Part I: Vacationland becomes home
In the last week of March, you could stand in the middle of one of Chaffee County’s main streets or in the middle of U.S. 285 for that matter, and it was like a B movie you saw as a kid: Where did all the people go?
A month prior, the coronavirus known as COVID-19 was just emerging from the realms of small talk. And then Colorado, along with the rest of the U.S., hit the pause button, putting “normal” in the rearview mirror.
Fast forward ten months. Where did the people go? They may perhaps be in the midst of moving to what is being called “Zoom towns.”
The aforementioned people went to Kingston, N.Y. They went to Idaho and Show Low, Arizona – small, rural-ish places that felt safe and roomy – as long as they could get the requisite bandwidth and workspace for their new lives. In Colorado, Aspen became the place that seemed to get the most mention as the destination of people fleeing the cities sought rural refuge. In Aspen, nobility equated to mobility. Breckenridge rose into that mix, and Sterling, an outlier in more ways than one, received a No. 9 mention in Insurify’s list of top-20 places in the U.S. for home-sale upticks during COVID-19.
In Chaffee County, people have been investing in numbers that have officials wondering how the so-called Zoom-town migration is going to play out; in housing, schools, and the county’s social and visual textures. This county is still a vacation getaway, but it appears that increasingly it’s becoming a 24-7-365 home, with that trajectory only hastened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It should be noted that, according to recent studies, America’s cities aren’t necessarily seeing a large-scale exodus due to COVID-19 and the challenges it presents. Despite the fact that New York City saw 81,000 mail-forwarding requests in April, which is twice the normal amount, many people leaving large cities are moving to other cities such as Seattle, Chicago, Austin, Atlanta, and Denver. But even a small drift from urban areas can have a large impact on small towns and rural areas such as Salida, Poncha Springs, and Buena Vista.
CentervilleRanch looking toward Browns Canyon. Photo courtesy of Central Colorado Conservancy.
The interest in the small and rural is also playing out in new places like Centerville Ranch. In 2019 the proposed development saw considerable pushback from the Chaffee County community, which fought the density and location of homesites proposed for the 940-acre ranch space on the east flank of U.S. 285’s scenic byway.
In response, developer Jeff Ince worked with Central Colorado Conservancy to place 650 acres into a conservation easement, and he scaled back the number of homesites, many of which are in the piñons east of the fought-over meadows.
Since that time, the ranch has installed roads, utilities, and homesites. Ince says the first phase started closings in August. As a nod to the current dash for homes and the space to build them, almost half of those 62 sites are now sold or under contract.
“It exceeds the highest end of my estimates,” says Ince, who plans to take Centerville’s second phase before the county commissioners in November.
He says a lot of buyers want to be here year-round. “Don’t get me wrong,” he says, “second home buying is still a thing. It’s just not at the forefront anymore. This new wave is really driven by full-time residents.”
Buyers tend to hail from the Front Range, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. Ince says the development is also seeing a number of people who already reside in Chaffee County.
Many of the lots in the new Broadview development come with striking views. Photo by Jan Wondra.
Ince is also the developer for the Broadview homesites in the Chalk Creek area. Looking at both projects, he says that while retirees used to account for a large percentage of buyers, “now they run the whole gamut – from late ’20s into retirement.” They are seeing young couples with children buying property as well as single people deciding to make the investment.
Realtors and developers will tell you that the quality of internet service is paramount to the new wave of residents being able to survive here. “It’s all about that bandwidth and being able to work at home,” Ince says. “An office in the city is no longer an anchor for them.”
One of the pandemic’s oft-discussed outcomes is the dissolution of the traditional office. Workers were ordered to stay at home and plunk away on their laptops in lieu of making office work a superspreader event. And while some companies have brought, or are planning to bring their workers back to their desks, many workers are saying “not so fast”! A recent study by real-estate aggregator Zillow found that 56 percent of employed Americans who have been working at home during the pandemic would prefer to keep working from home when it subsides.
So it makes sense for people, armed with good, flexible jobs and Zoom accounts, to relinquish their big-city digs and move to quieter places that offer more space for the dollar. Granted, many of these places are seeing notable spikes in housing prices, but it still costs a lot less, for example, to live in Truckee, California, instead of San Francisco, which is three hours away.
It should be noted that Truckee is seeing a 23 percent spike in home prices. Nationally, home prices hit a record increase in July, buoyed by low interest rates and low inventory in many places.
The pace of sales is swift. Chuck Azzopardi, a broker associate with Colorado Mountain Realty, says the pandemic hasn’t necessarily created a new interest in Chaffee County, but it has accelerated whatever time frames people may have had in mind.
“We are seeing people make decisions more quickly and more aggressively,” he says. “Where it used to take months or even years, now they are willing to make those decisions in weeks.”
And he says the time between listing a property and going under contract can be extremely fast. For example, he recently listed a Mesa Antero property on a Friday and had multiple solid offers by Saturday. He says it’s not uncommon to see multiple offers and buyers willing to go above asking price.
Like Ince, Azzopardi is seeing a mix of age ranges among buyers, and “A good internet connection is pretty much a requirement for all buyers.”
He says he’s seeing an increase in those wanting high-end properties – those selling for $800,000 or more. But he notes that buyers who live in Breckenridge or the Front Range, for example, can often buy a nice home here, sell the previous home quickly and “actually feel that they are getting a better home – while putting money back into their pockets.”
Azzopardi says people’s decisions to make the move can run pretty deeply. Asked if that is that a result of the introspection so many people claim to have had as a result of the pandemic, Azzopardi was circumspect.
“It’s not always explicit,” he says. “But the feeling I’m getting is people are just taking a hard look at their lives, and the decisions they make about the quality of their lives. They want a feeling of safety and security, but also of community. They’re tired of the rat race.”
Part II will examine the impacts of COVID-19 as Chaffee County girds for faster than anticipated growth.
Featured image: The Ranch at Centerville has seen nearly half its Phase I lots sold or under contract at a rapid pace.
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