Breckenridge’s deed-restriction acquisition program, Housing Helps, saw such high demand in 2024 that the town spent its entire budget for the program by mid-August. 

While presenting to Breckenridge Town Council at an Aug. 27 meeting, housing manager Laurie Best said the community’s interest isn’t waning and suggested an expansion for the program’s budget.

“Since I wrote this (staff memo for the meeting) a few days ago, we’ve had more applications and some really compelling applications,” she said.

The Housing Helps program incentives owners, buyers and businesses by paying them to place a deed restriction on homes that requires they be sold to members of the local workforce. Officials created it in 2019 at a time when the community was losing locally occupied properties to vacation rentals, second homes, remote workers and investors to ensure there was housing stock for the local workforce.

With around three months left in the year and more they want to tackle on the docket, housing staffers told the council the program needs more money. 

Council unanimously gave it to them, approving a $600,000 budget appropriation for the program. 

Council member Todd Rankin, a real estate agent, called the program “phenomenal,” noting its impact spanning to 88 properties to-date in Breckenridge is significant for the workforce. 

Council member Steve Gerard, a former Planning Commissioner for the town, said he supports funding the program because its value is evident. “We’re getting bedrooms at a price that we can’t build them,” he said. 

Council member Dick Carleton said funding the program is important because of the message it sends. 

“It’s a signal to the community — to sellers, to buyers — that we want to continue with this program,” he said. 

In actuality, $1.2 million is needed for the program for the remainder of the year. Yet, housing staff figured out a way to cover half of that by reallocating $600,000 out of the town’s Buy Down program budget, which is an initiative it does with Summit County that is also geared toward securing housing for local workers. 

For the year, approximately $2.5 million was the budget for the program. The town spent around $2.13 million by the last week of June. 

Aside from high demand, housing staff pointed to a number of reasons the program needed more money.

Since the program’s creation in 2019, the housing market has seen sustained increases in prices, which ultimately impacts what the town needs to pay to incentivize owners. For instance, where the town paid $129,000 on average for each unit in 2022 and $112,000 per unit in 2023, it’s paying around $133,000 per unit on average in 2024.

In most cases the program pays an owner 15-19% of a property’s market value to put a “light deed restriction” on it. With “heavy deed restrictions” the town pays 20-30% of a property’s market value for a full deed restriction, which has more requirements to ensure affordability including a 3% appreciation cap, according to the town’s website.

Full deed restrictions have recently become more popular, which is more costly. 

Best also walked council through a resale analysis of Housing Helps properties that have been sold at the request of council, who were interested in knowing if there were any trends. Mostly, council was interested in knowing how effective light deed restrictions were when it came to preserving affordability.

Best said identifying trends was tricky because only six Housing Helps properties have resold in the past five years. All six properties had a light deed restriction, and none of them had appreciation caps. A staff memo noted the properties all assumed a 10-15% devaluation because of the deed restrictions, yet price and value of the properties surpassed the town’s target goal.

One homeowner who participated in the program in 2019 had a home with a market price of $835,000 and was paid $125,000 by the town to place a workforce housing deed restriction on it. Around five years later, the home sold for just over $1.3 million. Staff’s calculations show if there was a 3% appreciation cap on the home and a full deed restriction was secured, it would have likely sold for around $812,000.

Council was in favor on continuing to offer both light and full deed restrictions.

“I’m a big fan of the full deed restriction, but I love the light as well because it still makes it a workforce housing unit and the market will settle out the resale price eventually,” Rankin said.