Idahos Trophy Spillover Value Markets STR Market Report

Jul 24

13 min read

Updated: Aug 28

Idaho has two short-term rental markets that make their living in the shadow of a famous neighbor. In the Wood River Valley, Hailey and Bellevue sit a short drive down-canyon from Ketchum, Sun Valley, and Bald Mountain , one of the oldest and most storied ski resorts in North America. On the other side of the state, Victor and Driggs sit across Teton Pass from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, arguably the single most expensive trophy vacation-rental market in the country. Neither Wood River Valley nor Teton Valley is a secret. But both are still, relative to their famous neighbors, a value trade , and both just received the same unusually large regulatory tailwind on the same day.

This report treats Hailey/Bellevue and Victor/Driggs as a single strategic story: two Idaho valleys built onSun Valley spillover marketandJackson Hole spillover Idahodemand, both still dominated by independent and second-home owners rather than institutional property managers, and both now operating under one of the most permissive statewide short-term rental laws in the country. That combination , real trophy-adjacent demand, fragmented competition, and a state government that just took local STR restrictions off the table , is a narrow, dateable window. It will not stay open indefinitely.

The Trophy-Spillover Playbook: Two Valleys, One Strategy

"Spillover" markets exist because trophy destinations are supply-constrained and expensive, and guests who want the experience , the skiing, the mountain access, the scenery , but not the trophy-market price tag look one valley over. Hailey and Bellevue absorb guests priced out of Ketchum and Sun Valley proper while still delivering world-class skiing on Bald Mountain and Dollar Mountain, plus a full slate of summer mountain recreation: fishing the Big Wood River, mountain biking, hiking, and the Sun Valley music and arts season. Victor and Driggs do the same job for Jackson Hole, sitting on the Idaho side of the Tetons with direct access to Grand Targhee Resort's ski season and to Teton-facing hiking, rafting, and fishing in summer , at a fraction of what a comparable stay costs on the Jackson side of the pass.

Both valleys share a second, less obvious trait: neither has been fully professionalized. Unlike gateway markets where a handful of large management companies control the majority of premium inventory, Hailey, Bellevue, Victor, and Driggs still skew toward independent owners and second-home operators who self-manage or use small local managers. That fragmentation is exactly what makes both markets addressable for an operator with a strong direct-booking brand , there is real competitive room that does not exist in Ketchum or Jackson itself.

Wood River Valley: Hailey and Bellevue in Sun Valley's Shadow

The Market Today

The price gap between the Wood River Valley's downvalley towns and its trophy core is significant and measurable. In Ketchum, AirDNA puts the market at roughly 102 listings (AirROI Hailey as of 2026-07-31), a 48% occupancy rate, and an average daily rate near $651, with RevPAR leftover Lincoln City ADR we do not published market year. Sun Valley proper runs close behind at 351 listings, 47% occupancy, and an ADR near $635. Hailey, by contrast, is a materially cheaper booking: AirDNA-sourced data shows around 18 listings (AirROI Bellevue as of 2026-07-31) with an ADR closer to $342 and occupancy in the low-to-mid 40% range, though other STR analytics providers report Hailey ADR figures as high as $400-$455 with occupancy nearer 52% , a reminder that data providers diverge meaningfully at this market size, and operators should treat any single tool's number as directional rather than precise. Even at the higher end of that range, Hailey books at roughly half to two-thirds of Ketchum and Sun Valley's nightly rate, which is the entire spillover thesis in one statistic.

Bellevue, further downvalley and the smallest of the Wood River Valley's towns (population roughly 2,600), has essentially no dedicated short-term rental analytics coverage from the major data platforms , a genuine data gap reflecting the market's small size and immaturity rather than a research omission. Consistent with that read, Bellevue's own pre-HB 583 framework asked for little more than a standard business license, in line with Idaho's 2017 Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental Act, which already barred cities statewide from imposing STR-specific permit or registration requirements beyond a basic business license. That thinness is the opportunity: Bellevue guests are, by definition, price-driven and willing to drive a little further for the same mountain, which makes a well-positioned direct-booking property genuinely scarce in a way it no longer is in Ketchum.

What Was Regulating This Market (Now Preempted)

Prior to July 2026, Hailey and Ketchum ran two different playbooks, and both had real friction for hosts. Hailey's ordinance limited STR licenses to one unit per property with a primary-unit requirement, and barred non-owner-occupied accessory dwelling units and tiny homes on wheels from short-term rental use entirely , of Hailey's roughly 4,200 homes, only an estimated 80 were licensed for short-term use, though that figure is dated and should be read as directional rather than current. Ketchum was more permissive on paper , it allowed STRs in residential zones with a two-night minimum stay and a one-STR-per-parcel cap , but a May 2025 Idaho Supreme Court ruling (*Idaho Association of Realtors v. City of Lava Hot Springs*) exposed a real vulnerability in Ketchum's code: its Avalanche Zone District imposed a five-month seasonal rental ban that the court's reasoning suggested could constitute an illegal "practical effect" prohibition on STRs under Idaho's existing 2017 vacation-rental statute. Blaine County itself has no separate countywide STR ordinance and defers to individual city rules. All of this , the one-per-parcel caps, the ADU and tiny-home carve-outs, the licensing structures , is the backdrop HB 583 just rewrote.

Teton Valley: Victor and Driggs Across the Pass from Jackson Hole

The Market Today

The Jackson Hole comparison is even starker than the Sun Valley one. AirDNA data puts the Jackson, Wyoming market at roughly 397 listings (AirROI Driggs as of 2026-07-31), 56% occupancy, and an average daily rate near $907 , among the highest in the country, and Jackson Hole led the nation in summer 2026 booking share. Cross Teton Pass into Idaho and the picture changes completely: Driggs runs around 355 listings (AirROI Victor as of 2026-07-31) with a leftover occupancy we do not published market year as the year rate, an ADR near $331, and RevPAR around $180 , AirDNA scores the market 73/100 overall with an investability score of 86/100, reflecting strong underlying fundamentals. Victor is smaller but similarly priced, with occupancy near 59%, ADR around $361, and RevPAR near $213, with peak-month ADR reaching roughly $376. In plain terms, a Teton Valley, Idaho stay books at roughly a third to 40% of what the same trip costs on the Jackson side of the pass, for direct access to the same mountains and, via Grand Targhee, its own dedicated ski resort.

A 2020 countywide study , the most recent public inventory count available and now several years stale , found Teton County, Idaho had more than 800 short-term rentals in operation, representing roughly 14% of the county's total housing stock, with a substantial share operating fewer than 180 days a year, consistent with a second-home-owner-heavy base rather than a professionally managed one. Current active-listing counts from AirDNA (537 in Driggs alone) suggest that inventory has grown meaningfully since 2020, though a fresh countywide census was not available for this report.

What Was Regulating This Market (Now Preempted)

Teton Valley's pre-HB 583 framework was the most administratively heavy of the two valleys. Driggs required an annual short-term rental permit ($80 initial fee, $50 annual renewal), mandatory building safety inspections, and a local representative requirement, on top of an 8% local lodging tax. Victor required a separate business license specifically for STR operation under city ordinance, alongside its own room occupancy tax , 6% at the time, though Victor voters approved a ballot measure in November 2025 raising that rate to 8% and extending it through 2050. Teton County's unincorporated areas layered on STR-specific registration, parking standards, occupancy limits tied to septic capacity, and quiet-hours rules. Local reaction to preemption was split along predictable lines: Driggs Mayor August Christensen argued the state bill "tips the scales in favor of STR operators" and goes "too far," while Victor Mayor Will Frohlich, writing on behalf of the Resort City Coalition, pushed to preserve local regulatory authority. Both mayors lost that fight in the legislature.

HB 583: Idaho's Statewide Deregulation Tailwind

This is the headline, and it deserves to be stated plainly rather than buried in a regulatory footnote: Idaho Governor Brad Little signed House Bill 583 on March 16, 2026, and it took effect statewide on July 1, 2026, via an emergency clause. It passed the Idaho House 54-16 and the Senate 23-12. HB 583 is a sweeping state preemption law that reclassifies short-term rentals as a "nontransient residential use" for zoning and building-code purposes and bars cities and counties across Idaho , including Blaine County, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellevue, Teton County, Victor, and Driggs , from imposing

STR-specific rules beyond baseline safety equipment.

Specifically, HB 583 prohibits local governments from requiring: owner-occupancy mandates, caps on rental days or on the number/proximity of STRs, conditional-use permits or special permitting beyond what applies to other single-family homes, parking requirements beyond standard residential rules, mandatory structural upgrades, mandatory rental-activity reporting, and , critically , any license, fee, permit, certification, or registration specific to operating a short-term rental. Local governments retain the ability to enforce baseline safety equipment (smoke alarms in every sleeping area, a fire extinguisher and carbon monoxide detector on each floor, removable escape ladders for upper-level sleeping areas, and occupancy limits tied to International Building Code standards), and to apply general noise, parking, nuisance, and traffic ordinances , but only if those rules apply equally to all residential uses, not just STRs. On the tax side, HB 583 requires platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo to register with the Idaho State Tax Commission and collect and remit applicable state and local taxes, while barring local governments from imposing separate taxes or fees on STR marketplaces specifically. Existing local lodging taxes (Hailey's local option tax, and Driggs's and Victor's lodging taxes , both now 8%, after Driggs's rate rose to 8% effective January 1, 2026, and Victor voters approved raising theirs from 6% to 8% via a November 2025 ballot measure) are a tax question, not a permitting question, and were not the target of this bill.

Practically, this means the licensing structure that limited Hailey to roughly 80 STR-licensed homes, the ADU and tiny-home carve-outs, Ketchum's one-per-parcel cap and Avalanche Zone seasonal ban, Driggs's $80 annual permit and inspection regime, Victor's STR-specific business license, and Teton County's registration and septic-based occupancy rules are all now unenforceable as written. Cities can still act on genuine noise or nuisance complaints and can still require the safety equipment above , but the permitting and quota apparatus that shaped both valleys' STR markets for the last several years is gone.

Idaho is not alone in this direction, though the count of states moving this way is small and worth stating carefully. Indiana passed a comparable law, HEA 1210, signed March 12, 2026 , just four days before Idaho's bill , barring cities and counties from capping the number of residential rental properties, passing 91-3 in the House and 48-0 in the Senate, though it preserves more HOA authority over rentals than Idaho's law does.

Industry coverage has specifically grouped Idaho and Indiana together as the two states that have actually enacted STR deregulation in this legislative cycle, contrasted with states like Pennsylvania that are pursuing standardization instead , Pennsylvania's HB 2303, introduced March 19, 2026, would build a statewide registration and operator-tier system rather than remove local control, a related but distinct trend from what Idaho and Indiana did. Arizona and Ohio add a further wrinkle: both have preemption-style STR bills that were moving through their 2026 sessions, but neither had passed as of this writing , Arizona's version stalled without a floor vote before the legislature's March 12, 2026 adjournment, and Ohio's Senate Bill 104 remained in committee. So "only two states" holds as a count of states that have actually deregulated, even though the broader push has more than two states' worth of momentum behind it. That framing traces to a single industry analysis (AirROI) rather than an independent 50-state legislative review, so treat the "only two" framing as well-supported but not independently exhaustive.

The Shared Headwind: When the Value Trade Becomes Common Knowledge

Both valleys' advantage rests on the same fragile premise: that guests, and increasingly hosts, have not yet fully priced in the spillover discount. That is changing on both counts. On the guest side, Jackson Hole's own record-breaking 2026 booking numbers are pushing more price-sensitive travelers to search "near Jackson Hole" rather than "in Jackson Hole," and the same dynamic is visible around Sun Valley during peak ski weeks. On the host side, HB 583 itself removes one of the few frictions , Driggs's permit and inspection process, Hailey's licensing caps , that kept casual investors and out-of-state buyers from entering these markets at scale. Lower regulatory friction plus rising guest awareness is a combination that typically ends the same way in spillover markets nationally: active listing counts climb, national property-management brands move in behind the demand, and the ADR gap that made the market attractive in the first place starts to close. Neither Hailey/Bellevue nor Victor/Driggs is there yet , both are still measurably cheaper than their trophy neighbors and still dominated by independent owners , but the runway is not infinite, and the operators who build a real direct-booking brand now will be the ones still standing once management-company penetration rises.

What This Means for Independent Operators in Both Valleys

For an independent host in Hailey, Bellevue, Victor, or Driggs, July 2026 removes the compliance overhead that used to eat into both time and margin , no more chasing an annual Driggs permit renewal, no more navigating Hailey's ADU carve-outs, no more Teton County septic-based occupancy math. That is real operating leverage, and it should be redirected into the one thing HB 583 cannot regulate away: a distinct, well-optimized direct-booking presence that captures guests before they ever compare your listing to ten identical ones on Airbnb. In markets that are still fragmented and independent-owner-heavy, a strong brand and a fast, accurate listing strategy is worth more today than it will be in three years, once the value trade is fully priced in and professional management arrives at scale.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Idaho's HB 583 actually in effect now?

Yes. Governor Brad Little signed HB 583 on March 16, 2026, and it took effect statewide on July 1, 2026 because the bill carried an emergency clause. It applies to every Idaho city and county, including Blaine County, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellevue, Teton County, Victor, and Driggs.

What can Idaho cities and counties still regulate about short-term rentals?

Local governments can still require baseline safety equipment — smoke alarms in sleeping areas, a fire extinguisher and carbon monoxide detector per floor, removable escape ladders for upper-level sleeping rooms — and occupancy limits tied to building-code standards, and can enforce general noise, parking, nuisance, and traffic ordinances that apply equally to all residential properties.

What can Idaho cities and counties no longer do?

They can no longer require STR-specific licenses, permits, fees, certifications, or registrations; impose owner-occupancy mandates; cap the number of rental days or the number or proximity of STRs; require conditional-use permits beyond what applies to other homes; mandate extra parking or structural upgrades; or require mandatory rental-activity reporting.

Does HB 583 eliminate local lodging taxes in Hailey, Driggs, or Victor?

No. HB 583 addresses permitting and operational regulation, not taxation. Existing local lodging taxes remain in effect — Hailey's local option tax, and Driggs's and Victor's lodging taxes, both now 8% after separate rate increases in 2025 and 2026. The law does require booking platforms to register with the Idaho State Tax Commission for collection and remittance.

How does Hailey pricing compare to Ketchum and Sun Valley?

Ketchum and Sun Valley run average daily rates in the roughly $635-$651 range with occupancy in the high-40% range, per AirDNA. Hailey's ADR runs meaningfully lower — reported between roughly $342 and $455 depending on the data provider — putting Hailey at roughly half to two-thirds of the trophy core's nightly rate for guests still within a short drive of Bald Mountain.

How does Teton Valley, Idaho pricing compare to Jackson Hole?

Jackson, Wyoming runs an average daily rate near $907 with occupancy around 56%. Driggs and Victor, across Teton Pass, run ADRs closer to $331-$361 with occupancy in the high-50% range — roughly a third to 40% of Jackson's nightly rate for direct access to the Tetons and Grand Targhee Resort.

Is Idaho really one of only a couple of states deregulating short-term rentals?

Among states that have actually passed and signed comparable laws, yes — Idaho and Indiana (HEA 1210, signed March 12, 2026) are the two most often grouped together as active STR deregulation in this legislative cycle. Pennsylvania is pursuing statewide standardization rather than deregulation, and Arizona and Ohio each had preemption-style bills moving through 2026 sessions that hadn't passed as of this writing.

Are Hailey/Bellevue and Victor/Driggs still dominated by independent owners, or has professional management already moved in?

Both remain fragmented relative to their trophy neighbors. Hailey has limited dedicated STR analytics coverage and a historically small licensed base, and Bellevue has essentially no dedicated market data — a sign of thin professional inventory in both towns compared to Ketchum, Sun Valley, or Jackson Hole.

Why are Hailey/Bellevue and Victor/Driggs grouped together in this report?

Both are Idaho valleys built on spillover demand from famous, much pricier neighbors — Hailey and Bellevue from Sun Valley, Victor and Driggs from Jackson Hole across Teton Pass. Both remain dominated by independent and second-home owners rather than institutional property managers, and both now operate under one of the most permissive statewide short-term rental laws in the country.

What does HB 583's regulatory tailwind mean for independent operators in these valleys?

Both valleys are still measurably cheaper than their trophy neighbors and still dominated by independent owners, but that runway isn't infinite. The operators who build a real direct-booking brand now — rather than waiting — will be the ones still standing once management-company penetration in these markets rises.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Hailey/Bellevue and Victor/Driggs still get marketed as vague 'near Sun Valley' or 'near Jackson Hole' overflow, instead of the fragmented, independent-owner markets they actually are while that runway lasts.

We build direct-booking brands for independent Hailey/Bellevue and Victor/Driggs hosts while these valleys are still cheaper and less consolidated than their trophy neighbors. Start at crestcove.co/audit or call (256) 998-7502.

Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502.