If you’re looking to build or expand a home in Pitkin County, you may have to keep it small – under 15,000 square feet, that is.
County officials, who oversee the ritzy resort towns of Aspen and Snowmass, are considering instituting a maximum home size as a way to control growth and simplify the local land-use process.
Pitkin County gets only one or two requests annually for residential structures of 15,000 or more square feet, said commissioner Mike Owsley.
“But that’s about the size of our county courthouse,” he said. “The larger the house, the more impact it has on our community’s infrastructure.”
The county now limits homes to a maximum of 5,750 square feet, but owners can break that limit by purchasing transferable development rights.
“The demand is absolutely there” for larger properties, said Ed Foran, president of the Aspen Board of Realtors. “Some people have a problem philosophically with the sheer magnitude of a 15,000-square-foot home. But I don’t know if our county commissioners should be making philosophical decisions like that.”
While many of Colorado’s largest homes are in the Aspen area – including the 55,000-square- foot palace of Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia – the luxury-home market continues to sizzle across the state. Real estate worth $2.2 billion sold in Pitkin County last year, and $2.8 billion worth sold in Eagle County, setting records in both counties.
Officials in Eagle County, home to Vail and Beaver Creek, are not considering a similar size cap, said planning manager Bob Narracci.
The largest home sold in Eagle County last year was 10,500 square feet, according to the Vail Board of Realtors MLS, while the average sale price for a home was $711,377. Statewide, the median sale price for a single-family home was $204,955, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors.
Colorado has some of the nation’s most expensive homes for sale, according to the recently published Ultimate Homes magazine. It ranked fourth nationally, with 92 of the 1,000 properties featured in the annual magazine, including a 14,300- square-foot Aspen home with a $35 million asking price.
Ultimate Home’s top spot went to Donald Trump’s $125 million, 75,000-square- foot mansion in Palm Beach, Fla.
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-820-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
