Picture two listings sitting side by side in Big Sky Mountain Village. Same square footage, same ski-in access, same walk to the lifts. One is in the Shoshone Condominium Hotel. The other is in a building like Big Horn or Beaverhead, a few hundred yards down the path. The listing sheets look nearly interchangeable. The rental income they'll actually produce over the next five years does not have to be.
That gap is not about finishes or view corridors. It comes from a legal structure buried in the condo declaration, one that just went through federal court and came out changed in ways that matter to anyone buying into a Mountain Village rental program this year.
Three Buildings, One Contract Clause
Shoshone, the Summit Hotel, and the Village Center Condominium are condo-hotels: buildings where a portion of the rooms were converted into individually owned units, then sold, while remaining part of a public rental inventory. Owners get to use their unit for vacations and collect a share of what it earns the rest of the year. It's a structure built for exactly the kind of second-home buyer who wants ski access without managing a rental calendar.
What made these three buildings different from a conventional Mountain Village condo was the fine print. When owners bought in, they signed an agreement requiring them to use Boyne's rental management program exclusively and to pay Boyne 50% of net rental revenue for the service. Not a choice. A condition of ownership.
How That Clause Ended Up in Federal Court
A group of owners in the three buildings sued Boyne USA and related entities in the U.S. District Court in Butte, filing the case on December 30, 2021. The named plaintiffs, Larry Anderson as trustee for the Lawrence T. Anderson and Suzanne M. Anderson Joint Revocable Living Trust, along with Robert and Nora Erhart and Tjarda Clagett, argued that tying mandatory management to ownership violated state and federal law.
Their complaint laid out specifics: the 50% fee ran well above the 25 to 30 percent that other Big Sky rental managers charge for comparable service. Owners were also on the hook for maintenance and repair costs, weren't receiving monthly statements showing where their rental income actually went, and had to make their units available for up to five nights a year at no charge for Boyne's business partners.
The case was headed to trial on March 10, 2025. Two weeks before that date, Chief District Judge Brian Morris approved a preliminary settlement instead.
"Exclusivity is unenforceable as written under Montana law as construed by the court."
That line, from the settlement agreement itself, is the part worth sitting with. It didn't say the 50% fee was illegal. It said the requirement to use Boyne exclusively couldn't be enforced as written.
What the Money Actually Buys
Boyne put $18.79 million into a settlement fund by April 1, 2025, to be split among roughly 377 class members using a formula tied to how long each owner had participated in the program. Attorney Ben Alke told Montana Free Press that payouts would vary widely, with some owners expecting tens of thousands of dollars.
Separately, Boyne agreed to pay $6.2 million directly to the three homeowners associations, split into two equal installments. The first landed on April 1, 2026, a few months before this was written. The second is due April 1, 2027. Per installment, the Shoshone Homeowners Association receives $743,756, the Summit Homeowners Association receives $845,534, and the Village Center Homeowners Association receives $477,570, with the remainder covering attorney fees. That money is earmarked for capital improvements to common areas and building operations, not owner payouts.
Here's the part that changes how a buyer should read a listing in one of these three buildings today: the settlement didn't touch the 50% number. Big Sky Resort's own current property management terms for Mountain Village owners still describe a 50/50 split on rental revenue after credit card and travel agent fees, with no monthly fee and an Owner Participation Program that increases the split for owners who make their units available more often. That structure is the resort-wide default, not something unique to the litigated buildings. What changed for Shoshone, Summit, and Village Center is that their HOAs are no longer contractually cornered into that arrangement. Whether any of them use that new leverage to negotiate better terms, bring in a competing manager, or simply keep things as they are is a decision still playing out building by building.
The Detail That Doesn't Show Up on the Listing Sheet
Here's where it gets specific in a way that actually matters to an offer. Shoshone Condominium Hotel has 94 total units, but only 56 of them are managed by Big Sky Resort and bookable through Central Reservations. The rest are rented independently through third-party platforms, and those units don't carry access to the full slate of resort amenities that come with a managed unit.
That means two units in the same building, on paper nearly identical, can sit on completely different sides of this whole conversation. One might be generating rental income under the 50/50 program with resort amenity access baked in. The other might be self-managed with a different cost structure and a different guest experience entirely. A buyer who only asks "is this building part of the rental program" and stops there is missing the actual question, which is whether this specific unit is in the pool.
Questions Worth Asking Before You Write an Offer
- Is this specific unit currently enrolled in the resort's managed rental program, or is it independently rented through a third party?
- Can the seller or HOA provide actual net rental statements for the past two to three years, not just projected gross figures?
- Has the HOA discussed using its settlement payment, and does the timeline show anything beyond the April 2026 installment already received?
- Has the HOA explored bringing in an outside management company now that exclusivity can't be enforced, or is the building continuing with Boyne under the existing terms?
- What does the FF&E reserve look like, and when is furniture and finish replacement scheduled given how heavily a rental unit gets used?
- Has the complimentary-use requirement for business partners been enforced recently, and if so, how many nights and which season?
None of these questions require a lawyer to ask. They require someone who knows this settlement happened and knows what it did and didn't change, which is exactly the gap between a listing description and an actual five-year income picture.
A Few Questions I Hear Often
Is every condo in Big Sky Mountain Village affected by this settlement? No. The settlement applies specifically to Shoshone Condominium Hotel, Summit Hotel, and Village Center Condominium, the three buildings named in the lawsuit. Other Mountain Village condos operate under Boyne's general property management terms, which were not part of the litigation.
Does the settlement mean the rental fee is going down? Not automatically. The settlement removed the requirement that owners in these three buildings use Boyne exclusively. It didn't set a new fee. The 50/50 split remains Boyne's stated default across its Mountain Village program as of this writing.
What's the practical difference between a condo-hotel and a regular condo here? A condo-hotel like Shoshone sells individual units but keeps them inside a hotel operation with a rental program built into the ownership structure. A conventional condo gives you more control over whether to rent at all, and if so, who manages it.
If you're weighing a condo-hotel purchase against a conventional condo in Mountain Village, the numbers on the listing sheet are the easy part. The harder part is reading the building's governing documents and HOA minutes closely enough to know which side of these questions your specific unit falls on. That's the work I do with every buyer before an offer goes in, not after. If you're comparing options in Big Sky right now, reach out to Callie Pecunies for a personalized market valuation or a curated look at what's actually available across Mountain Village's rental-program buildings.
