Whether you’re looking for your first home, a new home, or just a nice place to rent it can be tough in Mexico.

Developers, real estate agents, and members of the city’s planning and zoning commission had the same message for the city council last Monday, Sept. 11, at a regular meeting. Something needs to be done to develop more housing.

“I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years in January and I’ve never seen the market like it is right now,” real estate agent and member of the P&Z commission Betty Jo Sydenstricker told council members. 

Sydenstricker was just one of a handful of people to speak publicly at the council meeting last week about the issues. The local agent told the council she’s currently working with a family that has a student at the Missouri Military Academy who is looking for a house. She said they’ve given up on Mexico and are looking for a house in Fulton.

“We’re just throwing up our hands,” Sydenstricker said. “We’re calling people trying to find housing. We’re short and we have to have some new developments.”

Sydenstricker also provided some new building permit numbers for Centralia which is a much smaller city than Mexico but is booming in the new housing market. In 2019 Centralia issued 17 new home permits followed by 41 permits in 2020. Covid-19 slowed things down a bit but Centralia still issued 36 permits in 2021 and 2022. So far this year Centralia has issued 20 according to Sydenstricker’s numbers.

Marissa Lightsey, another local agent, said the problem in her industry is nationwide and shouldn’t be viewed strictly as a local problem, but it does seem to be worse locally in her opinion.

“This is something we’re seeing nationally so it’s not like we’re the odd man out,” Lightsey told council members. “However it seems Mexico is in a drought.”

Lightsey said listing numbers are way down and homes only stay on the market a couple of days at most.

“This is a real problem we need to get ahead of,” Lightsey said. “Corporations are looking for homes for staff and coming up short. They’re settling for other communities because they’re exhausting themselves waiting for something to pop up here.”

The issue has come to light recently because of two separate requests by developers who are requesting a variance to exclude sidewalks from the neighborhoods they’re currently building. Jack Creason, one of the developers, sees the issue as cost-prohibitive and just part of the issues with getting new developments in Mexico.

Creason said it’s a lot cheaper to build in communities like Centralia and Fulton for other reasons as well as the ability of other cities to streamline the entire process through a city office. Mexico, unlike some other cities, doesn’t own its utilities which means developers have to deal with multiple entities and in most cases increased costs.

“They have much lower costs to build the lots which in turn means lower costs to build a house,” Creason said. “Pretty simple economics.”

The city and Audrain County came up with a plan last year to incentivize developers with up to $10,000 to help pay for water and sewer infrastructure. Each contributed $250,000 to the fund, which to date, less than half has been used. Creason said the city needs to continue to fund programs like the incentives for developers and find some way to make the process more streamlined.

“These continued funds would be a little help in making Mexico more competitive,” Creason said.

George Huffman, a citizen who spoke at the meeting, said he was on the Progress Mexico committee that looked at the issue almost three years ago and agreed with Creason’s suggestions.

“Outside-the-box thinking is what we need,” Huffman said about the city and county’s plan. “The bottom line is these contractors need a return on investment and evidently they think they’re getting it in some other community. It’s probably not sidewalks or the cost but it’s part of it.”

Councilman Steve Haag said the city doesn’t want to do anything to discourage new buildings. However, Haag said there’s also an issue with affordable housing and most of the houses that are being built are out of the range of so many people who need housing. Haag said he would also like to look at programs that refurbish older homes.

“I don’t think anybody on the council wants to keep anybody from building,” Haag said. “We start talking about affordable housing and then it turns into new houses being built. There are people out there who can’t afford those and want to buy a house. I think there’s affordable housing and there’s those new projects that we absolutely need. We need to have both and I think there has to be a happy medium.”