New Amazon Facility in Colorado Springs 2021

[Jacob C.]

Amazon is currently building a new 800k sq ft facility near the Colorado Springs Airport. The facility is supposed to be completed Summer 2021 and is expected to bring in 1K+ new jobs to the area. A decent chunk of these workers should be renters and that should increase demand for rentals/possibly drive up rent. How much do you expect this to affect the rental/housing market in SE Colorado Springs? Will effects trickle down to the rest of Colorado Springs? How will this affect other marketing niches in the area? Any thoughts are appreciated.

[Bill S.]

@Jacob C. it helps. Jobs are the driver of rents. 1K jobs in a city the size of Colorado Springs, is not a market mover or maker. Makes things better but I would not expect it to drive up demand by itself.

According to the census bureau, there are approximately 240,000 jobs in El Paso County. The add of Amazon is less than 0.5%. Barely a blip.

According to the most recent rent survey (found here) by the local apartment association, there are about 50K units. If each of the new workers moved here and each rented their own apartment (not likely) that represents about 2% of the number of units. With the stated vacancy rate of 5% for the area, this could lower the vacancy rate to 3% at the very most. The fact is, they added about 750 new units to the market last year so again. Not likely to see a noticeable impact in and of itself. 

While it's great news, it is just a small part of the bigger picture of the growth of the area.