Ask any title company that closes deals in Three Springs what surprises buyers most, and it is rarely the home. It is the tax certificate. Where an in-town Durango closing usually lists one or two taxing authorities, a Three Springs closing can show four separate metropolitan districts, a sanitation district that has nothing to do with the City of Durango, and a homeowners association that answers to a professional management company based outside the state. None of that shows up in the listing price. All of it shows up in the first property tax bill.
That gap between what a home costs to buy and what it costs to hold is the real story in Three Springs right now, and 2026 just added a new line item to prove it.
Four districts, one neighborhood
Three Springs was built out through a structure common to large master-planned developments in Colorado: metropolitan districts that finance infrastructure through property tax debt rather than through the developer paying cash up front. The Three Springs Metropolitan District No. 3 was approved by the City of Durango in 2006 as the first of what became four separate districts, each carrying its own boundary and its own capacity to levy debt.
Here is the part that catches buyers off guard: the districts are not identical, and they do not cover Three Springs uniformly. District No. 1 corresponds specifically to Village 1 and the Mercado Business District. The other three districts sit alongside it, transferring tax revenue between each other through an inter-district financing agreement to pay for parks, drainage, streets, and sidewalks across the development. When the city approved the fourth district, it was structured to finance roughly $2.66 million in improvements for a 39-acre parcel known as Three Springs Crossings, with a debt service mill levy capped at 50 mills and a repayment window stretching 30 years.
What that means in practice: a home two streets away from another home in Three Springs may sit in a different metro district, carrying a different mill levy, with a different number of years left on its bond repayment. The address alone does not tell you the number. The parcel does.
The fire station that just landed on 2026 bills
The newest addition to that stack is the clearest illustration of what the districts have not yet paid for. Three Springs has grown for two decades without its own fire station, even as call volume in the area climbed. The Durango Fire Protection District made that case directly ahead of last November's election, noting that Three Springs has no fire station, yet it sees a heightened call volume.
Fixing that required two separate ballot measures to pass together: a City of Durango question and a Durango Fire Protection District question. Both did. According to results reported by Durango Local News, the fire district's measure won by a margin of less than 3 percent, about 236 votes, and is projected to raise close to $3 million in 2026 for fire protection and emergency services across the district.
Before the vote, the Durango Telegraph ran the math behind the city's half of that ask: with La Plata County assessing residential property at 6.25 percent of value, a $750,000 home would carry an assessed value near $47,000, and the proposed 4.45 mill increase would add roughly $209 a year to that home's tax bill. That measure applied specifically to properties inside Durango's city limits, which includes Three Springs. The second measure, the fire district's own question, covered the wider 325-square-mile district beyond city limits and needed to pass alongside the city's for the station to get built. Three Springs is the specific reason the station is being built, and it is the neighborhood that will finally get emergency response times that match the rest of Durango once construction is complete.
Layer that on top of the existing metro district debt service and the picture starts to look less like a single number and more like a stack.
A sewer bill the city does not touch
The stack keeps going below ground. Durango's own building permit fee page notes that projects south of Bodo Industrial Park, including Three Springs, are served by the South Durango Sanitation District, a separate entity from the City of Durango with its own sewer rates. Homeowners inside the city limits proper typically see sewer folded into a single city utility bill. Three Springs residents contact a different district entirely.
There is an offsetting detail worth knowing here, and it cuts the other way. The same city fee page confirms that Three Springs projects are exempted from the city's Park Fees, the one-time charge builders in most Durango neighborhoods pay to fund park land and construction. Three Springs does not pay that fee because the metro district structure already finances its parks and open space directly through the district bonds described above. It is not a hidden discount so much as a different mechanism for paying for the same thing. The neighborhood's twelve pocket parks and its interlaced trail system were financed through district debt instead of a builder's park fee passed on at closing.
What the price tag does not resolve on its own
None of this shows up if you are comparing Three Springs to another Durango neighborhood using a single median number. Three Springs itself does not have a single number. Single-family homes in the neighborhood have carried a noticeably higher median sale price over the trailing twelve months than the townhomes and condos built on smaller footprints within the same development, a gap of roughly $90,000 between the two product types as of spring 2026 reporting. A buyer comparing "Three Springs" to "in-town Durango" on price alone is often comparing two different products inside Three Springs before the neighborhood comparison even starts.
Add the district and association layer, and the comparison gets more specific still. A townhome and a single-family home a few blocks apart can carry different HOA dues, different metro district mill levies depending on which of the four districts they fall in, and the same sanitation district bill regardless of home type. None of that is disclosed in a scroll through listing photos. It shows up on the county assessor's parcel record and on the title company's tax certificate once you are under contract.
What to ask before you write an offer
| Question | Where to get the answer |
|---|---|
| Which of the four metro districts does this parcel sit in, and what is its current mill levy? | Title company's tax certificate or La Plata County Assessor |
| What do current HOA dues cover, and are they trending up? | Three Springs Residential Association, managed by CCMC |
| What is the current South Durango Sanitation District rate for this address? | South Durango Sanitation District directly |
| How many years remain on the district's debt service? | District's annual transparency notice, filed with the Special District Association of Colorado |
None of these questions are unique to Three Springs as a red flag. Metro districts are common across newer Colorado developments, and they often fund amenities a buyer genuinely wants, from trails to parks to, now, a fire station. The point is not that the structure is a problem. The point is that it is invisible until someone asks, and the sale price alone will never answer it.
A neighborhood still catching up to itself
Three Springs was designed twenty years ago as Southwest Colorado's first traditional neighborhood development, planned to grow to roughly 2,000 homes with a genuine business district, walkable blocks, and a trail network that connects straight into the Spur Line. The fire station funded in the 2025 election is not a sign that something went wrong. It is a sign that the neighborhood is still finishing the infrastructure list it started decades ago, and that current owners and new buyers are the ones funding that final stretch.
That is a different question than whether Three Springs is a good place to buy. It is a question about what a specific parcel actually costs to hold, and that number depends on which district it sits in, what the association covers, and what the sanitation district charges this year. A median price cannot answer that. A parcel-specific tax certificate can.
FAQ
Does every home in Three Springs pay the same district fees? No. The four metro districts have different boundaries, so two homes in different sections of the neighborhood can carry different mill levies and different remaining terms on district debt.
Will the new fire protection mill levy only affect Three Springs? No. The city's portion of the increase applies to every property inside Durango's city limits, and a second measure applies across the broader fire protection district beyond city limits. The station itself is being built specifically for Three Springs because the area has lacked one despite elevated call volume.
Is the sanitation district bill separate from HOA dues? Yes. The South Durango Sanitation District bill covers sewer service and is entirely separate from Residential Association dues managed by CCMC, which cover things like alley maintenance and snow removal in some sections.
If you are weighing a Three Springs address against another Durango neighborhood, the sale price is the easiest number to compare and the least complete one. Jeremy Deas can pull the actual district, association, and sanitation figures for a specific parcel before you write an offer, so the number you are comparing is the real one.
