{"id":50760,"date":"2020-10-24T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/why-so-many-homebuyers-are-picking-durango\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:53:13","slug":"why-so-many-homebuyers-are-picking-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/why-so-many-homebuyers-are-picking-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Why so many homebuyers are picking Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Ed
Ed and Jamie Kruft and their daughter, Sadie, 18, holding the family dog, Ralph, on Tuesday at their home in Edgemont Ranch. The Krufts were regular visitors to Colorado, and they recently moved to Durango \u2013 their long-planned move to the state accelerated by the prominence of telecommuting during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Jamie Kruft and her husband, Ed, knew they were going to live in Colorado eventually. The COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid shift in workplaces to accommodate telecommuting simply accelerated their plans.<\/p>\n

Keeping their home in Austin, Texas, where they\u2019ll split time, the couple looked at properties in Pagosa Springs and Durango, for their accessibility to Texas, before settling on Durango.<\/p>\n

Malia Bowkett and her husband, James, discovered Durango before the onset of the pandemic, finding the outdoor opportunities and small-town lifestyle enough of a draw to leave behind London.<\/p>\n

After living for six years in Kurdistan in northern Iraq and realizing their situation was not ideal to raise their young son, Oliver, who is now 3, they moved to Durango in early 2019.<\/p>\n

Durango won the Bowketts\u2019 hearts after researching and visiting a long list of possibilities \u2013 with London their top alternative to Durango.<\/p>\n

Hot home sales<\/div>\n

The Krufts and the Bowketts are not alone.<\/p>\n

Perhaps one of the most unanticipated consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic was its illumination of the outdoor attraction of small Western Slope towns to urban transplants.<\/p>\n

Rick Lorenz, who compiles La Plata County real estate data for his newsletter, said the active market in homes above $800,000 is likely attributed to people fleeing cities.<\/p>\n

Through the end of September, 124 homes priced at $800,000 or higher sold this year in La Plata County, almost doubling the 64 that sold in that category through September 2019.<\/p>\n

To a lesser extent, Lorenz said, the pandemic is partially contributing to the increase in sales in homes priced from $400,000 to $600,000, with 302 units sold through Sept. 30 this year compared with 236, last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy thought is the COVID thing is driving the market at $800,000 and above. We almost doubled sales; that\u2019s an incredible amount,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you look at $400,000 to $600,000, it\u2019s 66 more units sold to date, that\u2019s a 28% increase, which itself is pretty amazing, and COVID might be partially behind that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Malia
Malia Bowkett, her husband, James, and their son, Oliver, 3, moved to Durango in early 2019. They had lived for six months in Kurdistan in northern Iraq, and settled on Durango as their new hometown, moving from London, their home base before their six-month stint in Kurdistan.<\/span>Courtesy of Malia Bowkett<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
Outdoor attractions<\/div>\n

For both the Krufts and the Bowketts, an abundance of outdoor opportunities was important.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister lives out here,\u201d Malia Bowkett said. \u201cAnd we absolutely loved it. We loved the outdoors \u2013 how much you can do and enjoy the outside and have a short commute. We felt we\u2019d be able to have a really good work-life balance here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides considering London, the Bowketts looked at Boston, Florida, Colorado and California, all places where they have family nearby. They also looked at New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., where jobs in their professions, strategic communications for Malia and geoscience for James, were plentiful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to move. And the natural place for us would have been going back to London, because we\u2019d retained a base there,\u201d Malia said. \u201cWe had a property, we had large friendship groups, and we had professional experience in London. My husband\u2019s British, and so his family is there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Malia said neither James nor she was convinced they wanted the urban hassles of London.<\/p>\n

With a young son, neither of the Bowketts wanted to spend the three hours a day commuting that would be required in London. Similar commuting concerns were a strike against the other metropolises on their list.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had always had a commute of at least an hour, and when we moved to have a bit more space, we were easily having an hour-and-a-half to two-hour commute each way,\u201d Malia said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to spend four hours a day going to work. That was time I was not able to spend being productive at work or being with my son.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ed
Ed and Jamie Kruft and their daughter Sadie, 18, holding the family dog, Ralph, on Tuesday at their home in Edgemont Ranch.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
COVID-19 speeds move<\/div>\n

The Krufts were regular visitors to Colorado, vacationing for summer outdoor recreation and winter ski trips.<\/p>\n

Their desire to escape Austin\u2019s heat, their enjoyment of summer hiking opportunities and their four adult children\u2019s love for skiing and snowboarding (from Colorado family vacations), convinced the Krufts they would eventually settle in the state.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 1, about two to five years ahead of schedule, the Krufts moved into a home in Edgemont Ranch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m shocked with how beautiful it has been,\u201d Jamie Kruft said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t really ever been here in the fall. Because that is not a normal vacation season, right? My friends are like, \u2018Oh, is it snowing?\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018No, it\u2019s so beautiful.\u2019 Yesterday, the heat index in Austin was 97 degrees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Telecommuting helped smooth the move from Austin.<\/p>\n

Ed Kruft runs a company that monitors oil pipelines and Jamie has a small business helping students prepare their college-entry essays. Their youngest child, Sadie, 18, is a first-year student at the University of California at Los Angeles, where learning this semester is all remote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith COVID, life came to a screeching halt. We both can telecommute,\u201d Jamie said. \u201cWe were supposed to be empty-nesters. We thought Sadie would be at UCLA. Interest rates are at historic lows. We thought: Why wait? We really didn\u2019t have a reason to wait anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

London vs. Durango<\/div>\n

The Bowketts were able to swap a 550-square-foot flat in London for a house more than triple the size in Durango West.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s space Malia Bowkett appreciates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith a 6-foot-5 husband and a very energetic toddler, it would just feel incredibly claustrophobic in London,\u201d Malia said. \u201cIf we would have stayed, I felt like we would have ended up scrambling a lot, working all the time and only really seeing each other as a family for part of the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bowketts have run into a problem many Durangoans are familiar with: Making professional sacrifices to live in a remote mountain town.<\/p>\n

Malia has begun selling real estate, and James is remodeling and repairing houses as well as serving as a lecturer in geosciences at Fort Lewis College.<\/p>\n

But the professional sacrifices have been worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spend a lot more time together, we\u2019re able to spend a lot of time outside,\u201d Malia said. \u201cThis year in particular with COVID, changing what we can do with leisure time, I\u2019ve gotten into mountain biking, and I\u2019ve been loving that. You know, instead of spending the two hours on the train going to work, in Durango in 15 minutes your on a trail. So yeah, all the reasons that we moved here have delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outdoor wonderland, COVID-19 draw new residents, spur home sales<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[950,13,28,453,445,614],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-housing-and-urban-planning","tag-newsletter-lead","tag-real-estate"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87824,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50760\/revisions\/87824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50760"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}