The last big piece of Coeur d'Alene's Atlas Waterfront will be priced from a formula rather than from recent sales. In August 2026, ignite cda, the city's urban renewal agency, published a request for proposals for The Currents. The RFP sets each home's target price by working backward from a household's income. It assumes 30 percent of gross income goes to housing, 10 percent down and a 6.75 percent rate on a 30-year loan.
Developers have until 5:00 p.m. on Friday, October 30, 2026, to respond. The proposals that arrive will lock in a pricing method that works nothing like the market-rate homes around it along the Spokane River. Under that method, interest rates, HOA dues and a resale formula nobody has seen yet will have more to do with what these homes cost than the comps next door.
A river neighborhood built in two pricing systems
Atlas Waterfront sits on the former Atlas Mill site west of downtown. The Coeur d'Alene City Council formed the Atlas District in December 2018. It covers 68 acres, including 47 acres of the old mill site that the city bought and transferred to ignite cda, according to the Coeur d'Alene Press. The City describes the site plan as including about 24.5 acres of public open space and 3,780 linear feet of public shoreline.
Most of that land has already been sold to private builders. ignite's FY2025 audit lists the buyers:
- Bluegrass Development
- Toll Brothers
- Riverfest LLC
- Active West
- Coeur Investment Group
- deChase-Miksis
- Atlas Five LLC
As of December 31, 2025, only Area 5A and the Phase 3 parcels were still unsold. At a March 2026 council update, the project team described a planned 523 homes in total. When Toll Brothers announced its Atlas Waterfront townhomes in 2023, it advertised them from the upper $700,000s. That's an old figure, but it shows the range those first phases were built to sell in.
The Currents uses a different system. It covers roughly nine acres and about 104 owner-occupied homes, and ignite is considering contributing up to 100 percent of the land's value to make the numbers work. The scoring rubric is built around that choice. Out of 200 points, the land price paid to ignite is worth 12, and depth of affordability is worth 18. Once the land is close to free, the home price stops depending on land cost and starts depending on the buyer's income and the assumptions in the formula.
How the formula produces a price
The RFP's price grid uses HUD's 2026 median family income for the Coeur d'Alene metro area, which is $108,300. The calculation takes a target household's income and sets aside 30 percent of it for principal, interest, property taxes and homeowners insurance. It then assumes 10 percent down at 6.75 percent over 30 years and solves for the price that payment can carry.
| Household | 80% AMI | 100% AMI | 120% AMI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-person | $241,000 | $309,000 | $376,000 |
| 3-person | $275,000 | $350,000 | $426,000 |
| 4-person | $308,000 | $392,000 | $476,000 |
For comparison, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported a Kootenai County median home price of $569,945 from Coeur d'Alene Regional Realtors in late September 2026. The highest price in the grid sits almost $94,000 below that median.
The prices fell between April and August
In April 2026, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported tentative figures for Atlas phase three, with homes priced from about $300,000 to about $600,000. Here is how each home type in that early concept compares with the RFP's caps:
| Home type in the April concept | April figure | RFP household match | Top price in that household's RFP target range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twin home, 960 sq ft | $299,946 | 2- or 3-person | $309,000 at 100% AMI or $388,000 at 110% AMI |
| Cottage, 1,300 sq ft | $475,314 | 2-person | $309,000 at 100% AMI |
| Townhome, 1,600 sq ft | $478,638 | 3- or 4-person | $388,000 at 110% AMI or $476,000 at 120% AMI |
| Small-lot single-family, 1,800 sq ft | $598,297 | 4-person | $476,000 at 120% AMI |
The matches in the third column come from the RFP's own pairing of household sizes with example housing types. The RFP aims 2-person households at 80 to 100 percent of AMI, 3-person households at 90 to 110 percent and 4-person households at 100 to 120 percent. Once the program tied price to income, the larger homes in the April plan no longer fit. A 1,800-square-foot home at nearly $600,000 is about $122,000 over the 4-person, 120 percent cap. Any developer who wants to build it now has to cut costs or shrink the floor plan, and the RFP's 10 points for "construction cost savings and efficiencies" are meant to reward that.
The formula assumed 6.75 percent. A month later, the quoted rate was 7.125 percent.
The RFP set its rate at 6.75 percent. On September 26, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported a mortgage rate of 7.125 percent, citing Keith Pitsch of Pitsch Mortgage Team. Because the price is solved from a fixed monthly payment, a higher rate means a lower price. By our arithmetic, the same principal-and-interest payment over 30 years supports a loan about 4 percent smaller at 7.125 percent than at 6.75 percent.
That is how a formula-priced home differs from a market-priced one. When rates rise on the open market, sellers absorb some of the change through price cuts and concessions. In the same Press story, Pitsch said sellers paying down buyers' rates was becoming "a very commonplace occurrence." At The Currents, rate changes run straight through a published grid. The grid is dated to the HUD 2026 figures, and the rate it uses was already below the locally quoted rate within weeks of the RFP's release.
What the formula leaves out
The same RFP that sets the payment at 30 percent of income also says that figure "excludes HOA dues and mortgage insurance." With 10 percent down, mortgage insurance is a common part of a monthly payment, and the HOA dues have since been confirmed.
In April, HOA fees were still undecided. Will Osborne, ignite cda's executive director, told the Press that fees were "a likelihood" but not a certainty. Mayor Dan Gookin questioned whether HOA dues could push the homes out of reach:
"The problem I have with this affordable housing phase ignite is proposing is it's an HOA. How much are those fees going to be? How are they going to maintain all that open space in the middle?"
That's how the Coeur d'Alene Press reported it. Councilor Kiki Miller said at the time that the HOA question was still being discussed.
ignite's Currents project page now answers the question. Homes will belong to the same Atlas Waterfront master HOA as the surrounding neighborhood. They will also have a dedicated Currents HOA with tighter control over exterior maintenance and outdoor storage. Both layers of dues fall outside the 30 percent calculation. The design rules explain part of why the second HOA exists. The RFP calls for homes "indistinguishable in quality" from the rest of Atlas, built around a central park and pavilion, with porches, alley-loaded garages and a Design Review Committee that approves every home. Someone has to pay to keep that standard, and the dues are where that cost goes.
Resale terms set the long-term value
A market-rate home on the river builds equity at whatever pace the Coeur d'Alene market sets. Osborne's report to the City Council put the local median for-sale price at $199,500 in 2015 and $562,000 in 2026, a rise of 181 percent, according to the Press. Homes at The Currents are set up to grow at a different rate.
The RFP says the affordability restrictions run with the land permanently, and future resale prices "will be governed by an approved affordability formula." Each resale must go to another income-qualified household. An independent third-party housing organization will verify buyers and oversee resales, and ignite or the City keeps permanent audit and enforcement rights. ignite's project page describes the mechanism as deed restrictions combined with "shared-equity resale terms."
The actual resale formula hasn't been published. The RFP scores each proposal's "perpetual affordability structure" at 15 points. Once the formula is approved, it will decide how much equity a Currents owner takes with them at resale. For a household weighing a Currents home against a resale condo or an entry-level home elsewhere in Kootenai County, that rule will matter more than the purchase price.
The timeline
Here is the schedule the RFP lays out:
- Developer proposals due October 30, 2026.
- Estimated developer selection November 30, 2026.
- A 60-day due-diligence period under an agreement to negotiate exclusively.
- Development agreement signed January 31, 2027.
- Land closing April 30, 2027.
The Press reported in April that houses could start going up by summer 2027. ignite's project page says the work is paid for with land-sale revenue and tax increment from inside the Atlas District, and that the district closes on or before 2038.
A short FAQ
Is The Currents subsidized rental housing? No. ignite describes it as for-sale, owner-occupied homes for households earning roughly 80 to 120 percent of area median income, with deed restrictions that bar the homes from becoming rentals or short-term rentals.
Are the prices in the RFP final? No. They are targets, and the RFP itself says it is not an offer or a commitment to sell. The ignite board makes the final selection, and the agency can modify or cancel the process.
Will the proposals be public? The RFP says submissions become public records under Idaho law, with narrow exceptions.
This post is general information about a public program, not legal, tax or financial advice. Anyone considering a deed-restricted purchase, its HOA obligations or its financing should confirm their situation with a qualified attorney, lender or tax professional.
Atlas Waterfront now has two kinds of property side by side on the Spokane River: homes priced by recent sales and homes priced by a formula. Telling them apart takes reading the deed, the HOA documents and the scoring rubric along with the list price. If you are weighing a purchase on the river corridor, or wondering what The Currents could mean for nearby values, Gunther & Co. can walk through the documents with you. Schedule a free consultation.
