How the Wood River Valley's four towns differ on price and housing, what Idaho's 2026 short-term rental law changed, and how Friedman Memorial Airport fits in.
Blaine County’s housing market is really the Wood River Valley: four incorporated towns strung along State Highway 75, with Sun Valley and Ketchum at the north end next to Sun Valley Resort, Hailey about 12 miles south, and Bellevue a few miles past that (Wikipedia, Wood River Valley; Hailey). They share one highway, one airport and one listing market, but they are very different places to own a house.
The clearest way to see it is in how the homes get used. The Census Bureau counts housing units that sit empty most of the year because they’re held for seasonal, recreational or occasional use: second homes and vacation places. In Sun Valley that’s about 1,600 of roughly 2,450 homes, close to two in three. In Ketchum it’s about 1,800 of 4,180, a little over four in ten. In Hailey it’s around 5%, and in Bellevue the estimate rounds to zero (U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates, tables B25002 and B25004, via Census Reporter). These are survey estimates with real margins of error in towns this size, but the pattern is not subtle. The north end of the valley is largely a second-home market, and the south end is mostly homes people occupy all year.
What homes cost, town by town
Zillow’s typical home value for all of Blaine County was about $1.11 million in August 2026, up 13.2% from a year earlier and about 43% over five years. That’s a very different picture from the Treasure Valley, where most cities we track are within a few percent of where they were a year ago.
The county figure hides a wide spread. Zillow puts the typical Ketchum home at about $1.68 million, Sun Valley at $1.21 million, Hailey at $912,000 and Bellevue at $697,000 (Zillow Home Value Index, August 2026). A typical-value index describes the middle of each town’s housing stock, so it’s useful for comparing towns and says little about what any one property is worth. At the top of the market, a single sale can look nothing like the index.
Listing data moves on its own schedule. Realtor.com counted 264 active listings in Blaine County in August 2026, with a median list price of $1.825 million, about 13% lower than a year earlier, and a median of 60 days on market (Realtor.com Residential Listings Database). The median list price sits well above the typical value and can swing a long way from one year to the next, depending on which homes happen to be listed that month. A drop in the median list price alongside rising values says more about the mix of listings than about the direction of prices. Our Blaine County market report updates all of these numbers monthly.
Ketchum and Sun Valley
These two are where the resort is, and they behave like a resort market. Most homes here are used part of the year, and most aren’t detached houses: in both towns, fewer than half of housing units are single-family detached homes, and roughly half are in buildings with two or more units (American Community Survey 2020–2024, table B25024, via Census Reporter). Condominiums and townhomes usually come with an association, and demand for rentals follows ski season and summer. If you’re buying at this end of the valley, the association documents deserve as much attention as the inspection, because they decide what you can do with the property when you’re not using it. That includes rentals, pets, exterior changes and how special assessments get approved.
Zillow doesn’t publish a rent index for Ketchum or Sun Valley, so there’s no reliable public number for long-term rents here. For a seasonal rental, the useful figures are the property’s own booking history and the association’s rules, and a seller who has rented the home should be able to show both.
Hailey and Bellevue
Hailey is the county seat and the valley’s airport town. About two-thirds of its homes are detached houses, most are occupied year-round, and it costs noticeably less than the north end while staying about a 12-mile drive from Ketchum. Bellevue, a few miles farther south, has the lowest typical value of the four towns.
The trade-off in both is distance from the resort, and for most buyers that’s a question of routine. Think about how often you’d be driving Highway 75 north, at what time of day, and in what weather. Zillow has only recently started publishing a rent index for Hailey (about $2,900 a month in August 2026) and has none for Bellevue, so rent estimates in the south valley need to come from actual leases.
Seasonal rentals after Idaho’s 2026 law
House Bill 583 was signed on March 16, 2026 and took effect July 1 (Idaho Legislature, H0583). It bars cities and counties from putting rules on short-term rentals that they don’t also put on long-term rentals, which means no short-term-rental-specific permit, license, registration or fee. Ketchum ran its own short-term rental program before the law and has had to scale it back (Idaho Mountain Express). Life-safety rules that apply to all housing, and ordinary noise and parking rules, still apply.
What the law doesn’t touch is private covenants. We covered this in detail for McCall in Idaho Deregulated Short-Term Rentals in McCall. Your HOA Never Got the Memo., and it matters at least as much in Ketchum and Sun Valley, where so much of the housing sits inside associations. If a declaration limits rentals to 30 days or longer, the state law doesn’t change that. Read the recorded CC&Rs and the association’s current rules before your offer, and ask the association in writing whether nightly or weekly rentals are allowed today.
Taxes are also separate from permits. The Idaho State Tax Commission lists Bellevue, Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley among the cities that collect local sales taxes, and some Idaho cities apply theirs to lodging (Idaho State Tax Commission, city sales taxes). The rates and what they cover differ by town, so confirm them with the city before you count on a rental budget.
Flying in and out
Friedman Memorial Airport sits about one nautical mile southeast of downtown Hailey and is run by an airport authority set up jointly by the City of Hailey and Blaine County (Wikipedia, Friedman Memorial Airport). It has commercial service to Salt Lake City and Seattle most of the year, with more routes added seasonally (Wikipedia, Hailey). Routes change from season to season, so check the airport’s current schedule before you plan around a particular flight.
Weather used to divert a fair number of winter flights. The airport authority says a newer instrument approach, in use since December 2020, has cut diversions sharply. When one does happen, Delta and United flights generally go to Twin Falls, about 75 miles south, and Alaska Airlines flights go to Boise (Friedman Memorial Airport, diversion services). If you’re buying a second home here and plan to fly in often, a Friday-night arrival in January is worth a backup plan.
Financing a second home
If the home won’t be your primary residence, lenders will ask how you plan to use it. A second home and an investment property are underwritten differently, and the difference shows up in down payment and rate. Fannie Mae’s occupancy rules explain how lenders tell them apart. Plans to rent the home out often enough can move it into the investment category, so talk to your lender about rental plans before you apply.
If you’re weighing a Wood River Valley purchase, our Blaine County market report has the current numbers for the county and each town, and the valuation tool will estimate what a home you already own there has done since you bought it. When you’re ready to look at specific properties, get in touch and we’ll start with the sales and the association documents.
