Above is map from Brian Potter (over at Construction Physics) that shows every census tract in the US where vacation homes make up 20% or more of the total number of homes. What you are seeing is a relatively small number of census tracts — 3,372 out of a total of 84,414 (~4%).

But more than half of all vacation homes are in one of these tracts. And nearly 20% of vacation homes are in a census tract where more than 50% of the homes are vacation homes. So in other words: vacation homes in the US tend to be highly concentrated.

According to Potter, there are, perhaps not surprisingly, three main drivers of demand: beaches, lakes, and ski resorts. This is why if you drill down into Florida — which has the highest absolute number of vacation homes in the US at over 800k — you'll see that these homes are not evenly distributed across the state. They're on the coasts, and to a lesser extent inland near places like Disney World.

Also noteworthy is the fact that these census tracts tend to match up nicely with the location of ski resorts. Here's the same map of the US but with ski resorts overlaid:

And here's a close up of Salt Lake City and Park City, because, I love Park City:

As of Q1-2025, the US had over 147 million homes, and somewhere around 4.3 million of these were seasonal or vacation homes. If you'd like to better understand where these are and the trends surrounding them, I recommend you check out Potter's post.

Maps via Construction Physics; cover photo by Joe Ol on Unsplash

Parkview Mountain House has just launched a new creative residencies program intended to reinforce the house's identity as a creative retreat. The way it works is very simple: If you're an artist, designer, creative or a brand doing culture-shaping work, you can now apply for a free three-night stay at the house. In exchange for the stay, we ask that creative residents produce and share original content that reflects their experience in the mountains of Utah and at Parkview Mountain House. This could include photography, videos, written pieces, branded campaigns (such as a lookbook), and maybe even an artifact for the house. Long term, the idea is to assemble a kind of cultural archive with credit being given back to each individual creator and/or brand. We're really excited to see what this residency program produces and we hope that the results will be design-focused, globally minded, and rooted in a deep love for the mountains.

If you'd like to apply, or know of someone who would be a good fit, here's the link.

I experience this feeling on a regular basis, especially because I'm also someone who interacts and uses crypto on an almost daily basis. This week's frustration came about as I was trying to move money around from our Parkview Mountain House account in the US. We bank with US Bank and, for the record, the people in the Park City branch are absolutely lovely people.

But here's one of the things: US bank cannot interface with my mobile phone because I have a Canadian number. And because I live in Toronto, I'm also not able to download and use their mobile app. This means I cannot do rudimentary digital things like deposit a cheque (also known as checks in America). I'm constantly hamstrung and forced to do a lot of things in person. Is there really no simple solution to this?

In contrast to this, I own brandondonnelly.eth, which links to my personal Ethereum wallet. It'a also linked to my Farcaster account (Twitter-like social network), as well as many other onchain platforms and products. And it works, as expected, anywhere in the world.

If someone in Botswana would like to send me 0.001 ETH (~C$4) because they like what I write on this daily blog or they just want to buy me a morning coffee, they could easily do that by entering brandondonnelly.eth on their phone. They could also choose to do so with a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. And when I eventually do my income taxes and I review my wallet's ledger, this transfer would show up and I would be able to categorize it accordingly.

This, to me, is very clearly the future of the global economy.

Full disclosure: I am long ETH and companies like Coinbase.

Cover photo by Ales Nesetril on Unsplash.