"Deed Restricted" Properties

I think the only drawback with a Deed Restricted property is what was mentioned at the very end of the news report.

It would be hard to sell the house because you have to sell it at the same price you paid for it.

Which means that everywhere else, property values have gone up, and you won't be able to afford a new home.

So you're pretty much stuck there your entire life, and you won't be able to move.

This is nothing new. There are limited equity projects everywhere. Several in NYC.

Penn South in Chelsea is the best-known.

"Restricted? Do you mean like Mountebank?"

OP, these actually aren't uncommon in the least, but "deed restrictions" generally have a different meaning outside of Colorado. (They usually only forbid certain things in '50s- and '60s-era suburbs – many of which in the South formerly forbade non-white people from living there.) They're also often enacted by municipalities, not individuals. I have two friends in Austin who work as an elementary school teacher and social worker respectively, and their combined income is still well under the area's $120K median HHI for a family of four.

In the urbanist development that used to house Austin's main airport, a full 25% of their housing units – a mix of rentals and subsidized housing (the more standard term), and at varying HHI levels – are set aside for "normal" working folks who have solid jobs but still don't make enough to afford to purchase a market-rate home in one of America's priciest housing markets.

Summit County specifically is a total clusterfuck in the winter, thanks to housing Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, etc., and the point of THIS type of deed restriction is to keep local workers actually LOCAL, instead of making them drive two hours each way to/from work (as is still standard in places like the Tahoe vicinity).

Whoops, forgot part of the story. My two Austin friends were able to buy a 3BR townhouse for $220K, and since the units are all intentionally mixed with market-rate ones, it's next door to two that sold for over $600K in the past two years.

My cousin bought a house more than 30 years ago (in CA) and used a first-time low income homebuyer benefit that was offered by her city -- she got a great interest rate and help with the down payment, but the city required her to share any profit with them (50-50) if she sold it within 30 years. She kept it beyond that date and now the profit is all hers (and it's very large; she's in a desirable area of the SF suburbs.)

R4/R5 do you know if this type of deal (like the one in Austin and Colorado) is available in every city, or just some?

R7, it varies considerably, but they're for the most part only available in cities that have seen truly absurd leaps in housing prices over the past 20 years. Any given mountain town in the West applies, as do cities like Austin, Seattle and Portland.

OTOH most red states actually don't have them, and the only reason Austin is an exception is because the development in question was entirely on city-owned land. Since it's Texas, and they give zero fucks about the middle class, this isn't available even elsewhere in Austin, let alone anywhere else in the state.

Thanks for that, R8.

So then how would you go about finding these types of homes for sale, and if they're not called "deed restricted" in every city, then what would a person look for, if searching for this type of home? I mean, what would they be called, universally?

Sorry to bug you about this, but you seem very knowledgeable on the subject.

Search for equity restricted home buying or similar. It’s really not that hard…well, for you maybe.