Walk two comparable houses in Mayberry, one of Colorado Springs' newer planned communities, and the listing prices might sit within a few thousand dollars of each other. Pull the tax certification for each parcel and the story changes. One sits in Mayberry Metropolitan District No. 1, which currently carries a mill levy of zero. The other sits in Mayberry Metropolitan District No. 3, certified for 2025 at 79.878 mills, with 63.680 of those mills dedicated purely to bond repayment. Same development name on the sign out front. Very different number on the tax bill.
If you're comparing Colorado Springs neighborhoods against the median price you already found on a portal, this is the kind of detail that median price can't show you. It lives one layer down, in the metropolitan district that financed the roads, water lines, and parks under a subdivision before you ever toured it.
Why the Same Development Can Carry Different Tax Bills on the Same Street
A metropolitan district is a local government, not a homeowners association. Colorado developers use them to front the cost of streets, sewer, water, and parks, then repay that cost over decades through a mill levy stacked on top of the county's regular property tax rate. The mill levy shows up on your tax bill, not as a separate invoice, which is part of why it catches buyers off guard. Unlike an HOA, a metro district isn't listed in the MLS. The most reliable way to find one is to pull the actual tax bill for the parcel, or check with the El Paso County Assessor and County Treasurer directly.
Large developments rarely form one metro district. They form several, often five or ten, organized to match construction phases or to separate residential parcels from commercial ones. Mayberry, Colorado Springs runs five numbered districts. Here is what El Paso County certified for tax year 2025:
| District | 2025 Mill Levy | Bond Portion |
|---|---|---|
| Mayberry Metropolitan District No. 1 | 0.000 mills | — |
| Mayberry Metropolitan District No. 3 | 79.878 mills | 63.680 mills |
A parcel sits inside one of these districts, not all of them, and your tax notice names the one that applies to your specific address. Together, the Mayberry district family was certified to collect $246,926 in 2025 for bond repayment alone, debt service on infrastructure already built and already borrowed against.
Banning Lewis Ranch Runs the Same Structure at a Larger Scale
Banning Lewis Ranch, one of the largest master-planned communities inside Colorado Springs city limits, is organized even more elaborately. Its own governing documents list Metropolitan Districts 1 through 5, Districts 8 through 11, and two Regional Metropolitan Districts, each with its own mill levy cap. District No. 5 caps out at 20 mills for operations and 30 mills for debt service. Districts 1 through 4 cap residential debt service at 30 mills and commercial at 50, figures the service plan explicitly allows to adjust if the state changes how assessed valuation is calculated.
That adjustment clause matters more than it sounds. It means the number quoted as a "cap" isn't necessarily the ceiling a homeowner ends up paying over time. It also means these obligations run long. Bond documents for Banning Lewis Ranch Metropolitan District No. 4 specify the required mill levy continues through December 2057. District No. 5's bonds carry a maturity date of December 2051, with district-level levies authorized through December 2058. A buyer closing today could still be paying down that same infrastructure debt three decades from now.
The Cap the City Advertises Doesn't Reach Backward
Colorado Springs formalized its current Special District Policy in August 2022, capping the debt mill levy for new metropolitan districts at 50 mills and the operating levy at 20. It's a reasonable policy, and the city points to it as a homeowner protection. But that cap governs districts approved under the current policy going forward. It doesn't rewrite the terms of districts that organized earlier under their own service plans, and the Mayberry example shows exactly why that distinction matters: District No. 3's certified 2025 levy of 79.878 mills is well above what a district formed today would be allowed to charge. A buyer who hears about the city's 50-mill cap and assumes it applies everywhere in Colorado Springs is working from an incomplete picture.
The city itself acknowledges the scale of this. Colorado Springs currently has well over 100 special financing districts within its limits, and confirms that Banning Lewis Ranch, along with most major developments approved in the last decade, sits inside one.
What This Means Against Today's Market
Colorado Springs' broader market gives buyers more room to ask these questions than they had a couple of years ago. Over the three months ending in August 2026, the median sale price across the metro area held near $460,000, down slightly from the same period a year earlier, and homes were taking longer to sell than they had the previous summer. A slower, more negotiated market is exactly the environment where a buyer can reasonably request the district's service plan and current certified mill levy before writing an offer, rather than discovering the number after closing.
The math itself is straightforward once you have the right figures. A mill is one dollar of tax per one thousand dollars of assessed value. County assessors determine assessed value using the state's residential assessment rate, a figure that has shifted with recent legislation and is worth confirming for the current tax year rather than assuming from an old listing sheet. Multiply that assessed value by the applicable mill levy, county plus district, and you get the annual bill. Two homes with identical market prices in Mayberry, one in District 1 and one in District 3, will not carry identical annual tax obligations, because one of them carries a debt-service levy the other simply doesn't have.
What To Ask For Before You Write an Offer
A comparison shopper looking at more than one Colorado Springs subdivision benefits from treating this as a standard part of due diligence, the same way an inspection report or a title commitment is standard.
- Request the district's service plan directly, which spells out the mill levy cap, the conditions under which it can adjust, and the term over which it can be imposed.
- Ask for the most recently certified mill levy for the specific numbered sub-district that covers the parcel, not a development-wide average.
- Ask about the bond maturity schedule so you know whether the levy is scheduled to decline as debt is retired or is structured to run for decades.
- Confirm whether the property also sits inside a homeowners association. A parcel can carry both a metro district mill levy and separate HOA dues, and the two are governed by entirely different boards with entirely different budgets.
- Check the parcel directly with the El Paso County Assessor for assessed value and the El Paso County Treasurer for the certified tax bill, since these figures are the most current and property-specific source available.
None of this makes a metro district a reason to avoid a neighborhood. It's a financing tool that lets a subdivision arrive with finished roads and working infrastructure instead of a construction zone, and many buyers are glad to trade a higher tax bill for that. The point is comparing homes on the full carrying cost, not just the number in the listing.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly
Can the mill levy go up after I buy? Yes. Service plans typically allow the levy to adjust if the state changes how assessed valuation is calculated, and a district facing a funding shortfall can be authorized to increase its levy within its capped range.
Does the metro district show up anywhere in the listing? Not reliably. It appears on the property tax bill, not in the MLS data sheet and not as a line item alongside HOA dues, which is why pulling the actual tax certification matters more than trusting the listing's stated tax figure.
Is a metro district the same thing as an HOA? No. An HOA is a private association that collects dues. A metropolitan district is a unit of local government with an elected board, public meetings, and the legal authority to levy property taxes and issue bonds.
If you're weighing one Colorado Springs subdivision against another and want the actual mill levy pulled for a specific address before you write an offer, Coldwell Banker Collegiate Peaks Realty can help you get the service plan and the certified numbers in hand.
