Is Falcon a good place to buy for Schriever Space Force Base?

Falcon is where Colorado Springs stops. It is an unincorporated town on the plains fifteen miles east of downtown, at the junction of Woodmen Road and Highway 24, and it has grown from a crossroads into a set of large subdivisions in twenty years because of two things: Schriever Space Force Base a short drive south on Highway 94, and land. Peyton is the country east of it, where the subdivisions give way to acreage.

Who lives here and why

Schriever families first, then Peterson households willing to drive, then people from every installation who wanted an acre and a view and could not get it in the city. The subdivisions — Meridian Ranch around its golf course, Woodmen Hills, Paint Brush Hills, Falcon Highlands — are 2000s–2020s two-story tract and semi-custom homes with HOAs and metro districts, served by District 49's Falcon schools and their own water districts. The acreage is a different life: two to five acres and up, a ranch house or a manufactured home, a well, a septic system, a gravel road, horses next door and wind every afternoon. Both kinds of buyer are here for the same reason, which is that the money goes further than it does inside the city; the cost is the drive. The Fort Carson guide places Falcon against the rest of the metro by installation.

The commute

Schriever's gate is twenty to thirty minutes by Highway 94 or Curtis Road, which is the case for Falcon and the reason it is on this list. Peterson is twenty to thirty minutes by Woodmen Road and Highway 24. The Academy is thirty to forty minutes west on Woodmen, workable for a north-side household. Fort Carson is forty to fifty-five minutes and not a drive most soldiers choose twice a day. Downtown is thirty to forty minutes, and Highway 24 and Woodmen both back up at the morning peak. Snow drifts across the open roads out here in a way it does not in the city, so plan on the winter drive, not the summer one.

Housing stock and what the appraiser sees

This is where VA's rural rules apply, and they are the whole purchase on an acreage lot. A private well requires a water quality test from an approved laboratory, sampled by a third party, and the lender conditions on the result; wells out here draw on the Denver Basin aquifers, and the county's water-rights paperwork comes with the deed, so read it. A septic system requires an evaluation when the appraiser flags it or local rules require one, and El Paso County's transfer-inspection rule for onsite wastewater systems means it usually happens either way. The appraiser confirms year-round legal access, which on a private or gravel road means a recorded easement and a maintenance agreement, and values the acreage as residential with comparable sales, which can be thin. The well and septic answer walks through the sequence. On the tract side the Minimum Property Requirements are the Front Range basics — hail and wind on roofs, expansive clay under slabs, radon — and the paperwork questions of new construction: a builder with a VA builder ID, the warranty, and incentives tied to the builder's lender, covered on the new-construction page.

The payment question on the tract side is the metro district. Meridian Ranch, Woodmen Hills and Paint Brush Hills each sit in one or more special taxing districts that repaid the developer's roads, water and pipes with a mill levy on the property tax bill, and some parcels carry a separate water and sanitation district on top. The lender uses the actual bill, which runs through your ratios. Get the district's levy from the El Paso County assessor in the first showing, not at the closing table.

The loan angle

Falcon tract prices are close to Stetson Hills, so a full-entitlement VA loan — no down payment, no loan limit — carries a family house on a mid-grade allowance; run the BAH-to-payment calculator with the real metro-district tax rate and the HOA, because together they are the difference between Falcon and the city at the same list price. Acreage is where entitlement arithmetic and the appraisal meet: comparable sales decide what VA will lend on, and a buyer with a VA loan still open at the last station is in the second-tier calculation, where a down payment can appear on a higher-priced parcel. Schriever is a repeat-assignment base and the houses rent to the next rotation, though an acreage property is a harder rental to manage from the next station than a tract house; the renting-out page is the honest read. Colorado's disabled-veteran exemption is on the Colorado benefits page.

Next

• See BAH for Fort Carson →
• Compare nearby neighborhoods →

Around Fort Carson

• Buying Near Fort Carson: The Colorado Springs VA Loan Guide
• Colorado Veteran Home Buying Benefits
• The PCS Home Buying Guide