WOW! This is just a few blocks to the north of Epic on the Park Condos...just confirms how Colfax is changing and how AMAZING this area is...read on....
By John Rebchook
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
The St. Charles Town Co. is planning an $80 million apartment community with ground-floor retail near its Lowenstein Theatre development along East Colfax Avenue.
The new development would be built on a site bordered by Colfax, East 16th Avenue, York Street and the East High School teachers' parking lot.
The development marks the first new apartment building along East Colfax in Denver in memory, said Larry Nelson, chief development officer for St. Charles.
It's "more or less" across the street from the $16 million Lowenstein, anchored by a Tattered Cover Book Store and the Twist & Shout music store.
Lowenstein, after being vacant for about two decades, began opening in phases in 2006. It is now mostly occupied, with the most recent addition being the Encore bar-restaurant.
Construction likely will start in December and take 18 to 24 months to complete, Nelson said.
Plans call for 260 apartment units, with four stories on one side and five on the other, and 17,000 to 18,000 square feet of retail.
"We're calling them market-rate units, but you could say they are luxury units," Nelson said. "It will have a swimming pool and nice amenities."
Semple Brown Design is the architect.
Part of the current site houses the Church in the City, which has occupied a former Safeway building on the property for the past 16 years.
The church hopes to move into the former Beth haMedrosh Hagodol synagogue at East 16th Avenue and Gaylord Street, which St. Charles purchased in the fall.
rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5207
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Rocky Mountain News - Denver Ranks High for Urban Walking
Rebchook on Real Estate Insights gleaned from John Rebchook's 24 years of reporting on Denver's residential and commercial real estate.
Thursday, November 29 at 10:08 AM
Denver is the fourth best city in the country for urban walking, according to a new book.According to "The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream," by Chris Leinberger , Denver ranks only behind Washington, D.C, Boston and San Francisco as a walkable city.Leinberger is a visiting Brookings Institution fellow and professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.He said the walking movement is being “led by late marrying young adults and including empty nester Baby Boomers, many households are looking for the excitement and options living and working in a walkable urban place can bring,” according to their press material.Leinberger and Brookings conducted a field survey of the largest 30 metro areas in the country, where 46% of Americans live, identifies the 157 walkable urban places that play a regionally significant role.Walkable urban development works under the principle that “more is better.” More pedestrian areas results in a better quality of life, he said. And it's not just cities. Suburbanites also benefit, Leinberger points out. With the proliferation of the town center and reviving downtowns, walkable places are split equally between city centers and suburbs, he contends. The other cities making the top 10 list are Portland, Or., Seattle, Chicago, Miami, Pittsburgh and New York.
This is from John Rebchook's Blog on the Rocky Mountain News we site... I posted this here because most everyone I talk with who bought a Modo condos said they love the neighborhoods... especially because they can walk to everything...coffee, restaurants, pubs, shops, grocery, dry cleaners, parks, theatre, music, etc...
Chris
Thursday, November 29 at 10:08 AM
Denver is the fourth best city in the country for urban walking, according to a new book.According to "The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream," by Chris Leinberger , Denver ranks only behind Washington, D.C, Boston and San Francisco as a walkable city.Leinberger is a visiting Brookings Institution fellow and professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.He said the walking movement is being “led by late marrying young adults and including empty nester Baby Boomers, many households are looking for the excitement and options living and working in a walkable urban place can bring,” according to their press material.Leinberger and Brookings conducted a field survey of the largest 30 metro areas in the country, where 46% of Americans live, identifies the 157 walkable urban places that play a regionally significant role.Walkable urban development works under the principle that “more is better.” More pedestrian areas results in a better quality of life, he said. And it's not just cities. Suburbanites also benefit, Leinberger points out. With the proliferation of the town center and reviving downtowns, walkable places are split equally between city centers and suburbs, he contends. The other cities making the top 10 list are Portland, Or., Seattle, Chicago, Miami, Pittsburgh and New York.
This is from John Rebchook's Blog on the Rocky Mountain News we site... I posted this here because most everyone I talk with who bought a Modo condos said they love the neighborhoods... especially because they can walk to everything...coffee, restaurants, pubs, shops, grocery, dry cleaners, parks, theatre, music, etc...
Chris
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Denver soars to No. 1 in Home Value Increase -
Area leads nation with small gain in quarter that saw overall decline
By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News October 31, 2007
Denver squeaked out the No. 1 ranking in a national report on home prices released Tuesday. The closely watched S&P Case- Shiller Home Price Indices showed that Denver-area homes gained 0.3 percent in value from July to August.
Although a meager appreciation rate, it was good enough to make Denver tops in the nation during that period. The 20 cities ranked showed an overall average decline of 0.7 percent. From June to July, Denver homes rose in value by 0.8 percent, bested only by the 1 percent increase experienced by Detroit during that period.
"It looks like Denver may be one of the first markets in the turnaround mode. Maybe," said Maureen Maitland, an analyst and vice president at Standard & Poor's. Maitland said she would like to see more data before she's comfortable in saying that Denver's down cycle is over.
"However," she added, "Denver has had five positive months of price movement in a row." Maitland noted that Denver -real estate stumbled earlier than most cities in the country and in recent years didn't go through the double-digit price appreciation experienced by other formerly hot markets on the coasts and places such as Phoenix and Las Vegas. Nevertheless, the new-home market in the Denver area is still suffering through its worst period in more than a decade, according to a report by the Genesis Group.
Genesis said that there were 5,842 sales of new homes in the first half of the year, a 33 percent drop from the 8,758 sold in the first half of 2006. And 2006 was the worst year for new home sales in a decade.
There are pockets of robust price appreciation in Denver. Deviree Vallejo, of Kentwood City Properties, who on Tuesday was showing a prospective buyer a $1.15 million home in Cherry Creek North, said she has seen a huge appreciation of home prices in the Denver neighborhoods where she focuses. She said she is concerned, in fact, that values have risen too fast in some areas and aren't sustainable.
"We've seen appreciation in Highland at 13.5 percent and Cherry Creek North at 22 percent," Vallejo said. "What we want is appreciation at 7 percent to 10 percent." Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Council, said he thought the S&P/Case-Shiller report would show Denver-area home values falling less than the rest of the country, not rising in value.
Denver's housing downturn started around 2001, and the area dodged "the 2006 housing bubble bursting in other parts of the country," Clark said.
In the past, he would have considered it bad news from an economic development perspective that home values were on the rise. "But now it's probably not a factor because homes in Phoenix, our No. 1 competitor, are more expensive than our housing," Clark said.
Carolyn Sandberg, a broker associate with Metro Brokers, said the report shows that Denver housing is at the "very, very tip of turning around." Rising adjustable-rate mortgages will mean more foreclosures through 2008, which will dampen appreciation at the low end of the market, she said, but are not affecting more-expensive homes. "There will be another year for buyers to buy," Sandberg said. "But a lot of people are going to wait until all of the doom and gloom is over, and they are going to end up paying more. "You need to buy when the market is down to get the best deal."
rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5207
Monday, October 15, 2007
More Good News About Denver Real Estate in the Rocky Mountain News
Home prices hint at turn
S&P report suggests Denver area may be starting to recover
By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News September 27, 2007
Fresh evidence suggests the Denver-area housing market may be in the early stages of recovery, even as the national housing market faces an even bigger slump.
From May to June, Denver homes showed a 1.3 percent appreciation in value, the highest of 20 metropolitan areas surveyed, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller Home Price Indices. Charlotte, N.C., was No. 2 at 1.2 percent.
And while Denver home prices dropped by 0.7 percent in July from July 2006, only five metropolitan areas fared better during that period, the survey showed. Overall, a composite of 20 major metropolitan areas experienced a 3.9 percent drop during that one-year period.
"We need to see if the trend continues," said S&P Vice President Maureen Maitland, referring to Denver. "What you have to do now is to watch for signs of a turnaround before calling anything,"
She said Denver has been beating the nation as a whole for four consecutive months. From June to July, for example, Denver's market appreciated by 0.8 percent, with only Detroit doing better at 1.3 percent, and all 20 areas dropping by an average of 0.6 percent.
The report is produced by S&P and Yale University economist Robert Shiller.
The nation as a whole is "in a bit of a housing crisis, and it is likely to get worse before it gets better," Maitland added.
Adjusting for inflation, housing prices nationwide have soared by 86 percent in the past decade. Some cities, such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., saw larger jumps than other places in the country, including Denver.
The Denver-area housing market peaked in February 2001, with a 15 percent year-over-year appreciation, slightly higher than the nation as a whole, Maitland said.
"Many other markets across the country continued on an upward swing, and the Denver growth rate slowed down," she said. "Now, Denver seems to be going in an upward direction."
Economist Michael Kone, principal of Boulder-based Housingmetrics, said there is still "intense pain" for the lower end of the housing market in the Denver area, with a "huge bump" in foreclosures to come, as subprime mortgages adjust upward.
Colorado is on pace to see more than 37,000 foreclosures filed this year, a 30 percent increase over the record set last year. Colorado and the Denver area are among the top 10 worst areas in the county for foreclosure rates.
Expensive houses, Kone said, are doing much better in the metro area. Also, as always, there are pockets of strength.
The S&P/Case Shiller report also illustrates that housing is a bargain in the Denver area compared with many other places, said Mike Foster, director of land acquisitions for Century Communities, a private, suburban builder.
Not long ago, Denver was the most expensive housing market "anywhere in the U.S. without a beach," Foster said.
But because the Denver-area housing market has been flat for so many years, it will recover faster than other areas that, until recently, saw a huge run-up in prices, he said.
"Denver is a low-risk market," Foster said. "It will be easier for companies to relocate to our market than to relocate to other markets."
Independent broker Gary Bauer, who puts out his own monthly report based on Metrolist data, said that the S&P/Case-Shiller report is encouraging.
"Basically, it is saying what I have been saying for quite a while - Denver is counter-cyclical to the rest of the nation," Bauer said. "Is it all roses in the Denver marketplace? No. But it is not as bad as all of the doom-and-gloom talk, either."
The top-performing metropolitan area, according to the national study, was Seattle at 6.9 percent, followed by Charlotte, N.C., at 6 percent. Other cities faring better than Denver included Portland at 3.8 percent; Atlanta at 1.2 percent; and Dallas at 0.8 percent.
rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5207.
S&P report suggests Denver area may be starting to recover
By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News September 27, 2007
Fresh evidence suggests the Denver-area housing market may be in the early stages of recovery, even as the national housing market faces an even bigger slump.
From May to June, Denver homes showed a 1.3 percent appreciation in value, the highest of 20 metropolitan areas surveyed, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller Home Price Indices. Charlotte, N.C., was No. 2 at 1.2 percent.
And while Denver home prices dropped by 0.7 percent in July from July 2006, only five metropolitan areas fared better during that period, the survey showed. Overall, a composite of 20 major metropolitan areas experienced a 3.9 percent drop during that one-year period.
"We need to see if the trend continues," said S&P Vice President Maureen Maitland, referring to Denver. "What you have to do now is to watch for signs of a turnaround before calling anything,"
She said Denver has been beating the nation as a whole for four consecutive months. From June to July, for example, Denver's market appreciated by 0.8 percent, with only Detroit doing better at 1.3 percent, and all 20 areas dropping by an average of 0.6 percent.
The report is produced by S&P and Yale University economist Robert Shiller.
The nation as a whole is "in a bit of a housing crisis, and it is likely to get worse before it gets better," Maitland added.
Adjusting for inflation, housing prices nationwide have soared by 86 percent in the past decade. Some cities, such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., saw larger jumps than other places in the country, including Denver.
The Denver-area housing market peaked in February 2001, with a 15 percent year-over-year appreciation, slightly higher than the nation as a whole, Maitland said.
"Many other markets across the country continued on an upward swing, and the Denver growth rate slowed down," she said. "Now, Denver seems to be going in an upward direction."
Economist Michael Kone, principal of Boulder-based Housingmetrics, said there is still "intense pain" for the lower end of the housing market in the Denver area, with a "huge bump" in foreclosures to come, as subprime mortgages adjust upward.
Colorado is on pace to see more than 37,000 foreclosures filed this year, a 30 percent increase over the record set last year. Colorado and the Denver area are among the top 10 worst areas in the county for foreclosure rates.
Expensive houses, Kone said, are doing much better in the metro area. Also, as always, there are pockets of strength.
The S&P/Case Shiller report also illustrates that housing is a bargain in the Denver area compared with many other places, said Mike Foster, director of land acquisitions for Century Communities, a private, suburban builder.
Not long ago, Denver was the most expensive housing market "anywhere in the U.S. without a beach," Foster said.
But because the Denver-area housing market has been flat for so many years, it will recover faster than other areas that, until recently, saw a huge run-up in prices, he said.
"Denver is a low-risk market," Foster said. "It will be easier for companies to relocate to our market than to relocate to other markets."
Independent broker Gary Bauer, who puts out his own monthly report based on Metrolist data, said that the S&P/Case-Shiller report is encouraging.
"Basically, it is saying what I have been saying for quite a while - Denver is counter-cyclical to the rest of the nation," Bauer said. "Is it all roses in the Denver marketplace? No. But it is not as bad as all of the doom-and-gloom talk, either."
The top-performing metropolitan area, according to the national study, was Seattle at 6.9 percent, followed by Charlotte, N.C., at 6 percent. Other cities faring better than Denver included Portland at 3.8 percent; Atlanta at 1.2 percent; and Dallas at 0.8 percent.
rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5207.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
This is the Hottest Selling Project at this Price Point in Denver!
Everyone,
We're selling about 1 -2 units per week and people are either moved in or moving in shortly. Everyone is welcome to buy at 1245 Columbine and the majority of the people who purchased so far are young urban professionals buying for the first time. I hear the same situation over and over... they like the design, LOCATION and price point.
I usually hear our buyers looked at a lot of properties in their price range (average below$200K) and found old, unexciting, not newly renovated and not in the area they like. Then they found 1245 Columbine...balconies, laundry in every unit, available parking, newly renovated...home run! In addition, they are excited about the community... so many people have a lot in common since they're in a similar place in life and are excited to be neighbors. They are also excited about the investment quality of their place and especially the area. Congress Park is appreciated way above the Denver average... almost twice as much at over 9%. Not bad.
Now it’s your turn.
Contact me for more information, updated pricing and time to stop by and see for yourself.
Thanks!
Chris
303.619.7987
We're selling about 1 -2 units per week and people are either moved in or moving in shortly. Everyone is welcome to buy at 1245 Columbine and the majority of the people who purchased so far are young urban professionals buying for the first time. I hear the same situation over and over... they like the design, LOCATION and price point.
I usually hear our buyers looked at a lot of properties in their price range (average below$200K) and found old, unexciting, not newly renovated and not in the area they like. Then they found 1245 Columbine...balconies, laundry in every unit, available parking, newly renovated...home run! In addition, they are excited about the community... so many people have a lot in common since they're in a similar place in life and are excited to be neighbors. They are also excited about the investment quality of their place and especially the area. Congress Park is appreciated way above the Denver average... almost twice as much at over 9%. Not bad.
Now it’s your turn.
Contact me for more information, updated pricing and time to stop by and see for yourself.
Thanks!
Chris
303.619.7987
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
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