COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — The building boom in the Pikes Peak Region broke records in 2021 with thousands of new homes being built in the past 12 months. The Pikes Peak Regional Building Department issued permits for some $4.3 billion worth of construction projects, and there are no signs of that trend slowing down in the new year.
More than 5,000 new addresses were added to city and county maps in the form of single-family homes in 2021. Public Information Officer Greg Dingrando said that residential construction only tells half the story of the boom.
"We really saw a big explosion on the commercial side, particularly when it comes to apartments," he said. "We permitted nearly 4,000 units in one year, that is just unprecedented and the busiest year that we've ever had."
Dingrando hopes the roughly 9,000 new places to live will relieve the market pressures that have driven up housing prices in our communities.
"A lot of people are desperately looking for housing out there and these permits are obviously lead to projects and once they're finished, that's really going to help the market," he said.
The Pikes Peak Association of Realtors reported in December that the median home price in Colorado Springs grew to $450,000. That's an 18 percent increase over December of 2020.
And housing is only one sector that's been impacted by all of the construction activity. By mid-October, it was already clear that city sales tax collections would eclipse their budget projections by more than $26 million dollars.
Colorado Springs City Council prepared for the new year anticipating a refund to the citizens.
"That's well above our TABOR limit, our growth rate, and so we do have to set aside quite a bit of that for our TABOR refund," the city's Chief Financial Officer Charae McDaniel told the council during a budget work session on October 18.
The final sales tax numbers from 2021 won't be tallied until about April. In the meantime, Council asked the voters to set aside some of the TABOR overages to help improve wildfire preparedness in the community.
The approval of Ballot Issue 2D will let the city keep up to $20 million in TABOR overages to create and fund a city-wide regional wildfire mitigation and prevention program that will be managed by the Colorado Springs Fire Department.
Any additional overage will be refunded to citizens on their monthly bills from Colorado Springs Utilities.
