The 3 Percent Line Item Nobody Explains Until You're Under Contract in Mountain Village

Say you're closing on a place in Mountain Village this fall. Somewhere in the stack of documents your title company sends over, a wire instruction appears for an organization you've probably never heard of: the Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association, or TMVOA. The amount is 3 percent of your purchase price. On a $2 million condo, that's $60,000, due by wire, with the wire fees themselves also landing on you or the seller depending on how the contract splits it.

This isn't a scam and it isn't optional. It's the Real Estate Transfer Assessment, and nearly every property sale in Mountain Village includes it. What surprises most buyers isn't that the fee exists. It's what the fee actually funds, how the paperwork works, and the fact that the arrangement behind it is going through real change right now, in 2026, not in some distant future.

What RETA actually is, and why it isn't a government tax

TMVOA is a private, nonprofit owners association, not a municipal government. According to TMVOA's own RETA page, the assessment is set at 3 percent on eligible real estate transactions and is governed by the association's General Declarations rather than by town ordinance. That distinction matters because it means the fee sits alongside your closing costs as a private assessment, not a public transfer tax, even though it functions almost identically to one.

Compare that to the Town of Telluride, three miles down the gondola line, where a separate 3 percent Real Estate Transfer Tax applies to property sales inside town limits and Sunset Ridge. Telluride's version is a genuine municipal tax, codified in the town's finance department pages and municipal code, and the revenue is directed toward capital improvements, open space, and town reserves. Two neighborhoods, the same headline rate, two entirely different collectors and two entirely different purposes.

If you're cross-shopping a condo in Mountain Village against a comparable unit in town, the sticker prices might look close. The transfer assessment behind each one is funding a completely different thing, and neither shows up on a listing sheet.

The paperwork that catches people off guard

The RETA process is more procedural than most buyers expect from what amounts to a private HOA fee. Per TMVOA, the buyer or seller (or more often, the title company on their behalf) has to complete a RETA Information Sheet, submit payment by wire along with a copy of the deed, and separately complete a New Owner Information Sheet. Once TMVOA confirms the wire and verifies dues are current, it issues a Real Estate Transfer Assessment Payment Certification Form, which then has to be recorded with the San Miguel County Clerk and Recorder within five business days of the deed's recording. Miss that window and you're dealing with a lien issue on your own timeline, not the county's.

Deed-restricted properties are exempt, but the exemption isn't automatic. It requires a formal application, and TMVOA's documentation is explicit that missing the 30-day filing window after a transfer triggers a flat $500 penalty before a certificate of exemption will even be issued. For a workforce or attainable housing purchase where every dollar of closing cost matters, that's a detail worth flagging to your title company on day one of the contract, not the week before closing.

Who pays RETA is a negotiated term of your purchase contract, the same way Colorado's own statewide documentary fee is negotiable between buyer and seller elsewhere in the state. Nothing about the assessment dictates buyer or seller responsibility by default, so it's worth confirming in writing rather than assuming.

Where the money actually goes

The reason RETA exists at 3 percent instead of the modest fees you'd find in a non-resort Colorado town comes down to one piece of infrastructure: the free gondola connecting Mountain Village to Telluride. TMVOA describes itself as the primary funding source for the gondola, covering roughly $3.5 million a year in operations and maintenance alone, on top of past capital projects like a 2007-2008 system upgrade and a 2017 redundant power system and cabin expansion. The rest of RETA revenue goes toward TMVOA's other member services, including event sponsorship, community grants, and programs like Dial A Ride.

So when people say the gondola is free, what they mean is that riders don't pay a fare. Someone is still paying, and for the better part of three decades, that someone has largely been whoever bought or sold property in Mountain Village.

Why 2027 matters to a 2026 closing

Here's the part that doesn't show up in a standard closing summary. TMVOA's contractual obligation to fund the gondola expires at the end of 2027, which is close enough to the present that anyone closing on a Mountain Village property this year is buying into a funding structure that's actively being renegotiated, not one that's settled and stable.

The scramble to figure out what happens next has already produced two separate ballot measures. In November 2024, San Miguel County voters approved ballot measure 3A, which funds gondola operations beginning in 2028 alongside an expansion of SMART bus service. Then, in a more recent vote, Mountain Village residents approved a 5 percent tax on lift tickets sold at Telluride Ski Resort to help fund the eventual gondola replacement, while a similar measure failed in the Town of Telluride by fewer than 20 votes. That's not a footnote. It's two neighboring towns reaching different conclusions, within the same year, about who should carry a shared piece of infrastructure.

Meanwhile TMVOA itself has been sorting through its own governance questions. A July 2025 report from Telluride Daily Planet noted that TMVOA had accumulated $54 million in reserves as property values climbed after 2020, and that members were in the middle of an electronic vote, running from July 1 through July 28, 2025, on amendments to the association's declaration, articles of incorporation, and bylaws, a result of a 2023 legal settlement. Part of the debate centered on how much control the ski resort's ownership retains over board seats and RETA spending decisions as the homeowner base grows relative to the original developer structure. None of that changes what you owe at closing today. It does mean the entity collecting your 3 percent has, within the past year, been actively negotiating how much say homeowners get over how that money gets used going forward.

What this means if you're closing this year

None of this should change whether Mountain Village is the right property for you. It should change how you read the closing disclosure. A few practical habits worth adopting:

• Confirm early in your contract negotiation who is responsible for the RETA payment and any wire fees, since it's a negotiated term rather than a default.
• If the property carries any deed restriction, ask your title company to start the RETA exemption application well before the 30-day clock starts, given the $500 penalty for missing it.
• Build the recording deadline with San Miguel County into your post-closing to-do list. It's easy to treat RETA as done once the wire clears, but the certification still has to be recorded within five business days.
• If you're weighing a Mountain Village property against one in Telluride proper, ask what each town's transfer assessment funds, since the same 3 percent number means different things depending on which side of the ridge you're on.

A few questions that come up often

Does RETA apply to every sale in Mountain Village? Most transactions are subject to it, but deed-restricted properties can qualify for exemption through a formal application process with TMVOA.

Is RETA the same as a property tax? No. It's a one-time assessment collected by TMVOA, a private owners association, at the time of transfer. It's separate from ongoing county property taxes.

Will RETA disappear once TMVOA's gondola-funding obligation ends in 2027? That isn't settled. TMVOA's contracted funding role expires at the end of 2027, and voters have already approved separate measures, a county-wide ballot measure in November 2024 and a Mountain Village lift ticket tax in November 2025, aimed at funding gondola operations and eventual replacement from 2028 onward. Whether RETA itself continues at 3 percent, changes, or gets redirected is still part of an active planning and governance process.

Understanding a fee like this before you're three days from closing is the kind of detail that separates a smooth transaction from a stressful one. If you're weighing a purchase or sale in Mountain Village or comparing it against options in Telluride, Patrick Pelisson can walk through exactly how these numbers apply to your specific property and timeline. Let's Connect.