Cost of Living in Telluride
Telluride is genuinely, extremely expensive -- an extreme, disclosed housing-price spread sits atop a 9.47% combined local sales tax, and the town's own housing-price-to-income ratio is the most severe disclosed anywhere in this dataset.
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Learn moreA genuinely extreme, real housing-price spread
Zillow's typical home value (blending condos, row houses, and estate homes) is $1,915,392, while the median SALE price in the town of Telluride specifically was $4.5 million in the most recent month cited (up 30.4% YoY), and San Miguel County's median sale price reached $5.78 million in June 2026 (up nearly 65% YoY). This is a small, luxury-skewed market where individual high-value transactions can swing medians sharply -- see housing for the full picture.
A severe, real income-to-price gap
The Telluride Foundation cites the town's median home price at roughly 37 times median household income ($102,405) -- and local school-district salaries ($50,000-$94,665) sit dwarfed by one-bedroom market rents ($4,000-$5,000/month). This is a genuinely more severe affordability gap than the housing-crisis figures disclosed for Aspen elsewhere in this dataset.
A real, meaningful local sales tax
Telluride's combined sales tax rate is 9.47%: 2.9% state + 1% San Miguel County + 4.5% Town of Telluride + 1.07% special district -- higher than Breckenridge's 8.875% and Steamboat's 8.4% (both built alongside this record), though below Aspen's 10.35%.
Key takeaways
- Telluride's housing figures carry an extreme, real spread: $1.9M typical home value versus $4.5M-$5.78M median sale prices in the same window -- treat any single figure as directional.
- The Telluride Foundation cites town home prices at roughly 37x median household income -- a genuinely more severe ratio than Aspen's own disclosed housing-crisis figures elsewhere in this dataset.
- School-district salaries ($50,000-$94,665) sit dwarfed by one-bedroom market rents ($4,000-$5,000/month) -- a stark, real wage-to-rent gap.
- The 9.47% combined sales tax sits between Breckenridge's and Steamboat's rates, below Aspen's.
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