A new deed-restricted housing development in Big Sky opened its waitlist Tuesday. The three-bedroom units start at $1.2 million.

Developers at Mountain Vista Partners say the price reflects construction costs and land values. “We’re delivering attainable homeownership for the local workforce,” said principal Mark Hensley, 406-555-0142.

The deed restriction caps resale appreciation at 3% annually. Buyers must prove 30 hours of local employment per week. Short-term rentals are prohibited.

Longtime resident Gail Pritchard, 72, bought her cabin near Lone Mountain in 1998 for forty-five thousand dollars. She watched the waitlist open from her kitchen window.

“It’s a start,” Pritchard said. “But who has a million-two lying around? The lifties? The line cooks? They’re driving in from Belgrade at 5 a.m.”

Belgrade is where the valley’s working class lives. The commute is forty minutes on a good day. In January it’s ninety.

The Yellowstone Club sits three miles away as the crow flies. Its membership initiation is reported at three hundred thousand. Annual dues run thirty thousand. The waiting list is measured in years.

Every ski patroller in Big Sky knows someone who knows someone at the Club. Nobody admits they’d take the call.

Mountain Vista Partners has reserved forty percent of units for households earning under 150% of area median income. In Gallatin County that threshold is one hundred eighty-seven thousand.

A lift ticket at Big Sky Resort this season was two hundred eighty-nine dollars. A season pass was two thousand four hundred.

The waitlist filled by noon. Three hundred fourteen applications for eighteen units.

Pritchard’s grandson drives a plow truck for the resort. He lives with her. He’s thirty-one.

“He’ll get on the list next year,” she said. “Maybe the year after.”