BAYFIELD – Across the West, mountain towns like Durango are in a moment of reckoning.
Towns that offer stunning surroundings, ample amenities and quaint atmospheres have a tendency to attract demographics, such as second-home owners and well-paid remote workers, that drive up home prices.
“I was trying to buy in 2021 and I just got outbid left and right,” said Jordan Burningham. “It was, like, totally unrealistic.”
As he spoke, Burningham reclined against a U-Haul truck loaded with belongings. He and his partner had just begun to move into their newly purchased home in Bayfield.
In Durango, the median per-square-foot listing price of residential property jumped from $222 in July 2016, to $464 last month, according to data compiled by Realtor.com.
That 109% increase far outpaced national trends.
Communities need people like Burningham, a trails manager for the National Forest, or Peter Dunn, a loan assistant at a local bank, or Katy Maxwell, a public health worker in Montezuma County.
“The prices are getting out of reach for these folks,” said Pam Moore.
And Moore would know. She has worked at the HomesFund for 13 years and recently took over as the organization’s executive director.
HomesFund operates a revolving loan fund, facilitates access to state mortgage assistance programs and conducts homebuyer education for potential buyers who fall in the below-certain-income thresholds.
The nonprofit’s mortgage assistance is generally accessible to anyone in Archuleta, Dolores, La Plata, Montezuma and San Juan counties who makes less than 100% of the area median income.
Burningham had been aware of the HomesFund back in 2021, when he took the homebuyer education class that provides an overview of the process and is required to qualify for any HomesFund-facilitated loans.
Now, three years later, he and Tarryn Dixon, his partner, have an 11-month old daughter. Their rent in downtown Durango was about to spike, from $1,550 per month to $2,150.
Dixon was surfing Zillow one day when she saw a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom deed-restricted home for sale in Bayfield.
The couple already had the HomesFund application forms printed out.
HomesFund staff members work closely with homebuyers to ensure that their budgeting skills and income will allow them to repay the loans.
“I really appreciated their help there,” said Dunn, the loan assistant who scored a deed-restricted townhome in Durango last August. “… If I buy something, they’re going to see it and I’m going to have to justify it.”
Dixon and Burningham qualified for loans based on an annual income that does not surpass the $70,720 benchmark of 80% AMI in La Plata County.
HomesFund offers two types of loans.
Buyers can take on a standard-type additional mortgage, to be paid off over a 30-year period with an interest rate 2.5% lower than that primary mortgage.
Dixon and Burningham decided to go the more popular route, with a shared appreciation mortgage.
Given a deed restriction on their home that caps its possible appreciation, there was little reason not to, they said.
HomesFund lent the couple about 30% of the total cost of their $307,000 home. As long as it remains the couple’s primary residence, that loan is due either in 30 years, or when they sell the home. HomesFund is also entitled to 30% of the home’s appreciation.
“It’s a revolving loan fund,” Moore said. “So one of the benefits is every time we get paid off, we get to help another family.”
The 30% down payment assistance was an aberration, Moore said, that HomesFund was able to afford thanks to an influx of pandemic-era funding. Down payment assistance in La Plata County is now capped at $58,700, or $108,700 for homes in the city of Durango.
“When we were doing these loans four years ago, we were giving $25,000, maybe $35,000, and that was enough,” Moore said. “And last year, the programs that we had, people could get up to 30%, which was up to $150,000, and that was the magic number to make things work.”
In the organization’s history, it has issued 222 loans from its revolving loan fund to 169 households, of which only two have defaulted.
Burningham and Dixon recognize the problem at hand, as well as their own privilege – even with the HomesFund’s help, they would not have been able to buy their house without help from family and some generational wealth.
When they do sell their home, the couple is unlikely to reap massive profits.
But they’re OK with that.
“We’re a part, to a degree, of the solution,” Burningham said.
Part of the problem facing communities such as Durango and Cortez is a lack of inventory, Moore said.
It took Maxwell, the public health worker, a year and a half to find a home.
She grew up in Mancos and moved back about three years ago. She began looking for a house in 2022.
“I had probably been working for 15 years and was tired of paying rent,” she said. “I knew buying a home was the next step.”
She was able to purchase her $260,000 home in Cortez last fall with a $70,000 shared appreciation loan from the HomesFund.
Maxwell said she walks into her home sometimes and doesn’t believe it’s hers.
“I didn’t think I’d ever be buying a home,” she said.
Being a homeowner has made her more invested in her community. She lives there, permanently, and wants to be an active contributor to the betterment of Cortez.
Moore said she sees a high level of collaboration among municipal and county governments and other area partners, all trying to increase the housing inventory available. That might be the key to keeping housing somewhat attainable in towns such as Durango and Cortez for the workers who keep those communities humming along.
Still, prices will continue to rise.
“I don’t know that it’s possible to stop that boulder,” Moore said. “But I think there are lots of really smart people at the table trying to figure out how to keep the boulder from coming down the hill so fast.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
