Getting your player ready...
The Colorado Rockies, one might say, sealed the deal for Brad Klein
Klein, now a broker with 8z Real Estate, was a globetrotter as a young man. He was a one-man United Nations, travelling to about two dozen countries, from Belize to Portugal, Canada to Vietnam, and just about every where in between.
In 1991, he was ready to settle down. After seeing much of what the world had to offer, the Los Angeles native chose Colorado. He also decided to plant roots in real estate at the same time.
“I kind of picked Colorado in a crazy way,” Klein recalled recently in a Starbucks in Rock Creek, the community along the U.S. 36 corridor where he has been “farming” from its early days.
Two decades ago, Klein felt the Denver area had a lot of potential.
Prescient Klein
“Denver was still a pretty depressed market in the early ’90s, and I decided if I wanted to sell real estate, I should do it in a place that had a lot of upside potential,” Klein said.
What he liked about Denver are exactly things that economic development gurus and political leaders pointed to during that era, such as plans for Denver International Airport and the Colorado Convention Center.
Maybe even more importantly, there was talk that Denver would get a major league baseball team.
“I’m a big baseball fan and I knew if Denver got a baseball team, it would be in the news every single day and there was going to be a lot of focus on Denver,” Klein said. “I was at the airport and I saw an article in the Rocky Mountain News that said in an effort to try to attract a major league baseball team, they were trying to create a season-ticket base, even though they didn’t have a team yet.”
You could get on the season-ticket list for $50 a seat, and he immediately ordered two seats. “I’ve been going to games ever since,” Klein said. “I’m going on opening day .”
Although he’s a regular at Coors Field, Denver itself didn’t speak to him at first. Friends in the area told him he should check out Golden, Boulder and Evergreen. He went to Golden the next day, and struck out as far as making a connection.
But Boulder was an instant home run for him.
“I loved it,” said Klein, who now lives in Niwot with his family. “Sitting in a coffee shop, with the Flatirons in the background, and surrounded by all of these young, athletic people with all of this energy, I knew this was the place for me. To this day, I still haven’t set foot in Evergreen.”
Klein got his Colorado real estate license and joined Century 21 in Boulder, a company he notes, which is no longer around.
Rock Creek, Klein grew together
Klein, an avid runner, hit real estate running, scoring as “Rookie of the Year,” in 1992. About the same time, Denver-based MDC Holdings Inc., parent of Richmond American Homes, was launching Rock Creek, just 10 minutes or so southeast of Boulder.
“I had a mentor, early on, who was very helpful,” Klein said. “He said if you are going to sustain a career over the long-term, you should have a geographic area you will specialize in. I decided my “farm” area would be Rock Creek,” as it didn’t have veteran, established brokers there, like you might find in Boulder.
And farming took on an almost literal definition, at least once a year for Klein. His mentor delivered pumpkins around Halloween to the area he farmed, so Klein did the same at Rock Creek. He now delivers about 1,500 pumpkins each fall to homeowners in Rock Creek.
In 2010, home sales were down slightly in Rock Creek compared with 2009. The average and median prices, however, rose in 2010 from 2009, although the average price per square foot dipped last year. Overall, Klein thinks Rock Creek weathered the economic downturn as good or better than anyplace else along the Boulder corridor.
Rock Creek still a big part of Klein’s business
Klein estimates that typically 30 percent to 40 percent of his business is in Rock Creek. The balance is in Boulder, Niwot and the surrounding communities.
He recently listed a 3,354-square-foot home in Rock Creek with four bedrooms and three bedrooms, for $425,000. The home backs up to a pond and open space, something that Rock Creek has a lot of – 594 acres of open space, to be exact. The community of about 2,800 homes also has 27 miles of trails, 12 playgrounds and four major parks, as well as two neighborhood schools.
Klein knows the owner of the $425,000 home so well, that after planting a “For Sale” sign in the front lawn, he introduced me to the owner, Mick Pahl, and took me for a tour.
Pahl bought the 80th home in Rock Creek in 1992. He and his wife are only selling it, because they are both in their 70s and they want a ranch home. In fact, they’ve bought a ranch-style home in Arvada that “is only 7.7 miles away, as the crow flies,” Pahl said.
When it came to choose a Realtor, the choice was easy for Pahl.
“Brad knows every house in Rock Creek,” Pahl said. “No one knows more about Rock Creek than Brad.”
Pahl, like Klein, pointed to the strengths of Rock Creek such as its excellent schools, proximity to Boulder at a fraction of the cost of housing, at the same time being a short drive from the FlatIron Crossing mall and surrounding retail. Both of them also praised Rock Creek as a smartly laid out, master-planned community.
Klein and Pahl also share a love of something else.
“I can be out my front door and at Coors Field less than 30 minutes,” Pahl said.
