Never has the phrase “all real estate is local” echoed as truly as in the past year. While report after report paints a picture of rising foreclosures and flat home values in the metro area, the experience is startlingly different from community to community and, in some cases, from block to block.
In some neighborhoods, values are soaring and foreclosures are barely a blip on the radar. In other areas, evidence of the mounting foreclosure rate presents itself through boarded-up homes and free-falling prices. Here’s how residents in three metro-area neighborhoods are experiencing the vastly different results of the downturn.
THE GOLDSMITH NEIGHBORHOOD
Dianne Rogers has noticed an influx of families into her neighborhood over the last two years.
Dominated by tidy ranch homes built in the 1960s, the Goldsmith neighborhood near Interstate 25 and East Evans Avenue has largely been a haven for retirees who have lived in the neighborhood for decades.
In terms of foreclosures and home values, the neighborhood has fared the best in metro Denver, according to an analysis by Your Castle Real Estate. Of homes sold in the last year, just 4 percent were short sales — where a lender accepts the sale of a property for less than is owed on it — or foreclosures, and values increased 37 percent. The average price of a home is $438,000.
“There are quite a few people who are original owners, and they’ve always taken pride in the area,” said Julie Holliday, a real-estate agent who has lived in the area since 1964. “There are very few homes that are run down. Plus, these houses were so well-built that the reputation has just followed it all these years. People just like those areas.”
That type of demand has fueled an influx of families to the neighborhood, which pleases Rogers.
“That was something that bothered me when we first had our son,” said Rogers, who has lived in the neighborhood with her husband, Ken, for more than 12 years.
In the last two years, several families have moved onto their quiet street, giving their 9-year-old son, Seve, a number of new playmates.
“It was very lonely for him before — all his friends lived on the other side of Quebec,” said Rogers, whose house is on LaSalle Street east of Quebec. “Now, he hasn’t called his other friends because he has all these new friends.”
Terri and Gary Allsup put a contract on the first home they looked at in the neighborhood eight years ago, and three months later, they learned they were pregnant with their first child, Michael, who is now 7.
“We really wanted to be near the park,” said Terri Allsup, general manager of a manufacturing facility in Lower Downtown. “The homes are well-built, and we have a big backyard. My husband loves to garden. My son has a fort, and there are aspen trees along the fence.”
THE DEL MAR NEIGHBORHOOD
When Anita Criticos bought her house in Aurora’s Del Mar neighborhood 10 years ago, most people living there owned their homes.
Today, Del Mar is a collection of well-cared-for homes scattered among vacant houses with peeling paint and overgrown yards. Most homes are rentals, and For Sale signs are prevalent.
Del Mar has emerged as the metro-area neighborhood hit hardest by skyrocketing foreclosures and plummeting home values, according to an analysis by Your Castle Real Estate. In the past year, 71 percent of the 91 homes sold in Del Mar were either foreclosures or “short sales” – where lenders agree to accept a home sale and payoff for less than the balance owed on the mortgage.
Home values in the neighborhood near Aurora’s West Middle School have plummeted 57 percent. The average price of a home is $117,000.
“Ten years ago, it was very nice, and they were all owner-occupied,” Criticos said.
Criticos paid about $65,000 for her small two-bedroom house 10 years ago and watched it soar in value to about $150,000 by 2003. A big driver of prices at the time was the nearby redevelopment of the former Lowry Air Force Base.
But by the time Criticos tried to sell her home last year, the value had dropped to about $113,000. She ended up pulling it off the market.
Criticos’ neighbor Mike, who requested only his first name be used, has lived in the neighborhood all his life. He said the neighborhood’s gotten seedier because the city of Aurora has largely ignored it.
“There’s more families living in some of these homes than should be,” he said, adding that a few years ago a man was shot in the head and killed during a Christmas Eve party at a house across the street.
Still, he has no plans to move.
“Move to what? Higher payments? My wife and I have put a lot of work into this house. This house is perfect for us. In real estate, there’s always hope that things will go back up again.”
THE JEFFERSON PARK NEIGHBORHOOD
Gloria and Felix Del Rios moved from Aurora to Denver’s Jefferson Park neighborhood 12 years ago so they could rent a house from a friend.
Now, the couple is buying the home on West 24th Avenue near Eliot Street where they live with their two children.
The Del Rios’ neighborhood near Invesco Field at Mile High is changing rapidly and is also an anomaly in the metro area’s real estate market. While the foreclosure rate in Jefferson Park is high, average home prices are nonetheless rising at a rapid clip.
“This is a neighborhood in transition,” said Brad Evans, a broker with Denver CORE/Keller Williams Downtown who specializes in the area. “It’s evolving, and it’s really in its beginning phase.”
Of the 51 homes sold in Jefferson Park during the past year, 20 percent were either foreclosures or short sales, but the average value of the homes increased 24 percent to $247,000.
“I can imagine that houses that were changing hands were probably not owner occupied,” said David Zucker, a developer who’s building condos in the area. “My guess is that there were guys buying a second or third rental home and cutting pretty close and began to have some financial difficulty. They were getting squeezed by an adjustable-rate mortgage and one of their three holdings were tanking.”
Evans said the foreclosures are more likely a result of fix-and-flip buyers who didn’t know what they were doing.
“The get-rich-quick scheme doesn’t always work,” he said.
For Gloria Del Rios, the changes in the neighborhood are evident.
“At the beginning, it wasn’t a good neighborhood,” she said. “It wasn’t 100 percent safe. Now it’s 50/50.”
She blames the high number of rental properties in the neighborhood near Invesco Field at Mile High for crime and other disturbances.
“There’s too many people, lots of fights and drinking, especially on the weekends,” she said.
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
