Steamboat Real Estate

See if you can name this resort town:

• Locals and visitors continue to debate population growth and development
• It’s a city of about 10,000 people
• Growth can only go one direction due to public lands and mountains.
• Homes are low-density and big.
• People commute up to an hour to work here.
• A developer is proposing a large number of fair-market affordable housing for locals.
• Homes would be smaller than 2,000 sq. ft. on small lots.
• People are still complaining that growth should be capped to preserve the nature of the town.

Think it’s Steamboat? No. It’s Jackson Hole, and the developer who wants to build 500 fair-market affordable homes is from Chicago. It sure could be Steamboat, and the development could be Steamboat 700.

Resort towns have many similarities. They debate growth, big-box stores (read here why big box stores are controversial), affordable housing, sales tax revenue, airline subsidies, etc.

What’s interesting is that even though resort towns share the same concerns, they all have distinctly different personalities. What makes Steamboat unique is the real town (it’s over 100 years old), the western atmosphere, the “quiet” wealth, and the fact that you have to be going here to get here (as opposed to an exit stop off I-70).