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Tag: Colorado Housing

New Study Finds Government Taxes and Fees Add Tens Of Thousands To Colorado Home Prices
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, Commentary, State

New Study Finds Government Taxes and Fees Add Tens Of Thousands To Colorado Home Prices

By Peter Lifari | Commentary, The Denver Gazette Colorado’s economic competitiveness is slipping, and housing affordability is one of the most important reasons why. Policymakers have more control over this than they might think.   A new report from the Common Sense Institute details tens of thousands of dollars in housing-construction costs created not by land or water scarcity, labor costs, materials costs, market conditions or interest rates — but by nothing more than policy.  Housing affordability is as much an economic development and competitiveness issue as it is a social one. That matters in a state tracking business establishment losses and domestic migration losses.  This is a relatively new development for Colorado. For years, the ...
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Colorado Homeownership Slips Further Out of Reach as Prices Outpace Incomes
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The Coloradoan, Approved, State

Colorado Homeownership Slips Further Out of Reach as Prices Outpace Incomes

By Nate Trela | The Coloradoan A new study on homeownership shows just how unaffordable buying a home is across the country, including two Colorado metro areas where homebuying is out of reach for most of their residents even if mortgage rates were set to 0%. The report using data .from Ziffy.ai, an AI-powered real estate investment platform, included the Boulder and Grand Junction areas among dozens of examples of markets where more than half of the homes are unaffordable for most households, even if mortgages did not require paying interest. The analysis defines affordability as when the total monthly housing costs — principal, interest, taxes and insurance — are no more than 30% of the median household income in a market. It based the mortgage calculations...
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Colorado teacher home loan program puts school fund money at risk in foreclosures
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado teacher home loan program puts school fund money at risk in foreclosures

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I wrote earlier in the week about Impact Development and taxpayer-subsidized mortgages. That newsletter is linked first below if you’re interested.I have an update of sorts to share. It’s not so much the program I outlined earlier, more a related program run out of Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA).The program is called the Schools to Home Program. The CHFA website for this program is linked second below. I’ll run through the details and a quick example here, but as I do, I do not want you to lose track of something.Hidden in all of the graphics and words are the following: public money is given out on loan to the people who are in the program, and they get generous terms on their loans that others woul...
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Inside the Golden Range project: How public land and taxpayer dollars shape affordable housing
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Inside the Golden Range project: How public land and taxpayer dollars shape affordable housing

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Seeing an “affordable housing” project from the inside. I wrote about a project to build so-called affordable housing on a weird little quadrangle of land up near Golden, the Golden Range project. The newsletter from March of this year is linked first below if you’d like to go review. After talking to their media person, I set a reminder to follow up later in this year to see about any new developments. The project was just in its infancy when I wrote about it before. If it was in its infancy in March, it’s now in its toddlerhood. We are still a long ways from the end, but I have some updates to share. As the title of this post suggests, this will be one of multiple updates on this project; its a great...
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Fewer Homes for Sale Fail to Spark Denver Housing Demand
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, Local

Fewer Homes for Sale Fail to Spark Denver Housing Demand

By: Tamara Chuang | The Colorado Sun More sellers are taking homes off the market to relist them later. Denver has one of the highest rates of relisted homes. As spring revved up for the start of the home-selling season in metro Denver, something seemed missing: There were fewer houses for sale compared with the prior spring. In April, the number of active listings for single-family homes fell 14.2% from April 2025. In May, it was off by 20.5%. And last month, active listings were down 21.1% or about 3,000 homes. Meanwhile, home sales have been subdued, with year-to-date sales in the Denver area up just 0.2% from last year. June’s median price was flat, up 1.6% in a year to $650,000. Less supply, apparently, has not resulted in ...
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Boulder prepares for Sundance as housing rules face a real-world test
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, Local

Boulder prepares for Sundance as housing rules face a real-world test

By Jon Caldara | Commentary, Complete Colorado There are few things more satisfying to watch than socialists getting mugged by reality. The Sundance Film Festival is invading my hometown of Boulder early next year. Sundance drew 85,000 attendees last year in Park City, Utah. Boulder’s hotel room inventory is about 2,900. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when Hollywood’s anti-capitalist elite collide with basic supply and demand, we’re about to find out. When things don’t go as planned, the planner-class doubles down on its religion: more planning. When restrictions, rules, permits and fees don’t produce the desired outcome, more restrictions, rules, permits and fees are needed. Sundance is an event for and by well-heeled, artsy, socialist elites. So, Boulder is perfe...
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Colorado grew on a wave. The wave is gone.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado grew on a wave. The wave is gone.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado crossed six million people in 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Headlines called it a milestone. What they didn't report is how the state got there, and what's left now that the wave behind the growth has receded. The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 population estimates, released across state, county and municipal data, include a breakdown most coverage did not examine. The growth wasn’t coming from where it used to From 2015 through 2019, Census Bureau historical data shows Colorado averaged roughly 50,000 net migrants a year. Most were Americans who had sized up their options and chose this state. Then it changed. In 2020, Colorado received a net 239 international migrants. By 2024 that figure...
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Frozen in place: How a 1997 tax law may be trapping Colorado’s senior homeowners
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Frozen in place: How a 1997 tax law may be trapping Colorado’s senior homeowners

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice A Centennial resident wrote to RMV earlier this year with a frustration he suspects many of his neighbors share — one shaped by decades spent in the same home. He has watched its value climb far beyond anything he imagined when he bought it. And now, as he weighs whether to downsize, he finds himself facing a tax bill on that appreciation — one shaped by a federal law whose core thresholds haven’t been updated in nearly 30 years. "This realized gain could be used for moving into a more manageable home, pay for necessary home care if needed, help pay for insurance, medical, dental, medicine expenses and keep their quality of life," he wrote. His concern is not an isolated one. It reflects a structural problem — one incr...
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After fire, a new rule: Why one Lakewood property can’t be rebuilt as before
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Lakewood Informer, Approved, Commentary, Local

After fire, a new rule: Why one Lakewood property can’t be rebuilt as before

By Lakewood Informer | Lakewood Informer Subtack When a Lakewood resident bought a burned-out single-family house to rehabilitate it, he had no idea Lakewood would say no. The house had been vacant and neglected, allowing homeless to move in and cause a fire. The result is an unusable, dangerous eyesore. But those considerations were not as important to Lakewood as changing the property to high-density. The new owner thought he would do the neighborhood a favor and fix it up. He had no desire to build high-density and no reason to think he could not replace one single-family home with another. Unfortunately for him, Lakewood has been eliminating single-family zoning for years. During the 2012 rezone, many properties were changed from single-family to multi-use without ...
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Federal audit finds housing benefits paid to 221 deceased recipients in Colorado
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New York Post, Approved, State

Federal audit finds housing benefits paid to 221 deceased recipients in Colorado

By Ryan King | New York Post The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is investigating whether Colorado providers helped nearly 3,000 people swindle taxpayer money from Uncle Sam, The Post has learned. The investigation comes after an internal HUD audit found that benefits were granted to 221 dead people, while another 87 were otherwise ineligible. The department also said that another 2,519 beneficiaries will need to undergo additional verification. “From deceased tenants to individuals receiving HUD housing benefits who were never supposed to, the Department has questions for HUD-supported housing providers in Colorado, and we expect prompt answers and enforcement action,” a HUD spokesperson told The Post. READ THE FULL STORY AT T...
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