in Rio Grande Park, Aspen, Colorado
context_page_description: Aspen is the home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. Its population was 6,658 at the 2010 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains' Sawatch Range and Elk Mountains, along the Roaring Fork River at an elevation just below 8,000 feet above sea level on the Western Slope, 11 miles west of the Continental Divide.
  Founded as a mining camp during the Colorado Silver Boom and later named "Aspen" because of the abundance of aspen trees in the area, the city boomed during the 1880s, its first decade of existence. The boom ended when the Panic of 1893 led to a collapse in the silver market, and the city began a half-century known as "the quiet years" during which its population steadily declined, reaching a nadir of fewer than a thousand by 1930. Aspen's fortunes reversed in the mid-20th century when neighboring Aspen Mountain was developed into a ski resort, and industrialist Walter Paepcke bought many properties in the city in the 1950s and redeveloped them.
context_section_description: Aspen was the most expensive place to buy real estate in the US in 2011. Aspen is a mixture of high-end luxury estates and condos and single-family homes and mobile home parks. As of March 2011, the lowest-priced single-family home on the market was a trailer for $559,000. As of June 2015, the median listing price for homes or condos for sale in Aspen is $5,081,388, or $897 per square foot, according to Trulia. It is not uncommon to see listing prices of higher-end homes reach the mid-eight figures. In a 2015 survey of U.S. ski resort towns, Aspen had the second most expensive rentals, with a one-bedroom averaging $1,750. The City of Aspen, along with Pitkin County, operates an extensive affordable housing program, known locally as 'employee housing.' It is administered by the Aspen Pitkin County Housing Authority, which oversees over 4,000 units in the city and county.
  In 2018, Stephane de Baets facilitated the first major commercial real estate transaction using blockchain technology to sell ownership stakes in the Aspen St. Regis Resort.
caption: The John Denver Sanctuary in Rio Grande Park
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