Michael Diamond

Get the real numbers before you fall in love with anything. In Park City that's harder than buyers expect — Utah is a non-disclosure state, so the sold prices you'd normally check on Zillow simply don't exist publicly, and neighborhoods a few miles apart behave like different markets entirely. Mike's advice: know the true cost of ownership before you offer (HOA, club dues, and taxes change the math dramatically here), verify rental rules and ownership structure in writing rather than trusting listing remarks, and work with an agent who can show you actual MLS closed-sale data — not estimates. The buyers who win in this market are the ones negotiating from information, not instinct.

Price from data, not from hope — and in Park City, insist on seeing it. Utah is a non-disclosure state, so your neighbors' sale prices aren't public, and the market punishes guessing: last quarter, well-priced Park City luxury homes sold at a median of 97–100% of asking, while overpriced listings sat for months. Mike's advice: demand a neighborhood-specific comparable-sales analysis (not a market-wide one — Promontory and Old Town are different worlds right now), know what today's buyer pool actually looks like (roughly two-thirds of Park City's luxury sales close in cash, and most buyers come from out of state), and choose an agent whose marketing reaches those out-of-state buyers where they're actually searching. The sign in the yard doesn't sell the house anymore — the data and the digital reach do.

Mike's practice is built around out-of-state buyers and sellers — roughly 90% of his clients are based outside Utah, most of them purchasing second homes, ski properties, or investment real estate in Park City's luxury communities. That ranges from families buying into club communities like Promontory, to buyers navigating new-construction developer contracts in Deer Valley East Village, to investors weighing rental economics across the resort corridors, to longtime owners selling a legacy Park City home from another state. What they share: they're accomplished, busy people managing a significant transaction from a distance — and they expect data, communication, and a process that doesn't require them to be here.