The document that matters most to a Spanish Peaks buyer is not the listing sheet. It is a one-page dues schedule that the club updates every so often, dated in the corner, easy to miss if you only ask your lender about the purchase price. Two versions of that schedule now exist far enough apart to compare, one dated December 18, 2023 and one dated December 1, 2025. Set them side by side and the story changes. Home prices in Spanish Peaks have moved the way resort real estate tends to move, up in some years, flatter in others. The club's own numbers have not been nearly so patient.
Two Schedules, Two Years, One Number That Moved
Under the December 18, 2023 schedule, a Signature Golf membership at Spanish Peaks Mountain Club required a $200,000 deposit and $24,000 in annual family dues. Social membership, the tier without unlimited golf, carried a $100,000 deposit and $17,000 in annual dues. Every owner, regardless of club tier, also pays into the Spanish Peaks Owners Association, which that same schedule set at $3,250 a year.
By December 1, 2025, the deposit for Signature Golf had climbed to $300,000, with annual dues at $30,000. Social membership's deposit rose to $150,000, with dues at $23,000. SPOA dues, the fee that runs with every property regardless of which club tier an owner chooses, moved more modestly, to $3,750.
| Membership Category | Dec. 18, 2023 Deposit | Dec. 18, 2023 Annual Dues | Dec. 1, 2025 Deposit | Dec. 1, 2025 Annual Dues |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Signature Golf | $200,000 | $24,000 | $300,000 | $30,000 |
| Social | $100,000 | $17,000 | $150,000 | $23,000 |
| SPOA (all owners) | — | $3,250 | — | $3,750 |
Look at where the growth concentrated. The Owners Association fee, the piece every owner pays no matter what, rose about 15 percent. The club deposits, the piece a buyer chooses to take on, rose 50 percent in both categories. Annual club dues rose 25 to 35 percent depending on tier. The mandatory, structural cost barely moved. The discretionary, lifestyle-tied cost moved fast.
That split matters for how you read a Spanish Peaks listing. A home's price on the MLS reflects the real estate market. It says nothing about what the club will ask you to pay to actually use the ski-in access, the Tom Weiskopf golf course, or the Montage Big Sky privileges that make the address worth the address.
This Isn't the First Time the Club Has Done This
The pattern has precedent, and it goes back further than two years. The private club now known as Spanish Peaks Mountain Club has been through a full ownership change before, and the transition offers a useful data point on how this club recalibrates its buy-in when circumstances shift.
In 2011, the club's former owners filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. CrossHarbor Capital Partners and Boyne Resorts closed on the purchase of the club's assets the following July, and by that September the new ownership group had circulated the first membership terms under its control. According to Explore Big Sky's reporting at the time, the prior dues structure had been $8,000 a year for golf and ski homeowners and $5,500 for social members. The new terms set dues at $9,500 and $6,500 respectively, with new property-owning golf and ski members paying a $40,000 deposit and new social members paying $20,000. Existing members were grandfathered in without paying to rejoin, a detail that mattered enormously to the roughly 200 members represented by an ad hoc committee chaired by John Romney at the time.
Put that $40,000 golf and ski deposit from 2012 next to the $200,000 Signature Golf deposit on the books by December 2023, and then next to the $300,000 figure by December 2025, and you get a longer arc than a single two-year jump. The club's buy-in has been on a sustained climb across more than a decade of ownership under CrossHarbor and Boyne, not a one-time adjustment tied to a single market moment. A buyer weighing a Spanish Peaks purchase today is stepping into a club that has a track record of resetting its own price of entry well ahead of, or independent from, what the surrounding real estate is doing.
Two Members, Two Bills, and a Third Line Nobody Bundles In
Spanish Peaks currently structures membership into two categories. Social membership includes the private clubhouse with its dining room and bar, the year-round heated pool and hot tubs, fitness center, tennis and pickleball courts, the trail network for hiking and mountain biking, and access to Montage Big Sky's restaurants, spa, and bowling alley. Golf access under Social membership is limited and comes with a per-use fee. Signature Golf membership includes everything in Social plus unlimited golf for the member and immediate family on the Tom Weiskopf Signature Course and the shorter Tom's 10 Par 3 Course, with no greens fees, along with reciprocity at The Reserve Golf Course at Moonlight Basin.
The choice between those two tiers is a real decision with a real dollar gap attached, and that gap has widened along with everything else. What buyers sometimes miss is the third line: the Spanish Peaks Owners Association dues apply on top of whichever club tier you select. It is easy to see a club deposit and dues figure quoted somewhere and assume that number is the whole picture. The SPOA fee is a separate, mandatory line that every property in the community carries, independent of club membership choice, and it is the one part of the cost structure that has grown at something closer to a normal pace.
Why the Listing Sheet Won't Show You Any of This
The reason none of this surfaces in a standard property search comes down to how the two obligations are structured. Spanish Peaks Owners Association dues function like a conventional homeowners association fee. They are tied to the property, they run with the land, and a buyer inherits them automatically at closing the same way they would inherit any recorded covenant.
Club membership does not work that way. Because it is a contractual relationship with the club rather than an obligation recorded against the land, a Signature Golf or Social membership does not necessarily transfer to a new owner automatically. Depending on the property and the timing of the sale, a buyer may need separate approval, may face a new initiation deposit at whatever rate is current when they close, or may find that a membership category is tied to a waitlist rather than guaranteed. Spanish Peaks' own real estate materials note that owning a home does not, by itself, grant access to the golf course. The membership tier attached to a specific property is what determines that, and it is worth confirming in writing before you are under contract rather than assuming it based on what the seller currently enjoys.
This is the mechanism that a list-price comparison cannot capture. Two homes at the same price point in Spanish Peaks can carry two very different club situations depending on which membership conveys, whether that membership needs to be reestablished at the current deposit rate, and what the annual dues will look like the year you actually close.
What This Means If You're Comparing Big Sky's Private Communities
If you are weighing Spanish Peaks against other resort communities in Big Sky, the home's price is only the first number on the page. The one that will shape your actual carrying cost, and your resale math down the line, is the club's own trajectory. A few questions are worth asking before you write an offer:
- Does the club membership attached to this specific property convey automatically, or does it require reapplication and a new deposit at the current rate?
- Which tier, Social or Signature Golf, is actually attached, and does that match how you intend to use the property?
- What do the Spanish Peaks Owners Association dues run currently, separate from whatever the club quotes?
- Has the seller confirmed the current dues schedule directly with the club, rather than relying on a figure that may already be outdated?
None of these questions will appear on a standard property disclosure. They are the kind of detail that only surfaces when someone who has watched this specific club's history walks the number down with you before you sign anything.
Spanish Peaks remains one of Big Sky's most established private communities for the buyer who wants ski-in access, a Tom Weiskopf golf course, and the Montage Big Sky relationship in one address. The lifestyle case for it hasn't changed. What has changed, twice now in documented fashion, is what the club charges to actually use it. Understanding that difference before you make an offer is the whole point of working with someone who tracks these numbers as closely as the real estate itself.
If you're weighing a purchase in Spanish Peaks or anywhere else in Big Sky's private-club communities, Sandy Revisky De Leon can walk you through the current club figures, what conveys with a specific property, and how the numbers stack against the rest of the market before you write an offer. Let's Get Started.
