Noticias

With an average home price of $1.5 million in San Miguel County, barriers to home ownership are significant for those earning the median household income of $80,000 a year in the county. With the help of the Telluride Foundation and local governments, buying a home in the region just became a little bit easier.

Starting at the end of the month, a new down payment assistance program will offer up to $100,000 for a down payment in the Telluride Foundation’s service area, which includes Rico, the West End, Telluride, Ridgway and Ouray.

Elaine Demas joined the San Miguel County Commissioners meeting on Wednesday, March 26, to finalize an agreement with the county.

“We determined with some help from leadership with the county and Town of Mountain Village and Telluride that it would be great if the Telluride Foundation could do more,” Demas said. “So after about six to eight months of research, we decided to zero in on a much larger and robust program that would provide up to $100,000 in down payment assistance to qualified families.”

Demas explained that the Telluride Foundation, in partnership with the Trust for Community Housing, has provided up to $5,000 in forgivable loan assistance for last-mile housing costs. A little under $300,000 has been deployed under that program since 2019.

The new program pairs local government contributions with private donations for a revolving loan fund.

“They are designed as a shared appreciation loan, so the applicant, the borrower, pays nothing—the principal interest—for the life of the loan until the homeowner sells or refinances the home,” Demas said. “And they pay us back, they pay the fund back, and the principal of the loan as well as a pro-rata portion of the appreciation of the home.”

Demas noted that this program can be combined with other housing assistance programs, such as the “Your Equity Support Program” in the Town of Mountain Village.

“The home that will qualify for this program must be deed restricted,” Demas said. “So if you find a free-market home in Norwood, and it’s under the $850,000 limit—which is the limit we have set—and it’s not deed restricted, we would have to find some mechanism to deed restrict that house in order for us to provide this down payment assistance.”

San Miguel County agreed to contribute $200,000 in 2025 and $100,000 in 2026 for program applicants in the county. Demas said they’ve hit their fundraising goal for this year.

“We completed our fundraising in February,” Demas said. “We set an internal goal of $1.4 million for the first year, and we met that goal in February. We are now dotting our I’s and crossing our T’s. We have a bunch of families in the queue waiting for this to be launched, and it hopefully will be launched by the end of the month.”

While verbally agreed upon, the Town of Telluride is set to vote next Tuesday on contributing $100,000. Commissioner Anne Brown advocated for local governments to join the cause.

“The reason that I think it’s so important that the Town of Telluride participate is we need to give this a shot, and we need to give it the best shot possible,” Brown said. “I’m so grateful that the foundation, as a community partner, has offered to help our community in this way. Bringing in over a million dollars in resources for the program, where we’ve only had to participate at the level of $100,000 and $200,000—I’m really grateful for that.

“I also see this as an equity program,” Brown continued. “We have people who cruise into Telluride with a down payment, then we have people who don’t, and those are the people who are getting left behind. And I love the fact that this is such a significant leg up for anyone who needs it. It’s not just $5,000—it’s up to $100,000, which can really have an impact.”

Demas said the Telluride Foundation already has families lined up to apply. While this is the first program of its kind in the Telluride region, similar revolving loan funds exist in Summit County and the Roaring Fork Valley.