Housing Solutions in Summit County with Brandon Howes

🎙️ Episode Summary: Housing Solutions in Summit County with Brandon Howes

In this episode of Mountain Real Estate, host Candice De sits down with Brandon Howes, Interim Co-Housing Director for Summit County, Colorado. Together, they dive into the innovative and evolving strategies the county is using to tackle workforce housing challenges in the high country.

From the success of the Housing Helps program—which provides down payment support in exchange for light deed restrictions—to discussions about ADUs, property tax rebates, and the long-awaited Lake Hill development, this episode is packed with valuable insights for both locals and second-home owners.

Brandon shares what’s working, what’s still in progress, and where he sees the county’s housing efforts headed in the next five to twenty years.

🏡 Whether you're a buyer, homeowner, or community advocate, this is a must-listen episode for anyone curious about how Summit County is addressing one of its biggest challenges.

Summit Combined Housing Authority: https://www.summithousing.us/

🔗 Listen now and check the show notes for links to housing resources!

#MountainRealEstate #SummitCountyHousing #WorkforceHousing #ColoradoRealEstate #AffordableHousing #ADUs #LakeHill #FriscoCO #BreckenridgeRealEstate

Transcript

Welcome to Mountain Real Estate, where we bring you the latest insights on real estate from Denver to Summit County, Colorado. I'm your host, Candice De, a realtor, investor, engineer, mom, and Colorado native.  

Today we have Brandon Howes, who is the interim co-housing director of Summit County, Colorado. Did I get your title right? 

You did, yes, that's correct.

All right, well, thanks for being here, Brandon. 

Yeah, happy to be here. 

Why don't we just start with you telling us a little bit about yourself? 

Sure.  I have lived in Summit County about seven years now. Prior to that, I was in Denver for about eight years and I am from Florida, was there before Denver. Since I moved to Summit County about seven years ago, I worked for a private consulting firm doing land planning for about a year. And then I went over to the County and started working in housing and it's a unique position and not many other jurisdictions around the country really are as focused on housing as Summit County and some of the other mountain resort communities.  Because the housing is so expensive in Summit County and these other mountain resort communities we've created different housing programs and projects. And so that's really what I work on. And it's really interesting. I get to work on something different every day. So I'm happy to talk about that more.  

And I know Brandon through our families and our kids. And he was one of the first friends that helped when I was on a board. And so I was like he's nice, I want to be his friend. And then we went on bike rides and I'm used to biking with my husband who does not stop and let me take water breaks. And I went on a bike ride with Brandon and he stopped and he not only let me get water, but also like actually catch my breath. And I was like, oh man, this guy's wonderful.  So yes, our families are good friends, but Brandon also has a lot of insight into the public sector of real estate. We talk a little bit about the my side of real estate and the realtor business and some of our clients and how people are using housing in the mountains. But I think today we're going to shift a little bit, like Brandon said, to talk about what the County is doing because the County has been very progressive in trying to address some of our housing challenges. So why don't you tell us what brought you to this job? You touched a little bit that you were the private sector before and then what keeps you excited  coming to work these days? 

Sure. To be completely honest with you, I came to this job, not really knowing what to expect. I had never worked on housing. I do have a degree in master's degree in urban planning  and also a law degree,  but I never worked on housing at all. Housing is kind of a subset of urban planning and it is pretty specialized. And so I just went in with an open mind and really found that I really enjoy it. What I most enjoy about it is I get to work on something new every day. We are not only developers of deed restricted workforce housing, but we're also  coming up with and really doing cutting edge things when it comes to programs.  One of those programs, for example, is our housing helps program. We have an ADU assistance program. We have ADU stock plans. We previously had at least a locals program.  We're looking at potentially rolling out a property tax rebate people that are long-term running. So there's a lot of different things that we do that are pretty unique and pretty cutting edge. Yeah.

And I've heard of  most of those. I think there's some new ones coming, but I definitely  appreciate that the county recognizes housing as an important barrier for a lot of other programs within government. And so they've definitely put a focus on it. What would you say are the initiatives that have been the most successful? 

I think by far and away, our housing helps program has been the most successful. To give a little background on that program, the County back in 2019 started the program with the town of Breckenridge. So basically, the program started with both buyers and existing owners, and we will give you up to 15 % of your property value, max of $150,000, so up to a million dollar home to put a deed restriction light on your property. And what that means is you are essentially saying, I am a local who works, or someone in this house is a local who works full-time in Summit County, an average of 30 hours a week or more. And it's required to do that through the life of the time you've owned the property and then it stays with the property going forward. So for the county, we came up with that essentially 10 to 15 % that we will pay you for that deed restriction because we have projected  that will reduce the market value of the home by 10 to 15%. Now in practice, the program's only been around a few years so we don't have a ton of resale data, but of the resale data we've seen, the people that put their  housing helps due to restrictions on at the beginning,  their homes have not actually decreased in value very much at all. So we feel like it's a pretty good program. A lot of people have actually had their home prices significantly increase. Now, part of that is due to just the value of homes in general in Summit County have increased and maybe they could have sold it for a little bit more, you know, without the deed restriction. So it's really hard to project what that would be, but we feel that's been very successful. We have over a hundred properties that have the housing helps deed restrictions. We have expanded the program. So not only do we partner with the town of Breckenridge, we now also have partnerships with the town of Frisco, the town of Silverthorn and the town of Dillon. And so pretty much anywhere in Summit County that you were looking to purchase a property. We had to scale it back. We were having so much demand from existing owners that we had to kind of scale the program back. So now it's only available to buyers who are looking to purchase a home. And so at that closing, you can essentially use the money as a down payment. So up to about $150,000 or 15 % of your property value. And it's proven to be extremely successful.  And with those partnerships, our money has been able to go a lot farther. We have had $3 million budgeted for the program for the last several years, including this year, and we are  hitting that budget.  just, it's been pretty consistent.  we're right about that $3 million number for the last few years that the county has been contributing to the program. 

That's awesome. And if you're at a hundred total, that's money well spent because getting more homes. That kind of turnover with new builds or other kind of construction would be really challenging for that. 

Absolutely. I mean, the dollar for the county stretches a lot farther. And we look at it from, you know, some of our incentives that we are paying when we're developing new workforce housing are multiple hundred thousand dollars. You're looking at three to five hundred thousand dollars per unit. And if we're able to get it for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars or in many cases less, that's a huge win for the county because we're preserving our local workforce housing in the community that's already been built. 

That's awesome. So to summarize, the Housing Helps program offers an incentive from the county  and  you put a light deed restriction. So there's no AMI cap, there's no appreciation cap. It's just ensuring that somebody who lives in the property works in the county 30 hours or more per week. 

That's actually correct. 

Okay. That's interesting because I know sometimes when I hear about  the programs, I hear your language of light deed restriction, but I don't always understand the intricacies between them. So it's good to clarify because sometimes I hear deed restriction and I'm like, oh, appreciation cap. Like that's not good for certain buyers. 

Yeah. That was part of the success of the program. And we've actually based, we were not the first in the country to do this program. Vail was the initial  entity that started it. They have a program called Vail Indeed, but we modeled our housing helps program off of that. Although I think ours is actually much more successful than theirs,  likely due to the fact that our property values are just slightly lower than theirs, so they just can't. People are less likely to be willing to put a deed or shit on it and they can't afford to really, the town can't afford to spend that much money. 

So. Right. When you say slightly less, I think it's more than slightly. Hopefully we stay under Vail prices.  All right. So that leads to my next question. So you talked a little bit about your modeling this after Vail. I know you guys did the Least to Locals program, which had been done in other places. Have you guys seen other places that are trying things that you want to try that you wish we could try? 

So we're constantly looking for new ideas, new programs, which is it's great to be in that environment.  We, you know,  there's not a lot of programs out there that we've seen in other places that are very successful that we want to try. A couple of things we are looking at doing right now is last year the legislature passed a bill that allows for counties to do a property tax rebate or a  property tax rebate for certain things. And one of those things could be workforce housing. And so right now Summit County is studying the language of the bill and trying to figure out whether that would be something we want to pursue or not. It's not a simple, straightforward answer because the way the bill is written, you can only rebate the Summit County portion of your property taxes. So that really only makes it about a third of your property tax bill.  So looking at it, it ends up not really being that much money, but we're going to go to the board of our County commissioners and discuss it with them more probably in the next few months and see what they think about it.  I would mention, I’d love to see this happen, but I know we're not allowed to. In some jurisdictions, they have a real estate transfer tax. For example, the Town of Breckenridge. We are not allowed to have a real estate transfer tax due to a 1992 law in Colorado called Tabor, because you had to have the real estate transfer tax prior to Tabor going into effect. You know, while obviously from a real estate side, nobody wants to transfer tax, it does generate a lot of funds for workforce housing in the town of Breckenridge. We unfortunately do not have the same budget that the town of Breckenridge does for workforce housing because of that. 

Oh, that's interesting. I didn't realize that Tabor applied because it wasn't already a tax prior to Tabor. 

Only a handful of communities in Colorado that have the transfer tax because they were in place before Tabor. 

Okay. Interesting. Cause it does, it generates a lot of income. I mean, I work with a of clients that it's part of the overall transaction. No one likes it, but  it's when a lot of money is being exchanged, it doesn't feel as  much of a hit as like your annual property taxes or something you see throughout  the life of your ownership. 

Sure. And it's only a 1 % tax in the of Breck. I don't know what it is in other places,  Yeah, it varies, but 1 to 2 % is what we see. One percent is  more common. 

All right. So switching gears a little bit, what advice would you give somebody  either in Summit County or looking to move to Summit County that's looking for housing and feeling  overwhelmed when they open Zillow? 

Sure. It is challenging. I would highly recommend they look at the Summit Combined Housing Authorities website.  And the Summit Combined Housing Authority is an entity that represents not only the unincorporated Summit County government that I worked for, but also the town of Breckenridge, town of Silverthorne, town of Frisco, town of Dillon.  And they essentially are, they're governed by a board. They have an executive director and they have staff and they are kind of the clearinghouse for all of the differentiated property sales in Summit County. So if you're looking to buy something,  they consistently have listings on their website.  This is a property that's coming up for sale. These are the requirements around this particular deed restriction. Unfortunately, virtually every deed restriction property in Summit County has a different deed restriction, which makes it very confusing and complicated.  But the housing authority can help you navigate the differences, the different deed restrictions. They'll have the property advertised. They'll have the main primary points in the deed restriction. Then if you have questions, you can reach out to them or you can reach out to the actual jurisdiction. One thing that's a little bit funny is at the end of the day, the housing authority does not have the power to enforce the deed restriction. So it comes back to the individual jurisdictions to make the final interpretation of the deed restriction language, because it's the individual jurisdictions that will be enforcing it if there's a violation. So I would start off with going to that website, is  www.summithousing.us. They have, not only do they have for sale properties, they also have resources for renters. So that means different rental properties that you can apply for if you're a local worker. They also have other programs such as a first time buyer's class, and they have a lot of resources on the website,  and more tenant issues, things like that. So definitely check it out. 

Okay. And I'll put a link in the show notes as well. I have a follow-on question to that. Sure. So  I know that there's been a lot of building in Breck and Summit County has done some, and Silverthorne did some  recent building. I think most of them are rental, like for rent units, and then some are for sale units. What are you seeing as far as how those projects have been going? Are they getting filled up? How does the AMI factor play into that, which is a whole can of worms that we don't need to go down, but are we seeing that  these new projects are serving our workforce like we intended?  

Sure. So about every five years, the Summit Combined Housing Authority does what's called a housing needs assessment. And so that is a report. They typically hire a third party consultant that goes out in the community to surveys and research and determines whatever housing needs.  That looks at not only the total number of units, but the total number of rental units, total number of for sale units. So probably about  seven years ago or so, you know, we always have a lot of needs in our community for housing, always multiple thousand units short based on not only our existing long-term renters that wanted to get in to buy something. We have a lot of in-commuters that are coming into Summit County from other places that would really prefer to buy something in Summit County, but can't afford it. So we have this demand study that really helps inform  what we should be building. Now it's never perfect, and it's really a snapshot in time.  So we had a lot of focus on for sale product for quite a bit of time. Our last housing needs assessment that was done about five years ago said there’s really a huge demand for for rent product. And so it really shifted. And now the county and the towns have been pretty focused on building for rent product. Recently, of course, now that everyone has started that or are in the process of finishing that up, there's now a fair bit of rental availability here. And, it's not a ton, but there's some out there at least.  Now we were kind of going back to a for sale demand is what we believe is kind of happening for local. So I think you'll see newer projects more likely be more for sale. There's pros and cons to each.  They both have their own challenges in terms of development. For rent is much harder to finance in some ways, but because it requires a larger upfront subsidy that you make back over 30 years and then the jurisdiction's making an interest payment. And for sale, capital requires a bigger subsidy upfront, but you make back half that subsidy. So it gets very complicated. In terms of uptake, we have seen huge demand right now on all the for sale deed restricted units, pretty much everywhere in the county. As far as for rent, we're seeing high demand at anything under about 110 % AMI, but anything above 110 % AMI rental rates, it's been very slow. So unfortunately, in order to finance some of these projects, you have to have a spectrum of AMI. So you'll have units being built at 70 % and 80 % AMI to meet those needs of those folks to balance out You know, you're to make the project pencil, you have to have units up to 120 % AMI. Unfortunately, those rents are really just too high for the vast majority of our workforce. And so those units have been a little bit slower to lease up. You know, as time goes on the, you know, if they don't lease up, the jurisdictions will likely lower those rents some. They can't lower them a ton to otherwise the pro forma won't work, but I'm expecting they will continue to lower those to make sure they're actually filled. 

That's really good insight.  I heard from the outskirts as we have a couple workforce housing projects going on in Frisco and just being on planning commission, just hearing how they're developing their pro forma and getting that financing and what financing they can qualify for depending on what AMIs they set. But I didn't realize that the pendulum was swinging between some points you need the for sale and then at some points you need the for rent and then as the market shifts, you need more for sale and there's a need everywhere, but trying to strike that right balance sounds tough. 

Absolutely.  

Cause, they don't get built overnight, right? 

They do not get built overnight. I mean, just to give an example,  people may have heard of the Lake Hill project. It is a project that I've been working on since I started at the county six years ago. And it had been essentially initiated 15 years before that.  And we're still working on it and we're not close.  It's just, development is hard and it's expensive. And so that's why I think, you know, we've feel like we've had a lot more success with some of our programs. Like housing helps because it just takes a long time to develop these, especially these big projects because they are, the structure is very expensive and can take a long time to negotiate. And then you always have pushback from neighbors. Unfortunately, you constantly have NIMBYs that say, I don't want this next to me. And so you have pushback. 

We all feel like that. Everybody wants housing, just not by me.  Right. Okay, Brandon, here's a question for you. If you had to guess when Lake Hill would be open for people to move in, what year would you guess? 

That is really tough. I'd say we're at least seven years away.  

Oh.  That's more optimistic than I would have thought. 

Yeah, I mean, that's maybe an optimistic take. The biggest challenge is the, the sewer, the area sewer district needs an upgrade to their sewer plant in order to build Lake Hill. And that is a 20 to $30 million project. So doing that on the back of workforce housing just doesn't work. You can't subsidize housing and build a $25 million sewer plant. So something needs to change there, but not quite sure how we're going get past that. 

Gotcha. Well, where there's a will, there's a way. 

We're looking at different options. We're trying to explore maybe if we could take a smaller chunk and maybe not to do the full super plan expansion, but more to come. 

Yeah, I heard that that was the thing. I didn't realize it was that scale. 

It's yeah. Well, the Lake Hill project is supposed to is huge. I mean, it was master planned at 436 units with an option of 536 units.  And it is a 45 acre site. So that's actually still fairly low density. You could theoretically fit quite a few more units on the site.  And we've looked at that as well. And your county commissioners have had some desire to do a higher density project because it is the last  large parcel that the county has control over to build workforce housing. But those infrastructure challenges have really gotten in the way. 

Yes. There's not a lot of  room in that area to just add all new infrastructure. 

No, it's very challenging.  

But they will be beautiful, have beautiful views. 

They would have great views.  

Alright, Brandon, and last question for you.  And this is a hard one.  Where do you see Summit County Housing in five years? Do you think we'll be in the same boat still trying to get through workforce housing? Do you think we'll make a breakthrough?  Or where do you see us in five years and then maybe in 20 years?  

Sure. I think more than likely we'll be in the same boat that we are today. I there's going to be a high demand. I know, as I mentioned, these projects take a long time to build out. You know, the town of Breckenridge is working on a pretty big project called Runway. But even if, you know, that's a hundred units, a hundred or 150, I forget, but you know, our housing needs assessment says we need 2000 units. So it doesn't, there's just not enough, there's not enough land and there's not enough money to go around to really be able to build enough workforce housing.  I expect we'll be in a similar situation, but we're doing our best. We have a lot more supply than we did five years ago and a lot more supply than we did 15 years ago. So 20 years from now, hard to say.  There's so many things that could happen between now and then, but I think we'll probably have more workforce housing built. The challenge  we see is that costs keep going up  significantly.  Building more workforce housing just becomes more and more expensive for all of the jurisdictions  and  revenues are not growing. Recently, they're kind of flat. At the county, we recently lost the town of Keystone when they incorporated. So we lost about a third of our housing funds when that happened.  So that took a big hit for us, but now the town of Keystone has their own housing funds. Hopefully one day they'll be doing some more work, but they're just... trying to get started up as a town still. 

Yeah. That's a good point. Well, I think it's an  ongoing problem and we're not the only people fighting it. And you guys are doing a great job of looking at what others are doing and being creative so that we can at least make a dent in the demand. And  I think I've been very impressed just seeing how the county has been very proactive and creative and trying new things and having new partnerships and sometimes  there's a lot of creative projects that don't end up  becoming fulfilled, but that doesn't mean  that they weren't worthwhile. I think you guys are learning a lot along the way and I think  it's cool to see how many options there are. And that's what I tell some of my clients or people that I'm working with. I have one client that is about to close on a workforce housing project that you all just completed over in Nellie's neighborhood. And it's really cool to see somebody who's a long time local that was like, I don't know if I can ever do this, actually find housing. And  he has an amazing place with great views and something he can afford. And he will probably stay in the county because of it. So it's really cool what you guys do. It definitely makes an impact  on individuals and our economy as a whole. 

Thanks. Yeah, that's definitely the one thing I really enjoy about my job is getting locals into housing. What a difference it can make for somebody to be able to have a stable house and not worry about losing their long-term rent rental home. So it's  exciting. 

Yeah. Well, thanks, Brandon, for taking time. I know you're a busy man, but I appreciate you taking time to chat with us.  

Thanks, Candice. It's great to chat with you.  

Thanks for joining us today on Mountain Real Estate.  I'm Candice De. If the mountains are calling you, reach out to me.  See you next time.