New Construction

Join us on Sunday, September 21st from 12:00 to 5:00 for a neighborhood open house tour featuring some of the areas most exciting new developments!  Each site will have food, drinks and the opportunity to tour each project. You have the opportunity to visit 16 different new contruction projects in the Lower Highlands (LoHi) and Jefferson Park neighborhoods.  A few of these are “hardhat tours” so be sure to wear your comfy shoes! The tour will conclude at Pasquini’s (32nd and Zuni) where prizes to local restaurants will be auctioned off and just in case you didn’t fill up during the tour, you can sample some of their wonderful pizza!

Participating developments include;

3131 Zuni, 3505 Osage, 3650 Osage, Confluence Heights, Flats 15, Highland Bridge Lofts, Highland Views, HiVu29, Jefferson Park Townhomes, LoHi Lofts, Q36, Q-Mod, RiverClay, Sprocket on Wyandot, Shoshone Heights and the Wyandot Townhomes.

This open house tour is for neighbors, buyers, brokers, and anyone else that is interested in learning more about new construction projects in the LoHi neighborhood.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions and I hope to see you all on Sunday!

Not that I am really sure just what that means, except that it is the opposite of misplaced optimism. I bring it up because I was “accused” last week of having “misplaced optimism” with regard to the real estate market. So, with my usual introspective take on the really silly things people say, I started to think about “misplaced optimism”. Just exactly what could that be? When could optimism ever be misplaced? Does “misplaced” mean that I should not express optimism? Or that optimism is in someway lost? Or If I, or the collective we, just do not want to recognize positive anything? And, if “optimism” is indeed lost, just where should I go searching for it?

Just so the average member of the home owning or wannabe home owner public is up to date, there is a large group of “optimistic” investors wandering around buying residential real estate. Lots of it. They are renting them out, covering the debt, and waiting patiently for the market to rebound. Grasping the fact that all markets move up and down is not a discussion of optimism, it is a discussion of and understanding of basic economics. It’s only been two years when the average American was buying real estate at a furious pace, using loan vehicles that transferred all the risk of borrowing to securities investors trying to get a bit more profit than made good sense. There was not even a hint that the market was at the peak. Just as few people recognize the peak of a market, if is also true that few people recognize the valley of that same market. And those securities investors forgot about the market also. If I owned stock in Merrill-Lynch, I would be furious today that a small group of greedy managers (who no doubt walked away with really big bucks) flushed both the company and my stock value.

In Denver, we are no longer in the valley’s creek. The Denver market has started slowly up toward the next peak. The operative word is “slowly”, because this time around it will take awhile for the the capital markets to re-establish themselves and create equalibrium in mortage loan origination’s. But, it will peak again in three years or ten. That is probably way to long for the average American, but long-view investors will get rich from Joe Citizens impatience.

The 2008 HBA Denver Parade of Homes is in full swing and being hosted by Solterra a Carma Community located in Lakewood, CO. The community which is set to include approximately 1,400 residences is modeled after European hillside villages. The natural landscape fits the theme well and highlights the amazing views.

As with any showcase there are certain trends that jump out & make you take notice. Texture was the reoccurring theme this year. Everywhere you look & touch a new texture, some more familiar then others. Hand trowel walls were the norm with quite a bit of Venetian plaster as well. One home even featured natural straw as a wall texture. You may have seen granite but how about honed and leather finishes? Distressed wood and patterned carpet ruled when it came to floors. And of course that’s just on the inside. Stucco, stone and brick were on all of the exteriors in very rustic weathered styles and color.

I encourage you to take some time and tour for yourself you too may find that while many of the materials look familiar they sure don’t feel the same!

The monthly Center City Housing Council meeting at the Downtown Denver Partnership yesterday had a timely topic — Ron Faleide, President of Faleide Architects, intrigued the council with the idea of conserving living space without compromising comfort and, of course, style.

Faleide spoke of the increasing demand for livable spaces less the excess — formal rooms that collect dust, storage space heated at a high price but with no added value, the aging boomers looking to downsize from the drain of the McMansion. Faleide recommended the book, The New American Dream: Living Well in a Small House which puts many of the concepts in use.