Less than a year after breaking ground on 705 N. Laura St., Terese and Josh Seal have nearly completed construction on a house – one they expect to sell for $375,000, a price rarely seen in the Ridgway housing market.
The 864-square-foot house is the first of three they plan to build on deed-restricted lots in River Park. While Ouray County has several other affordable housing efforts in the pipeline, they’re being led by nonprofits; the Seals are a small, private construction company, Green Seal LLC, doing most of the work on their own.
It’s a model they’d like to see more of in town: locals finding a way to address the lack of affordable housing for locals.
Under the requirements outlined in the Parkside subdivision final plat from 2007, the homes on lots with affordable housing provisions must be sold to buyers who will live in the house, not rent it out. At least one member of the household must earn the majority of their income in Ouray County, but unlike other affordable housing projects locally, there is no income cap or restriction for buyers.
The plat requires the initial maximum sale price of the home to be capped at “the cost of acquiring and developing the lot and building the housing unit, plus 15% profit.” The town must review documentation of those costs and approve a sale price; the Seals brought their cost sheets to the town earlier this month and set the price at $375,000, Terese Seal said.
The home is also subject to an appreciation cap for 10 years: 3.2% per year for the first five years, then annual increases up to 9% in the 10th year. After 10 years of continuous ownership, the restrictions end; if the original buyer sells in less than a decade, the clock on the restrictions restarts.
In exchange for those restrictions, the town waived development excise taxes required by the municipal code for the units, according to the plat. Half of the tap fees were also paid by the original developer, Seal said, which also saved them about $35,000.
The Seals bought the lot at the intersection of Laura, Green and Railroad streets in October 2020 and broke ground in August 2022. The flexibility in the deed restrictions was one reason the project was appealing, she said.
With no income requirements on the homes, she hopes the homes can be options for people who make too much to qualify for other local affordable housing efforts, but can’t afford to buy the highpriced options on the market.
The median family income in Ouray County for 2023, an amount set annually by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is $89,100 for a household of four people. The cap for most affordable housing projects that receive state and federal funding is 120% AMI.
But the median sale price for a single family home in Ouray County through the first four months of 2023 was $932,500, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors.
“There’s a whole section that’s missing, that 120% AMI to up to 200% AMI, and that’s the people we’re trying to capture,” Seal said.
Because the deed restrictions don’t have income limits or restrictions, they won’t have to exclude potential buyers based on how much they earn.
To reach that target market, they’ve made strategic choices throughout the construction project to keep the sale price down: the small footprint and simple layout and design helped. The house has two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an open living room connecting to the kitchen.
They also made choices to save on materials: focusing less on the “wow factor” than they have on previous builds. That meant choosing butcher block counters over concrete, for example, and purchasing prefabricated walls for a shower.
In an effort to keep utility prices down for future owners, and to be as energy-efficient as possible, the home is all-electric, with a heat pump and mini-split for heat and air conditioning, and a heat pump water heater. Rebates from San Miguel Power Association made that possible, she said.
It isn’t their first time building in Ridgway, and with this project they’re targeting locals who work in the community.
“We feel blessed that we’re able to sell to real people,” Seal said. Creating second homes for visitors was “the last thing we wanted to do.”
They moved to Ridgway in 1997 and started flipping homes in Montrose about a decade ago. At one point, they considered moving to Denver, with its larger market, she said, but they saw a niche for building smaller, attainable, energy-efficient homes in the community instead.
“I think Ridgway’s a great town, that’s why we’ve been here for almost 30 years. But I see that we could really lose our community here, if this housing really keeps going the way it is,” Seal said. When teachers and other essential community members can’t afford to live here, “it’s just not right,” she said.
The problem isn’t unique to Ridgway, “but we’re a unique community, and we need to keep it,” she said.
Once they sell the house, they’ll move on to building two more at 707 and 709 N. Laura St., which will be slightly larger at just under 1,200 square feet, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. They’ve already done the infrastructure work for those lots, and hope to work on the foundations this summer.
In the future, Seal hopes they can continue building smaller and more attainable homes, potentially including duplexes that are affordable for buyers with a single income, something she knows is a challenge locally.
“Houses are expensive by the square footage, so let’s build smaller square footage,” she said. That’s appealing in a community so focused on the outdoors, too, she said. “Most people spend a lot of time outside, you just kind of want to come home and sleep and eat.”
For now, they’re looking for an owner for the first house, and hope to work directly with interested buyers, keeping costs down on the sale, too.
“We’re just looking for the most qualified buyer that can close the quickest,” she said, so they can move on to starting the next house.
