As Vail Resorts reports a 12% drop in pass units and faces an activist proxy contest, the Kaufman & Company founder says whoever runs the mountains next has to solve for the people who work them
LOS ANGELES (Oct., 2026) Daniel Kaufman, founder of the permanent capital holding company Kaufman & Company and an investor in mountain resort and workforce housing development, said Vail Resorts’ fiscal 2026 results show the ski industry’s growth story has moved from selling more passes to keeping mountain towns livable for the workers who operate them.
Vail Resorts reported Sept. 28 that pass product units sold for the coming North American season fell about 12% through Sept. 18, with pass sales dollars down about 6%. Skier visits for the fiscal year fell 13.4% to 15.3 million, and net income attributable to the company fell to $147.5 million from $280 million a year earlier. It is the company’s first annual report since Oasis Management, a Hong Kong hedge fund, launched a proxy contest, nominated four director candidates and raised its stake to 7.4%, according to regulatory filings and local press coverage.
“A pass is a promise that the mountain will be open, staffed and worth the drive,” Kaufman said. “You can argue about weather and pricing all day, but the thing no corporate office can fix from a distance is whether the lift operator, the patroller and the line cook can afford to live near the base. That is where the value of a resort actually sits, and it does not show up in the pass count until it is too late.”
Local coverage of the proxy contest in Park City has raised the possibility that individual resorts could eventually change hands. Kaufman said any owner, current or future, should underwrite housing before lifts or lodges.
“If mountains start moving from one owner to another, the buyers who do well will be the ones who treat employee housing as part of the lift system, not as an amenity,” Kaufman said. “We look at mountain towns the way we look at any housing market, by the data: supply, wages, and how far a worker drives to the job. A resort that gets those right does not need a record-breaking year to make money.”
Kaufman & Company invests only its own capital and does not raise outside funds. Its operating company DEK Builds, headquartered in Cheyenne, Wyoming, is an integrated design, build, development, and investment firm working across custom homes, mountain resorts, hotels, and commercial construction. LandBriefing, a land and housing data platform built by Kaufman Real Estate & Consulting, recently added Mountain Watch, which tracks land and housing fundamentals in mountain resort and gateway towns. Oldivai, an aligned and independently led partner, develops workforce housing.
About Kaufman & Company
Kaufman & Company is a permanent capital holding company founded by Daniel Kaufman and is the trade name of Kaufman Family Office LLC and Kaufman Real Estate & Consulting LLC. Its 10 operating companies are Convivium Living, DanReDev, DEK Builds, Design Build Affordable, DK Homes, Forge Development Partners, Kaufman Development, Kaufman Real Estate & Consulting, LoneStar Kaufman, and Kaufman Ventures, whose portfolio includes BridgeStar, Meridian, LandBriefing, SpreadSight, FoundCheck, ServerDomes, and Mr Good Container Homes. The platform represents more than $2 billion in project value and more than 10,000 housing units across more than 25 years of building, lending, and investing.
Media Contact
Janine Rodrigues
KeyCrew Media
[email protected]
Disclosure: Individuals or companies mentioned may have a commercial relationship with KeyCrew.
Explore similar articles from Our Team of Experts.
Firm with a newly opened downtown Orlando office points to flat prices and building inventory as a repricing, not a collapse, heading into the late fall buying window ORLANDO, Fla. (Oct. 1, 2026) Dissonant Capital LLC, a vertically integrated real estate investment platform that recently opened an office in downtown Orlando, said today that the ...
KeyCrew Media, a real estate intelligence and media company, is meeting with members of Congress and their staff in Washington, D.C., as part of the News/Media Alliance’s 2026 Support Journalism Fly-In. The company is joining more than 220 participants from news, magazine, and digital-only publishers to press for legislation that protects how journalistic content is ...
KeyCrew Media, a real estate intelligence and media company, is expanding its luxury real estate coverage with new high-end partners. The expansion follows strong early momentum from its partnership with Leading Estates of the World, the luxury real estate network founded in 1969. Since the partnership was announced, KeyCrew has interviewed dozens of agents, brands, ...
KeyCrew Media, a real estate intelligence and media company, has now had its content distributed and republished by more than 1,000 downstream publications, digital platforms, and AI platforms. The milestone comes just over two years after the company launched, and the network now includes some print publications alongside digital outlets. KeyCrew Media reached that number ...
By the time information about a commercial building reaches its owner, it has usually passed through several people. Each handoff removes a little more detail. Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise, says this is one of the most common reasons owners and asset managers end up making decisions without the full picture. “It depends on how ...
For home sellers in Maplewood, New Jersey, the first few days on the market often decide how the entire sale goes. Mark Slade, who runs Mark Slade Homes with his business partner MaryCeu Nunes, says almost every listing his team handles follows the same launch schedule, and offers usually start coming in within days of ...
