A three-bedroom condo in downtown Jackson sold this year for $1.7 million. It carries a deed restriction. The restriction does not cap the price, does not limit who can buy it based on income, and does not require the buyer to be anything other than someone who works in Teton County. That single sale is the cleanest illustration of a gap that has been quietly shaping downtown Jackson's skyline for a decade: the word "deed-restricted" on a listing tells you almost nothing about what you're actually looking at.
If you're comparing property in the Town of Jackson against Wilson, Teton Village, or the ranchland south of town, this distinction matters more than it should. Deed restrictions here come in at least two flavors, and they behave nothing alike. One caps price. The other caps almost nothing but who's allowed to live there. Understanding which is which, and how the town just moved to close the gap between them, tells you something real about why downtown buildings have been getting bigger and what that means for anyone buying, building, or holding property in the core.
Two Restrictions Wearing the Same Label
"Affordable" units in Jackson work close to how most people assume deed restrictions work. Income is capped, typically somewhere between 80 and 160 percent of the area's median family income depending on the program, and resale price is capped too, with appreciation limited to roughly 3 percent a year. That structure is why 440 West Kelly, a 12-unit condo project completed downtown in 2023 on town-owned land, could sell its most expensive unit for slightly under $900,000 in a market where, according to a 2025 HUD case study on the project, the median home price had reached $2.2 million and the mean had climbed to $3.8 million. The restriction did its job. It kept the unit affordable relative to the rest of the valley.
"Workforce" units are a different animal entirely. There is no income cap and no price ceiling. The only requirement is that the person living there earns a living in Teton County. A developer can sell or rent a workforce unit for whatever the market will bear, and several have. That's how a three-bedroom workforce condo downtown reached $1.7 million, a price that would clear the affordability threshold for almost every actual member of the local workforce it was ostensibly built to house.
Town Councilor Jonathan Schechter put the problem plainly at a recent council meeting, asking the question that's been sitting underneath this policy for years:
"Who are we really trying to house? To me, that's what this entire discussion is getting at."
The Zoning Trade That Built the Buildings You're Looking At
The reason developers keep choosing the workforce track over the affordable one isn't mysterious. It's written into the incentive. For nearly a decade, the Town of Jackson has run what's known locally as the 2-for-1 bonus: for every square foot of deed-restricted housing a developer builds, the town lets them build two additional square feet of market-rate housing beyond what base zoning would normally allow. Workforce units, with no price cap and no income underwriting, are cheaper and simpler for a developer to build and sell than affordable units are. The bonus rewards volume, not depth of affordability, and for years the market responded exactly as you'd expect.
The clearest example sitting in the pipeline right now is Mogul Capital's proposed megahotel and condominium complex on North Cache Street, in the town's northern gateway. Using the 2-for-1 bonus, Mogul was able to more than double the project's size, adding 97,382 square feet of housing to an originally allocated 81,000 square feet. That's not a rounding error. That's a building roughly twice the size it would have been without the trade.
The bonus pool itself isn't unlimited. Planning staff told the joint planning commission in March 2026 that the incentive pool created during an earlier downzoning has been partly spent, with roughly 500 incentive units left between the town and county. Every project that uses the bonus draws that number down further.
What Just Changed, and What Hasn't Yet
The council has spent most of 2026 working through what to do about this. A January workshop directed staff to prioritize a review of the bonus alongside building-height and basement rules. A June workshop floated a sliding scale, offering developers a worse 1:1 ratio for workforce-only restrictions, keeping the existing 2:1 for standard affordability terms, and dangling a 3:1 bonus for deeper, longer-lasting affordability commitments.
By August 2026, the council had backed three concrete changes to the policy:
| Change | What it means |
|---|---|
| Income bands replace open workforce eligibility | Units built through the bonus will likely have to be affordable to households earning between 120 and 160 percent of median family income, which currently works out to roughly $142,560 to $190,080 a year for a couple |
| Downtown core banned from the bonus entirely | Planning Director Paul Anthony said the move is meant to limit building size specifically in the town's busiest district |
| Worse ratio for workforce-only projects | Developers who still want to build purely occupancy-restricted workforce units, with no price cap, will get a 1:1 exchange instead of 2:1 |
None of this is final ordinance language yet. Anthony has said formal adoption is likely still months away, and councilors are considering lowering the income thresholds further before anything is locked in. What is settled is the direction: the era of building bigger downtown in exchange for units with no real price ceiling is ending, at least inside the core.
What This Means If You're Looking at Property Here
If you're evaluating a downtown Jackson listing, a nearby parcel, or a development opportunity, this shift changes what you should be asking.
For a buyer comparing an existing building that includes deed-restricted units, the label alone won't tell you whether those units are income-capped affordable housing or open-market workforce units. That distinction affects the building's unit mix, its HOA dynamics, and, if you're benchmarking comps, whether a nearby "deed-restricted" sale price is even a meaningful comparable for your own unit.
For anyone weighing a purchase near a parcel that could still be redeveloped, the downtown-wide ban on the bonus means the biggest lever for oversized new construction in the core has been taken off the table, at least for now. Outside the core, the lever still exists, just at a less generous ratio unless a project commits to real income-based affordability.
For a developer or builder client planning a project in town, the math changed. Straight workforce-only deed restrictions now cost more in bonus terms than they used to, and the downtown core is off-limits for the trade altogether. Projects seeking the most favorable ratio will need to build to the new income bands, not just occupancy requirements.
A few questions worth settling before you write an offer or break ground:
- Is the deed restriction on this unit or nearby project income-capped ("affordable") or occupancy-only ("workforce")? The answer changes what the unit can sell for, now and at resale.
- If a project near your target property used the 2-for-1 bonus, how much of its bulk came from that trade, and does it sit inside or outside the new downtown-core boundary where the bonus no longer applies?
- If you're the one building, does your project pencil better under the new income-band requirements, or does relocating outside the downtown core preserve access to the more favorable ratio?
The Town of Jackson has been trading building size for housing supply for a decade, and the terms of that trade just got more specific. Whether you're comparing a downtown condo to something in Wilson or Teton Village, or planning a project of your own, knowing which track a deed restriction sits on is the difference between reading a comp correctly and being surprised by one.
If you're weighing a purchase or a project in downtown Jackson and want a read on how a specific parcel or building fits into this shifting picture, Work with Jake.
