Prompted by changes in the real estate finance environment, two of northern Colorado’s biggest residential developers are combining their assets into one package being marketed for $177 million.
Windsor developers Martin Lind and Jon Turner are shedding 5,000 acres of residential and commercial properties, as well as water rights. The properties, which are not contiguous, include 9,370 residential lots that are already annexed and zoned. The properties are in Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley, Windsor, Timnath, Berthoud, Johnstown, Mead and Severance.
The portfolio includes a fully platted, 700-lot golf community and the 5-year-old Highland Meadows Golf Course.
Lind, developer of the 1,500-acre Water Valley master-planned community in Windsor, which he is keeping, said he’s liquidating non-core assets because federal regulators have crippled the ability of small community banks to finance development projects.
“I’m reading the tea leaves, and it’s going to be a different game for developers,” he said. “I think us small guys are toast. This economy is horrible, and it’s creating defaults all around, and I don’t want to be that guy.”
Turner echoes that sentiment, saying, “Banking has become so restricted, we can only focus on one or two projects at a time. There’s so few banks that can lend right now.”
The portfolio, valued at more than $400 million in 2007, is likely to sell to a hedge fund or a foreign investor, said Craig Harrison, who is marketing the property.
“(The buyer) will probably bring it back to market between 2014 and 2017, which is when Moody’s shows Colorado is predicted to come back to peak 2007 pricing,” Harrison said.
Like Denver, the northern Colorado housing market has been stagnant but is expected to show signs of improvement this year, said Russell Baker, a land and development broker with Fuller Real Estate’s Loveland office.
“We expect the northern market to emulate the Denver market, with the first signs of recovery coming through the absorption of some of the current housing inventory,” Baker said. “With over 11,000 vacant developed lots between Larimer and Weld counties, this part of the state is at the beginning stages of recovery.”
The asking price, if reached, would place the portfolio among the largest land deals in recent years. Only the $175 million sale in 2007 of the 171,400-acre Forbes Ranch in Costilla County is in the same range.
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
