Getting your player ready...
How much can somebody who works in Boulder save on space by commuting 10 miles down the Diagonal Highway to southwest Longmont, instead of buying inside the pricey city limits of Boulder? You can see for yourself today at Kingsbridge by Boulder Creek Builders, right off the Diagonal at Airport Road, where you can find a new 1,400-foot 2-bedroom/2-1/2 bath townhouse with attached 2-car garage for $205,000.
A little Zillow.com research will show you the comps on what that buys ten miles away in some of Boulder’s least-expensive areas. You can also talk with some of the buyers who in less than two years snapped up over half of Boulder Creek’s 109 available townhome sites that were taken over in 2010 from a departing California builder.
That fast sales pace runs counter to the fact that Kingsbridge isn’t particularly easy to find – gets far less walk-in traffic than projects along the Boulder Turnpike do. Meanwhile, aside from the Longmont address, this looks pretty much like Boulder-proper: expensive surrounding homes, with bike trails adjacent that filter into a vast network of city paths, and beyond that to a biker’s paradise of foothill roads and trails. All three schools are close at hand, including Longmont’s Silver Creek High (GreatSchools.org gives it the same 9-out-of-10-star rating that Boulder High School gets).
You’re also going to see one of the most thorough energy packages of any community in the Denver-Boulder area – HERS scores all under 60 (the lower the score the better), derived from the same strategy Boulder Creek uses at its luxury single family ranch-style patio homes from the $400s at Steel Ranch in Louisville (they’re selling fast, too – 18 since November). That includes state-of-the-art blown Fiberglas 2×6 insulation, advanced pocket-corner framing, low-e windows and more.
All of that, combined with a 5-minute commute to IBM, should be drawing plenty of first-time buyers to Kingsbridge, but Karen Sanders (she’ll welcome you today, along with Brent Patterson) says buyers have trended toward downsizers who want low-maintenance close to their Boulder grandkids, and single parents. She’ll show you a roomy ‘Tuscany,’ almost 1,800 feet from the $250s, with a study or third bedroom on the main, lavishly proportioned bedroom level with stairway landing, nice dining/entertaining area with a bar-island, and big storage spaces — one outside for bikes.
Kingsbridge is off Airport Road between the Diagonal and Nelson Road; from Boulder take the Diagonal north 6 miles to Airport, then left (north) a mile to Venice Lane.
If you go…
WHERE: Kingsbridge Townhomes in southwest Longmont by Boulder Creek Builders, low-maintenance 2-&-3 bedroom homes near trails, 4 miles to IBM. 1656 Venice Lane, Longmont; take I-25 north to Exit 240, Colo. 119; west 7.6 mi., continue west on Nelson Rd. 1.9 mi to Airport Rd.; left 1 mi. to Venice Lane. Or from Boulder’s Foothills Pkwy take Diagonal north 6.6 mi. to Airport Rd, left 1 mi.
PRICE: From $205s
WHEN: Mon 12-5, daily 10-5
PHONE: 303-502-5338 WEB: LiveBoulderCreek.com
Mark Samuelson writes on real estate and business; you can email him at mark@samuelsonassoc.com. You can see all of Mark Samuelson’s columns online at DenverPostHomes.com
