Am I Headed For Trouble in Taos?

[Willie Presson]

Something to ponder - the average home price in Taos is over $325,000 and the average income is around $23,000. The seasonal residents have inflated the prices. There are no decent paying jobs, other than the state and the schools which are cutting salaries and hours at the moment. Unless you come here with money, the only way to afford a home is to have a very successful business, which is also tough because the only people with money are only here a few months per year.
Combine that with the intense isolation (and isolationists) that you rightly fear and you are "heading for trouble".

[Santa Fe]

Tao is expensive and will only get more expensive because of transportation or the lack thereof. That is partly because of the mountains but even more so it is due to the politics of Northern New Mexico. And it is part of the politics that nobody talks about it.

The logical place for a decent highway to Taos is up the High Road from Santa Fe, but what do you have? A road that is studded with stop lights and left turns and curb cuts and useless interchanges. Little Pojoaque alone has four stop lights, one strangely designed interchange, and some curb cuts and left turn lanes that each serve a single business. Then there are a couple of stop lights, a planned useless interchange, and you hit Espanola which has so many stop lights that the traffic is worse than going through Santa Fe.

Then it is better for a while -- there are no people -- until right south of Taos which is a nightmare in ski season. There was discussion of a bypass for that section, but the powers that be in Taos vetoed it.

I live 40 miles from Taos, but haven't been there in more than a year. Unless you are a skier it is hard to justify fighting the traffic. And if you are coming from the Santa Fe area, you are going through Rio Arriba County with all its drunk drivers so certainly don't make the trip on a weekend after 6 PM.

The state is rebuilding the road slowly but they are making it worse. Everybody with any influence gets a stop light or an interchange so they can sell their land for a profit.

So of course everything in Taos is expensive. It is expensive to ship it in. The situation has got to be bad for business in Taos, but nobody talks about it. I suppose if you live in Taos, have money, and are opposed to growth, then you might think it is ideal.

[bongo]

Originally Posted by Towanda

And.....I don't think Farmington has the "hum" like Taos does.

LOL I think we ALL heard the hum in Taos back in the '70s!! But retrospectively we now know it was just the humming in our brain cells LOL

I can remember 20-30 years ago talk about building a road from SF to Taos, not the high road which would require going thru the mountains, but up onto the mesa across to the gorge bridge. Too big an undertaking.

I would never consider the commute from Espanola to Taos. The canyon along the Rio Grande by Embudo is not the best commute in the winter, not to mention the rest of the long stretch.

For me part of Taos' charm has always been its isolation. We have a home on the high road and have always just as soon gone down into Taos as gone down into Santa Fe or Espanola. There are some wonderful people that have lived in Taos for decades, just good down-to-earth folks getting by.

Real estate prices are high, especially for the size home to accommodate a large family like yours, Deviantlore. Is the job a done deal or still in negotiation stage?

[jaxart]

Originally Posted by bongo

Real estate prices are high, especially for the size home to accommodate a large family like yours, Deviantlore. Is the job a done deal or still in negotiation stage?

NOTE: The OP began this thread in August, 2007, and hasn't replied since!!

Not sure why people revive threads as old as this one was?

[mortimer]

Originally Posted by jaxart

NOTE: The OP began this thread in August, 2007, and hasn't replied since!!

Not sure why people revive threads as old as this one was?

I would say that it was done so because everything in the thread
is still just as valid today as it was in 2007. It's better than starting
a new thread so that people using the search function have to wade
through multiple threads just to get some information.

I didn't even notice that it was that old until you pointed it out.

As for the OP, I would guess that deviantlore got a clue and decided
that one would need an extra $75k/year or thereabouts to live an
equivalent lifestyle that a $50 wage would pay in Farmington.