Getting your player ready...
If you’ve been waiting for your chance to move out to the Southlands area with its three, coveted Cherry Creek Schools, but haven’t seen any new homes at near-reasonable prices, this is the day to go shopping. Next weekend, Colorado-based homebuilder elacora is getting set for a grand opening of its newly completed single-family homes at The Overlook at Wheatlands — but if you wait that long to see these, you’re likely to miss out on a remarkable single-family deal.
Walk through those two model homes today – one a family-sized two-story, the other a roomy ranch – and you could buy into this neighborhood from as little as $316,900. That would put your kids within two blocks of Cherry Creek Schools’ new Pine Ridge Elementary – a school with the very highest possible rating at GreatSchools.org, and closer still to a neighborhood clubhouse with pool and splash-pool. “I like that finally there are some new-builds that most of my clients can afford,” said Aurora Realtor Rochelle Landau, who snuck an early peek at the homes this week. “They all want to live out here, but they can’t afford it.” Landau, with Peak Properties Group, was planning to bring buyers back to see the models today. elacora’s Karyn Jansen, who showed Landau around, says that numbers of buyers who’ve already signed on for these choice lots are all from neighborhoods right around Wheatlands, who want to move up while keeping their schools and amenities. “The location is a trifecta,” she said. “You can walk to Southlands with its shopping and dining, walk to Cherry Creek schools, walk to Aurora Reservoir’s beach. For elacora – already building homes in Florida and California – these two models and 60 sites in Wheatlands are its first Denver-Boulder area offerings. Right now you can tour an ‘Aberdeen’ ranch, with fireplace, front-yard landscaping, hardwood floors in the kitchen-entry, granite countertops, stainless appliances, and 42-inch uppers, priced from $316,900. “We can actually get you into a home at that price,” says elacora’s Scott Oldham. That, says Oldham, would put you on an interior lot; but right across the street elacora has other lots that are on an open space corridor along a gulch. For another $20,000 you could be there. Next door, you can preview a big-family Valhalla – four bedrooms, PLUS a big main-floor study, PLUS loft, 2,782 square feet for $394,000. Prices of both homes include a partial basement – and you’ll see low cost options for upgrading to a full basement, with attractive finished space down there, if you wish. All of this is a sharp contrast to what buyers are seeing in resale homes in the area – where Colorado’s unprecedented low inventory has driven up prices and sparked bidding wars, for dated houses that sometimes sell in a single day. You’ll notice a cleaner, more contemporary look to interior design (the ranch has a well-defined entry space, and the 2-story shows an option for a huge master retreat with fireplace); and you’ll see backyards being landscaped to show elaborate options for outdoor living space. elacora, Oldham says, offers a very personalized system of finish options – standards that everybody wants included in the base price, and loads of options available through the builder’s design studio in Centennial. elacora can deliver homes as early as September for a good start on the school year – but there are only 60 lots. To tour these models today, tomorrow or Sunday, from E-470 take Smoky Hill east a half mile, just past S. Aurora Parkway, to Wheatlands Parkway and turn north.and business; you can email him at
mark@samuelsonassoc.com. You can see all of Mark Samuelson’s columns online
at DenverPostHomes.com
