The Boulder County Board of Commissioners is considering a temporary halt on site plan review applications for homes exceeding a certain size, citing concerns over affordability and the environmental impact of constructing big homes.
This potential pause comes as Boulder County grapples with the rising cost of housing, which is making it more difficult for people to enter the local housing market. For existing homeowners, the construction of larger homes increases their property values but also drives up taxes, burdening those already struggling with costs. Halting the review process for homes above a specific square footage, which would vary by neighborhood, in unincorporated Boulder County would prevent these homes from being built.
Boulder County is not alone in its efforts to rein in oversized homes, often referred to as “McMansions” for their sometimes generic designs. The City of Boulder is considering a policy that would require property owners to pay into the city’s affordable housing fund if they demolish a single-family home to build a larger one in its place.
In recent decades, the average floor area of a home in unincorporated Boulder County has increased. The average home built in the 1970s was about 1,800 square feet, according to an analysis of internal county data by Boulder Reporting Lab. That compares to about 2,800 square feet for homes built in the past decade. So far this year, several property owners have submitted applications to build homes larger than 6,000 square feet across Boulder County, according to county records.
“Right now, house sizes are getting bigger and bigger,” Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann told Boulder Reporting Lab. At the same time, she added, “there is a real demand for smaller houses, more affordable houses.”
Boulder County code allows property owners to construct homes up to 125% of the median residential floor area in a neighborhood. However, property owners can seek special approval to build even larger homes. Over time, this gradually raises the allowable limits.
The commissioners are considering a moratorium on site plan review applications in unincorporated Boulder County for homes exceeding the median neighborhood size, as they explore additional regulations for larger homes. The proposed moratorium would not impact projects already under review or homes destroyed in a natural disaster, according to the county. County officials are planning to exclude properties burned in the Marshall Fire, which destroyed 1,100 homes in the City of Louisville, Town of Superior and unincorporated Boulder County.
Many of the burned lots, such as those in Olde Town Superior, have been sold. The homes being built on those lots are sometimes larger than the original single-family homes.
“The fabric of the neighborhoods is changing,” Jeri Curry, executive director of Marshall ROC — a coalition of local agencies, nonprofits and municipalities aiding in long-term recovery — told Boulder Reporting Lab on the second anniversary of the fire. “Boulder County has very little affordable housing. We know there’s a crisis here to begin with, and [the Marshall Fire] has just exacerbated it.”
The proposed moratorium will likely face pushback. It would have a major impact on the ability of property owners to build their preferred homes. It would also ripple through the residential construction industry, which includes builders, architects, realtors and other businesses.
John Tayer, the president and CEO of the Boulder Chamber, said the proposed moratorium came as a surprise to businesses in the home design and building industries. He said the chamber has not yet taken a position on the proposed moratorium. But, he added, “we are always concerned about anything that is disruptive to the business climate and plans for individuals and businesses.”
Stolzmann acknowledged the proposed changes could affect property owners planning to build their dream homes. However, she said larger homes contribute to rising property taxes for neighbors due to the way the county assesses property values. She added that these larger homes require more resources to build and consume more energy for heating and cooling.
“It’s not my intention ever to take away someone’s creativity or their vision,” Stolzmann said. But, she added, “we have community norms and values to protect the environment and to protect those who don’t have as much as others.”
A public hearing on the proposal is scheduled for Sept. 17, 2024.
Meanwhile, the county has more than 2,000 applicants currently on the waiting list for a subsidized apartment managed by the Boulder County Housing Authority, as it works to add 400 affordable housing units in Lafayette while it also sells off other affordable properties.
Where land is very valuable, people will try to maximize their investment,
Interesting article. I am not particularly a fan of more regulation in this area, as it’s hard enough to do any building in Boulder.
I thought this was a little misguided: “However, she said larger homes contribute to rising property taxes for neighbors due to the way the county assesses property values.”
Sounds like the bigger issue as it relates to this point is how the county assesses property values.
Thanks for the article.
Pray tell, what does the size of a home have to do with affordability? Is even a 3K sq. ft. home going to be affordable? Or a 2K sq. ft.? It’s all about demand – not the size of the home. People flocking to the Front Range – many with good-paying jobs – have driven up housing costs. More people = more housing. This is just another case of Boulder progressives imposing their beliefs on everyone else; e.g., we ll need to live in tiny homes, ride bicycles to work, be employed in “green” jobs and give whatever excess money we have to the transients.
Well said g love 😄
“What does the size of a home have to do with affordability?”
You can put three smaller houses with smaller yards on the same lot that a 6,000 McMansion “ranchette” would occupy. Three single-family homes on the space that one single-family home (with four-car garage, home theater, and multiple guest rooms) would otherwise take. Three families being able to buy their own home instead of one. More supply = more affordability. Also, a 2,000 sf house is going to be more affordable than a 6,000 sf one.
Pray tell, what does the size of a home have to do with affordability? It’s all about demand – not the size of the home. People flocking to the Front Range – many with good-paying jobs – have driven up housing costs. More people = more housing. This is just another case of Boulder progressives imposing their beliefs on everyone else; e.g., we ll need to live in tiny homes, ride bicycles to work, be employed in “green” jobs and give whatever excess money we have to the transients.
Nope. It’s a factor of land use and inflated value and drives up costs for everyone. It increases the wealth gap and homelessness, which as g lovell herself admits, never pays for itself. Let the developers pay!
This from BRL 8 Sept.’23
Boulder City Council rejects proposal to build more middle-income housing:
“The cash-in-lieu payments go into the city’s Affordable Housing Fund. The city uses the fund to subsidize deed-restricted affordable housing across the city, mostly by giving the money to Boulder Housing Partners, the city’s largest nonprofit manager of affordable housing. In 2022, the city generated about $9.8 million from cash-in-lieu payments, according to an October 2022 city staff memo. In 2022, the city used money from the Affordable Housing Fund — combined with other funding sources — to add 127 new deed-restricted affordable housing units to its portfolio, according to city data.
Nearly all these units are apartments rather than for-sale homes. That’s because the city usually leverages the money with federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, which can only be used for rentals, Allen said.
Another proposed change would charge a fee to property owners who demolish homes and build new, larger and presumably more expensive ones in their place.
The city reviews permits for about 30 such rebuilds every year, according to Allen. Currently, if a single-family home is replaced with a single-family mansion, the property owner is not required to pay anything into the city’s Affordable Housing Fund. By contrast, under city code, property owners who replace a single-family home with a multi-unit home, such as a duplex or triplex, are required to pay cash-in-lieu for each additional unit.
The details of such a fee are still in the works. City officials are proposing to conduct a study to determine whether larger rebuilds exacerbate the city’s need for affordable housing.”
Maybe their study is done by now, although it seems intuitive to me.
Over time it just gets worse, what with the evictions, minimum wage and jobs/housing imbalance unattended to.
It seems that one solution might be to revise the metric for property taxes, so that neighbors aren’t affected by someone’s choice to build a “mcmansion.” it also seems reasonable to impose square-footage limits based on lot size & size of homes in the neighborhood. & who approved the increased build of homes after the marshall fire?
This affects me directly. My wife and I bought agricultural land on July 22 (1-month ago). When I asked the county planners then they gave me a max square footage of 5,800 sq/ft which includes the garage. Then yesterday in our pre-application meeting they said the max square footage number is much less than that. We put our life savings in this land and we feel like the rug is getting pulled out beneath us. We are a couple in our 30’s that expect to raise our family here for life.
We are planning on building a net zero house which is mostly off the grid and converting the monoculture wheat farm into a vegetable market garden.
From a legal perspective, they are removing our property rights in a fashion that seems ex post facto and without much due process. There is a building height restriction decrease that happened in the 90’s and allowed existing land to be grandfathered in. I feel like this change should follow a similar path of grandfathering in a square foot limitation.
This surprise moratorium means we have to design the house with our architect and get the plans submitted for initial approval in a couple of weeks.
I do not see what this building size limitation seems to fix. It smells like NIMYism with the older generation who have built their houses pulling up the ladder to younger generations who want the same opportunities there were in the past.
Seriously? Who needs a 5800 square foot home?? You feel there should be no restrictions on what your money can buy? McMansions (even nicely designed ones) have been a plague on Boulder for a long time, but the wheels turn ever so slowly in this town, in this case mainly because all the wealthy people who come from afar feel entitled to take full advantage of Boulder’s limited space. They have been far more vocal and persistent than the critics in recent years it seems. Those other McMansion builders aren’t the ones urging a moratorium on uber large homes, though, as you suspect. It’s everyone else who wants to try to preserve any shred of Boulder’s character, has legitimate environmental concerns, and does not want to see their property taxes jacked up because of ever more McMansions popping up on so many properties. NIMBYism? That’s really funny! A totally twisted definition of the word.
The big houses are at the higher end of the market. Lower and middle income people probably can’t afford the land by itself, let alone the bigger house. It also feels like another restriction on supply, that will ultimately bid up prices on bigger homes, resulting in higher property tax revenue but no relief for buyers. If one wants to have a public policy intervention to lower housing costs, we need to do something on the lower end and middle of the market, where you have buyers that are simply being priced out of the market.
To effectively lower housing costs, it requires reducing restrictions on, and expanding, supply. One way to do this, that Boulder policy makers won’t like, is to take some of the bigger lots with old 900 square foot houses, and subdivide them into two lots, and build two 1,500+ square foot homes. This allows the supply of houses to expand on the existing land that we have. But this requires that policy makers allow this, and going from 900 SF to 1,500 SF may fly in the face of the proposal covered by the article.
Another solution that doesn’t require public policy intervention, is for buyers to look for housing in neighboring towns. A friend of mine found a 2,600 SF townhome 12 minutes northeast of downtown (outside the city limits) for less than half the cost of a 2,000 SF townhome in downtown Boulder.
If the goal is more affordable house then the county should extend the allowance for ADU’s to the county, not just the Marshal burn area.
If you are developing an undeveloped property there are a bunch of costs that are unrelated to square footage such as septic, well, driveway, fire mitigation, etc.
This proposal feels like a feel good but ineffective action.
Charge a fee that increases exponentially based on the size per unit. There is obviously demand for larger units, not just smaller ones. Restrictions on building just increases prices. Just as taxing folks to subsidize others, who aren’t willing or able to pay full price on their own, to live somewhere increases prices. Report on the size of those subsidized units. How much have they increased in size over time.
How about limiting the sizes of building plans! I think there are a lot of homes that are huge in areas like coal creek canyon that are a few thousand square feet; mostly aging and not occupied, off the market. Also theteare very few land lots to buy to build under 900-1000 square foot homes or smaller for handicapped seniors! I have searched for years. Yet some realtors also need better regulations in CO
and need to include disability rights!
Boulder County Community Planning and Permitting (CP&P) already has a published mission statement to “drive all development into the municipalities”. Essentially, it is a building department whose mission that it is to never build in Unincorporated Boulder County.
I had to rebuild my home after the Marshall Fire and have lived the CP&P nightmare, firsthand. While the building inspectors were generally professional and capable, I have never encountered a more corrupt, bungling morass of administrative incompetence and passive resistance than my neighbors and I found in planning and permitting. Much of the root cause of Boulder Counties affordability problem is the attendant time, hassle and expense that it costs owners, builders and developers to build in BoCo.
In discussing with builders and subcontractors, most will tell you that they include a MINIMUM of a 20% premium to build here.
In short, you have met the enemy, Boulder County, it is yourselves. At minimum, you should remove the word “Community” from CP&P.
Like everything with housing in Boulder, this idea is at least 10 years too late.
Also, for a city and county that screech “we’re GREEN!” it’s a bit ironic that a good percentage of houses are over 5000 square feet. If that ain’t wasteful, I don’t know what is. But city council should just go back to worrying about bikes and prarie dogs.
The size of one’s house is purely their decision – not the government’s. And what if that 6K sq. ft. house has solar, heat pumps, green building materials and a low carbon footprint, making it more efficient than the average home?
2:45 PM public hearing on large homes at Boulder County Commissioners Tue. 17 Sept.