Getting your player ready...
If you’re tired of climbing stairs and shoveling snow, and you’ve been waiting for the right moment to trade up for a lower maintenance ranch plan, builders up and down the Front Range are asking “What are you waiting for? Prices are just going to get higher!”
This is the day when people flock to big-box stores to save on high-ticket items – but builders say the real opportunities are what you’ll find on the shelf now at new home enclaves designed age 50-plus buyers, vs. what you’ll find next year. The 22 builders in the Best 50-Plus Homes Tour offer a range of lifestyles for buyers pushing into those age brackets – and virtually all say that prices next year are headed up. Better yet, coming into the holidays, some builders have ranches in inventory, priced to move right away. All of them say that time’s a wasting – including Kathy Curtis at Skyestone, an age-55-plus enclave off 108th Avenue west of Simms. She sees many couples who visit repeatedly over months and years, still waiting to make a move. “They come in mortified that we’ve raised prices another five grand,” she says. “What are you waiting for?” Curtis says. “Interest rates are still great and we have home sites backing to open space. Why wait?” Meanwhile, coming into the end of the year, Denver is ranked as the fastest selling market in the country – and some buyers see that as a good-news bad-news story. The good news is that the older home you’ve spent decades in will sell rapidly. The bad news is that new homes are disappearing fast, too – raising a possibility that you could buy a new one, but see the old place sell before the new one is done. “Lots of buyers are scared they’ll have to move twice,” says Mike Welty, area sales manager for Century Communities, with ranch and main-floor master models to tour at Vista Ridge in Erie, just north of Highway 7 on Mountain View. Century takes the fear out by offering to make a purchase of a new ranch contingent on the sale of the older house. “We make it easy as possible,” Welty adds. “We want you not only to enjoy the new house, but enjoy the process, too.” Brad Arnold, vice president with East West Partners, has another reason why you should look now, not wait for New Year’s: “Everybody has a budget, but also a style they like,” he says. “The longer you wait, the more your options disappear.” At The Landmark, the iconic towers over The Landmark’s theaters and restaurants in Greenwood Village, homes have vanished rapidly; just 10 percent left, from the $600s. “We saw this last year,” says Arnold. “People weren’t thinking about this stuff over the holidays, but on Dec. 26, it was like they put the tree on the curb and called us.” Right now, he adds, Landmark still has a good selection of popular 2-bedroom-plus-den plans, but after you choose a style and finishes you prefer, you may be picking between two or three units. “If we sell one, then…?”also next weekend
