Builders, lenders and housing advocates urge College Station to lower impact fees to boost homeownership

More than a dozen local builders, real estate professionals and housing advocates urged the College Station City Council on April 10 to reduce or waive development impact fees, saying the charges raise the cost of starter homes and push buyers out of the market.

Speakers from the Greater Brazos Valley Builders Association, local Realtors and nonprofit housing groups told council members that impact fees and other development charges are being passed along to purchasers and are a material barrier for first-time buyers.

Chandler Arden, co-chair of the Government Affairs Committee for the Greater Brazos Valley Builders Association, told the council that "impact fees do have an effect on homeownership," and that the fees can price would-be first-time buyers out of their first house. Carrie Bullington, a bank loan officer, said she had turned away "3 this week" first-time buyers who could not qualify after impact fees were added and said, "4 or 5 8000 dollars is a lot of money to add on to the price of a home." Hunter Goodwin, a developer, told the council bluntly that builders "are not going to work for free and we are not going to absorb those fees."

Speakers urged multiple approaches. Richard Woodward, who said he serves on the city's impact-fee advisory committee, summarized the legal framework the committee used in its 2021 review and emphasized that the city can reduce or waive fees in certain circumstances. "If you don't . . . recover those costs from the people that are necessitating those costs, that's a subsidy," Woodward said. He pointed to statutory language that allows a political subdivision to reduce or waive impact fees for service units that qualify as affordable housing.

Representing housing providers, Charles Coats of Bryan-College Station Habitat for Humanity said the shortage is broader than impact fees alone: "Impact fees is only a very small part of the whole issue," he said, and encouraged continued work on the city's 2024 Housing Action Plan. Veronica Morgan, a consulting engineer, showed staff maps of vacant, developable acreage inside the city and said much of the land has sewer or infrastructure constraints; she urged a broader, multi-pronged approach that could include strategic infrastructure investments and partnerships.

Builders and their trade group representatives urged the council to lower fees as a straightforward lever to reduce final house prices. Several speakers said College Station remains a competitive market and that builders can and will build in other Texas cities with lower fees if City policy does not change.

Why it matters: City staff and council have repeatedly cited housing affordability as a priority in recent planning work. Council members heard these comments as part of the public comment period; no formal action or ordinance change regarding impact fees was taken at the April 10 meeting. Several speakers asked council to use the statutory waiver language for affordable housing and to consider targeted fee relief as a tool to expand homeownership opportunities.

What council members said: Council members did not take immediate action on impact fees at the meeting. Several council members later discussed housing and affordability while reviewing the city's strategic plan and comprehensive-plan "existing conditions" report, both on the April 10 agenda.

Ending note: Residents and trade groups asked council to pair fee changes with targeted programs (down-payment assistance, infrastructure investments and coordinated development incentives) to increase the supply of entry-level homes without shifting costs onto current taxpayers.