Part 2: “We Have to be Okay Changing”

The Realtor perspective on housing

First published in the Los Alamos Reporter in February 2023

Real-estate agents are “optimistic by nature,” says Ryan Maupin, but when you talk to them about housing in Los Alamos, a distinctly guarded note creeps in.

“We’re in a huge national housing shortage, people talk about the housing market crashing but we’re still 5 million units short of what we need in the entire country,” said Maupin, associate broker at RE/MAX First. We met via Zoom in mid-January 2023 to talk about the housing situation in Los Alamos. “We have this huge imbalance; we don’t have enough housing and people can’t afford the housing we do have.” In Los Alamos, it’s even worse, he added. “We used to say that the $500,000 houses were the expensive ones in town. That used to be the top 5% of sales. Now it’s $860,000.”

In fact, half a million dollars is the price of the average home in Los Alamos, he said, and that number is steadily rising. It will rise until the average employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory wil…