COLORADO SPRINGS —Houses are being built in the Pikes Peak region at their fastest pace in seven years. Home prices and sales have been rising for more than a year. Long-term mortgage rates – while ticking up in recent weeks – remain attractive at under 4.5 percent. – So if a housing recovery is in full swing, why is apartment construction at a 10-year high in the Colorado Springs area, with several more projects proposed or on the drawing board?
Because times have changed – and so have demographics, said members of the real estate community and multi-family housing industry. Home ownership might have been the American Dream for many generations, but not everybody wants to live in a house these days.
“Notwithstanding that certain sectors of the housing market are growing again, there is a whole contingent of people, young people particularly, who are not anxious to take on mortgages and set down more permanent roots,” said Steve Sharkey, a vice president with Nor’wood Development Group in Colorado Springs, which has built one apartment complex in Fountain and is developing four others in the Springs.
