Here are two concepts you don’t find in the same sentence.
One million dollars.
Fixer-upper.
Unless you’re house-hunting in Aspen.
“A million-dollar house is a fixer-upper, right? It’s going to be somewhat minimal. It’s going to be a smaller home, an older home,” said real estate agent Brian Hazen, who sells luxury properties for Coates, Reed & Waldron.
In Aspen, in the last year alone, housing prices have nearly doubled, with the average sale price going from about $1 million to $1.9 million.
“The billionaires are chasing the millionaires right out of town,” said Mark Donaldson, community development coordinator in Glenwood Springs, a town about 40 miles away, where many of Aspen’s workers live.
A former silver mining town turned ski resort whose Victorian homes and red brick business district ooze charm, this community has long been a playground of the super-rich.
So a million, two million, even the $19 million that one house fetched in July–those folks can afford it. Who cares?
For starters, people in Glenwood Springs, Carbondale, Basalt, El Jebel–any of the Roaring Fork Valley towns within commuting distance of Aspen.
Once known as middle-class or blue-collar communities, they now find themselves tony in a way longtime residents can’t afford.
Among the valley’s real estate listings are a two-bedroom condo in Carbondale, 26 miles from Aspen, for $154,000; a two-bedroom, one-bath home in New Castle, 50 miles away, for $115,000; and a townhouse in Parachute, 75 miles away, for $199,500.
People drive from as far as Rifle, a distance of 65 miles, to work in the four ski resorts that serve the Aspen area.
There’s also plenty of griping about a new trend–middle-class Aspen residents who sell their modest homes, then buy much bigger properties elsewhere in the valley, thus driving up prices for everyone else.
“Their (Aspen) properties are worth so much that they have to take advantage of the market,” said Hazen, “but they can’t afford to buy back in Aspen.”
Several factors contribute to the dizzying prices. There’s the skiing, of course, and the town itself–a real community, not just a sterile resort town.
Then there’s the Roaring Fork Valley, surrounded by the Sawatch Range, with some of the most spectacular scenery in a state that features breathtaking views around every switchback in its mountain roads.
But more important, from a real estate point of view, is the fact that the federal government owns most of that heart-stopping scenery.
Only 20 percent of the land in the valley is privately owned.
Available property was at a premium even before 1976, when Pitkin County, which includes Aspen, adopted a plan limiting growth to 3.1 percent a year.
Such plans are becoming increasingly popular in a state experiencing some of the fastest population growth in the nation. Colorado’s Summit County, home to several ski resorts, grew 33 percent between 1990 and 1995.
“The first thing we tell people who want to move here is that they won’t have any problem finding a job,” said Cindy Christensen, manager of the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Office. “Their biggest hurdle will be finding a place to live.”
Christensen’s office runs an affordable-housing program for people who work in the county. Those who qualify can rent a studio apartment, which normally might go for $1,000 a month, for $475.
Demand is high. Put your name on the list for a studio, and you might get one in a year. If you’ve got a family, expect to wait three years for a three-bedroom unit.
The agency offers single-family homes, through a lottery system, for about $200,000. Nationally, the average home price is $145,500.
When six new three-bedroom townhouses went on the market for $180,000, more than 300 people put their names in the lottery, Christensen said.
“This is a pretty stressful place,” said Christensen, whose housing agency job is one of three she works to afford life in Aspen. “Nobody we see is happy.”
Hazen would advise those unhappy souls to stick it out. Twenty years ago, he was one of them, working three jobs, paying through the nose for a chilly apartment that he shared with a revolving cast of roommates, just to support his ski habit.
When, in desperation, Hazen got his real estate license, his net worth was $5,000. The commission on his first sale was $2,500.
Now, he cruises the mountain roads high above Aspen in a four-wheel-drive Audi, chatting familiarly with the guards who control access to some of the most exclusive homes in the country.
Demand is nearly as high for the homes he sells as for the ones Christensen’s agency offers.
One $3 million property had seen six potential buyers in a day. At 5,000 square feet, it seemed almost cramped compared with some of the 15,000-square-foot properties he sells.
But the rich and the not-so-rich share one trait: They’re willing to pay top dollar, whatever their income level, to get to Aspen and stay here.
Christensen, despite her daily hassles in the housing office, and her part-time jobs, said she could not imagine living anywhere else.
“I moved here in 1990, and I still love it,” she said. “And I don’t even ski.”
