Real Estate Market Trends in Pagosa Springs, CO: The median home price in Pagosa Springs, CO is $750,000…
— https://homesforsale.century21.com, October 12, 2021
Rocket Homes has 332 homes for sale in Archuleta County at a median price of $624,900. View property photos and details, research neighborhoods, get in touch with location real estate agent…
— https://www.rockethomes.com, October 12, 2021
The streets and sidewalks of Pagosa Springs felt a bit less… occupied? overrrun? invaded?… as we moved into October, and as the snow began to fall, as it did yesterday.
And apparently, the changes in tourism traffic began to occur back in August, although I didn’t really notice it.
At the Tuesday, October 12, Zoom meeting of the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board, executive director Jennifer Green revealed that the unholy onslaught of tourist visits, seemingly generated by the COVID pandemic, had already showed signs of weakening in August.
“August Lodgers Tax collections does show our first ‘down’ month since we began the COVID recovery in June of 2020. I had kind of thought, just based on anecdotal input I was getting from lodging partners, that August would start to be coming back to reality, because schools are in-person this year. And we definitely saw an impact… you know, midweek, in August… which we usually do.
“So we will see how this continues. My anticipation is that we’re going to continue to see numbers lower than 2020, through the remainder of this year. Now, how close they get to what we saw in 2019, I think we’re still a bit ahead of that, because… just the data that I’m seeing, across the board… airport traffic is down, so people are not traveling as far away as they were prior to COVID. They’re still not traveling internationally. So we’re still reaping, I guess, the benefits of a limited supply of destinations that people are willing to travel to.”
Tourism Board member Michael Whiting zoomed in to ask a question.
“Does this track with our sort of ‘competitor’ communities — Salida, Buena Vista, etc.? Or do we know?”
Yes, the tourism industry is a competition, or at least, some people perceive it that way. How is Pagosa doing, compared to our competitors?
Ms. Green:
“We’ve actually… I haven’t looked at their numbers, specifically, in a few months… but I can dig up that data and give you guys an update on what other communities are reporting. I don’t know that I can get information from Salida and Buena Vista, because it’s a ‘county’ lodging tax. And it’s much easier [to get data] if it’s a ‘city’ lodging tax, because those are usually reported online on a monthly basis. So I can get data for Ouray and Durango and Cortez…
“I do know that urban areas are still not quite seeing the numbers they saw [prior to COVID]… They saw a recovery compared to last year, but not compared to 2019, yet. The mountain communities… it’s disproportionate, as far as the amount of traffic that mountain communities are seeing…”
Mr. Whiting:
“I just want to know, if we see an anomaly in our numbers, I just want to know — is it us? Or is it everybody? Especially when we’re going to be goofing around with our Lodgers Tax, over the next few years. So I want us to track, carefully, the results of goofing around with our Lodgers Tax. So having some baseline data wouldn’t hurt, even if it’s anecdotal…”
County Commissioner and Tourism Board member Ronnie Maez:
“I just wanted to understand what Michael meant by ‘goofing around with Lodgers Tax’?”
We can understand Commissioner Maez’ confusion. “Goofing around with Lodgers Tax” is not a familiar expression at local government meetings.
Mr. Whiting:
“I can answer that, Ronnie. There appears to be — not on my part, Ronnie — but there appears to be an inclination to reallocate some of the Lodgers Tax away from pure tourism promotion, toward housing infrastructure.
“And any time you let your foot off the gas, there is going to be an impact on your velocity…”
Mr. Whiting is presumably talking here about the “velocity” of tourism growth in the community.
But of course, the metaphor can be applied equally well to, say, a housing crisis. The Archuleta County community took its foot off the gas, in terms of affordable housing back in… well, long before the Great Recession. We might need to go back to the early 1980s to find any “affordable housing velocity”?
For the past 30 years, whatever “gas” Pagosa Springs has been pumping, has been going into the tourism gas tank. That particular industry has been subsidized with millions of dollars in Lodgers Tax revenues, and also by various other government and business policies aimed at steadily increasing our visitor traffic.
Some folks would like to see us continue to pump our gas into that same gas tank. But as Mr. Whiting suggests, we’ve seen a growing interest — an “inclination” — to view the millions of Lodgers Tax dollars as a ready source of funding for the actual crisis taking place in Pagosa: the lack of workforce housing.
Archuleta County is not a “poor” community, if we look at average home prices ($500,000? $600,000? $750,000?) and if we look at the median household income. Thanks to the large number of retirees in the community, average household income levels, and percentage of impoverished families are relatively low, compared to some neighboring counties.
But for young working families? Is it possible to thrive here, on the wages paid by a tourism industry?
Mr. Whiting:
“I’m not a big fan of re-allocating Lodgers Tax, by the way. Just for the record.”
Commissioner Maez:
“Glad to hear that. I’m not a fan of it either. I know the legislature is trying to work that in, as well, so it may be coming up, in the next election year. I don’t think it will this year, but it might, in 2022.”
Mr. Whiting:
“And the reason I brought it up, Ronnie, is that it’s something that our staff is going to have to deal with. A reduction… either a flattening, or a reduction… in our fuel…”