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Monument's Growth Boom Comes With a Tax Question New Buyers Should Ask First

Monument's Growth Boom Comes With a Tax Question New Buyers Should Ask First

Picture two homes in Monument listed within a few weeks of each other, both around $700,000, both roughly the same square footage. One sits in an established section near Woodmoor, with mature pines and a roof that's already been through a few hailstorms. The other is new construction going up near Baptist Road, close enough to walk to a shopping center that isn't finished yet. A buyer comparing them will naturally look at lot size, finishes, and commute time. What they probably won't ask, and what actually matters more for their long-term cost, is a question on this November's ballot.

That's the piece of Monument's market that doesn't show up on a listing sheet.

What's Actually Landing Near Baptist Road

Monument's growth right now is concentrated in one corridor, and it's worth naming what's arriving there specifically, because the names matter more than the category.

The Legacy at Jackson Landing shopping center, a 225,000-square-foot project on 30 acres just south of the existing Home Depot, broke ground this year with confirmed tenants including Target, Marshalls, HomeGoods, Chick-fil-A, and Firehouse Subs. It sits right off I-25 near Baptist Road, and the developer says a grand opening is expected in October 2027, which means anyone buying nearby now is buying ahead of the amenity, not next to it.

A few miles over, ACCO Engineered Systems announced a $36 million expansion into the Falcon Commerce Center, projecting up to 135 new jobs at an average wage just over $87,000 a year. That facility will sit next to the UPS distribution center that opened in 2022, in a two-building industrial park built by VanTrust Real Estate, its first project in Colorado. In January 2026, the town council also approved a 10.3-acre mixed-use business park on the same stretch of I-25.

None of this is abstract corporate expansion happening somewhere else. It's happening along the same two-mile run of road, and it's arriving fast enough that even the smaller openings tell the same story. A new Dairy Queen opened on Cinematic View in early August, locally owned by Karlye Brooks, who grew up in Monument and graduated from the local high school, along with her husband. Growth here isn't only chains moving in from outside. It's also longtime residents building something new in the middle of it.

The Number Everyone Quotes Differently

Ask five sources what a home in Monument costs right now and you'll get five different answers, and none of them are wrong exactly. They're measuring different slices of the same market.

Source Type Window Figure What It's Actually Capturing
National home-value index Through July 2026 roughly $754,000 average value A modeled estimate across all home types, not a sale price
Automated sales tracker A recent 30-day snapshot $700,000 median sold price Actual closings, mixed home types
Same tracker, a different snapshot Confirmed the week of June 3, 2026 $834,545 median sold price Same market, a different mix of homes closed that stretch
Local MLS pull, single-family only Late 2025 roughly $850,000 median sold price Larger single-family homes only, no townhomes or condos

The spread isn't noise. Entry-level townhomes and smaller single-family homes in Monument start in the mid-$400,000s, while the established single-family market runs $600,000 to $800,000-plus for updated homes with real lot size. A median built from all of that together will bounce by tens of thousands of dollars depending on which homes happened to close that month. If you're comparing Monument to another Tri-Lakes town, ask what's actually in the sample before you anchor on the headline number.

The more useful number this year has been days on market, because it tells a cleaner story than price does. Median days on market across the Tri-Lakes area hit 87 in January 2026, the slowest reading in five years, worse than the rate-shock stretch of late 2022. By April it had dropped to 23 days. By May it was down to 19. As of August, Monument specifically is running closer to 29 days, roughly double where it sat a year earlier, while Colorado Springs overall is averaging around 42 days on market with close to 43 percent of active listings taking at least one price cut. Read together, that's a market where inventory came back hard this year and buyers finally have room to be selective, but homes priced and prepared correctly are still moving in under a month.

The Fight Over Who Pays For The Roads

Here's the part that doesn't show up in any market report, and it's the part that actually explains where this is heading.

When the Legacy at Jackson Landing project went to a community meeting, residents didn't push back on the stores. They pushed back on the road. Traffic already backs up along Jackson Creek Parkway, and turning from Lyons Tail Road onto the parkway has no timed signal, which residents flagged as dangerous well before the shopping center broke ground.

The town's answer to that gap is on the ballot this November. Monument already collects a 2 percent use tax on construction materials, and the question voters will decide is whether to add another 1.5 percent, earmarked specifically for road projects, with the long-stalled widening of Jackson Creek Parkway named as the priority.

What makes this worth understanding isn't the tax rate. It's how the town tested the idea before deciding to put it forward. According to survey work the town commissioned, when 636 residents were first asked about a straight 1.5 percent use tax increase, only 39 percent supported it and 55 percent were opposed. Then the survey told them where the money would go. Once respondents heard the funds would be legally locked to roads and infrastructure, and that developers and builders would carry much of the cost because they buy materials in volume, support jumped to 64 percent and opposition fell to 31. The single statement that moved the most people, a legal guarantee that the money could fund nothing but roads, swung 68 percent of respondents toward yes on its own.

The council's June 15 action was a consensus to draft ballot language, not a final adopted measure. Voters decide in November. But the survey result tells you something a price chart never will: the town already knows this tax isn't popular on its face, and the case for it depends entirely on convincing people that builders, not residents, will absorb the cost.

What This Means If You're Comparing New Construction To Resale

That's the friction point worth sitting with if you're actually shopping in Monument right now, not just watching the market from outside.

A construction-materials use tax lands on new construction. It doesn't touch a resale home that was framed and drywalled a decade ago. So if the November measure passes, a new build near the Baptist Road corridor, timed to a builder's permit pulled after the tax takes effect, carries a cost exposure that a comparably priced resale home in an established section like Woodmoor simply doesn't have. Builders don't absorb material costs quietly. They price them in.

That doesn't mean new construction is a bad choice. It means the calculus is different than it looks on a spec sheet. If you're weighing a new build against a resale home in Monument this fall, it's worth asking the builder directly when their permit was pulled and whether their pricing already assumes the tax passes. It's a straightforward question, and any builder working in this corridor right now should have an answer ready, because they've been watching the same ballot language the town council has.

A Few Questions We Hear Often

Has the use tax measure actually passed? Not yet. As of this writing, the town council directed staff to prepare ballot language after the June 15 vote. Monument voters will decide in November 2026.

Does this affect homes that are already built? No. A construction-materials use tax applies to materials purchased for new construction and permitted work going forward. It doesn't retroactively apply to a home that's already standing.

Is this only relevant near Baptist Road? The tax itself would apply anywhere new construction happens in town, but the road project it's meant to fund, widening Jackson Creek Parkway, is specific to that corridor, which is also where the shopping center and industrial development are concentrated. That's where the traffic pressure and the funding question overlap most directly.

If you're trying to figure out what Monument's growth actually means for a specific address, whether that's a new build near the Baptist Road corridor or a resale home tucked into an established section, The Elite Team can walk you through what a builder's pricing already assumes, what the November ballot outcome could change, and what your money actually buys once you look past the headline number. Schedule your free market consultation and get a straight answer before you write an offer.

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