Denver Just Backed 82 Condos You Can Actually Buy at 507 Acoma

Median home price in Denver right now is around $573,000. Sit with that number for a second.

Now here is the other number.

So on Sept. 15, 2026, Denver's Community Planning and Housing Committee approved a $6,314,000 contract with the Colorado Department of Local Affairs to make it happen. It went through as a consent item, Resolution 26-1340, which is the boring paperwork way of saying nobody fought it. The contract itself is HOST-202684078 and it runs all the way out to Jan. 31, 2031. Government money moves slow. But it moves.

What is actually getting built

The project is called Bannock Lofts. Eighty-two condos total, and the mix is smart. Nineteen one-bedrooms, 56 two-bedrooms, and seven three-bedrooms. So the bulk of it is those two-bedroom units, which is exactly what a working household with a kid or a roommate or a home office actually needs. This is the part people miss with affordable housing. It is not all studios stacked like shoeboxes. There are family-sized units in here.

It sits in City Council District 7, right near the Golden Triangle. If you know that pocket, you know the location is real. Museums, downtown a short walk away, the light rail close. This is not some parcel out by the highway nobody wanted. This is central Denver land, and the city is putting income-capped ownership on it. That combination almost never happens.

The developer is Shanahan Development. Construction is projected to start late 2026 with completion in 2028. So if you are doing the math, keys in hand somewhere around two years out from now.

Who this is for

The units are set aside for households earning no more than 100% of area median income. And here is where you need to actually understand what AMI means, because the term gets thrown around like everybody was born knowing it.

Denver's AMI runs roughly $63,000 for a one-person household. That is the benchmark the city uses to decide who qualifies for affordable housing. So we are not talking about a lottery for millionaires. We are talking about the person making a normal Denver salary who has watched every single listing sail past what their paycheck can carry.

I mean, think about who that is. Teachers. Nurses. The person who runs your favorite coffee shop. Hayley and I have friends in exactly this spot, good jobs, careful with money, and every time they run the numbers on a market where the median tops $573,000, the math just laughs at them. This is who 82 units at these prices is built for.

Why the land trust piece matters

Here is the thing that makes this different from a one-time discount. Mayor Mike Johnston has framed the whole strategy around keeping these units permanently affordable, especially at transit-friendly sites, using a land trust model.

What that means in plain terms. Normally you buy a below-market condo, you sell it five years later at full market rate, and you personally cash out while that affordable unit disappears from the pool forever. The land trust structure caps the resale too. So the next working family gets the same shot you got. The unit stays affordable for the long haul instead of getting flipped into a market-rate condo the first chance somebody gets.

You can love it or you can argue with it. Some folks want to build all that equity themselves. But the city's bet is that keeping the units affordable forever does more good than letting a handful of owners hit the jackpot once.

They have done this before

And this is not Shanahan's first time running this play with the city. They already partnered with Denver and the Elevation Community Land Trust on 62 permanently affordable for-sale condos over at 2907 to 2915 Welton St. in Five Points.

On that one, Denver's HOST put