Kirsten Molz always thought of herself as a beach person more than a mountain person. But when her family rented a house in Park City, Utah, at the beginning of the pandemic, she reconsidered.

“I always wanted an ocean house,” said Ms. Molz, 51, an interior designer who calls Pasadena, Calif., home. That wish changed when she and her husband escaped to Park City in June 2020 with two of their children, three family friends and three dogs.

“It was so beautiful here,” Ms. Molz said. “I sat outside, right over the mid-mountain trail, watching hikers go by, and I just had this feeling in my heart that I could live here.”

When she told her husband, “he called an agent within five minutes,” Ms. Molz said.They dreamed of building a house that could serve as a vacation home for now and perhaps a retirement home in the future, as well as a place that their grown children — Emma, 28, Charlie, 26 and Ollie, 20 — would want to visit regularly.