Good market or bad? If you’re buying in Highlands Ranch, it’s good…
$10 Starbucks card at The Hearth in Highlands Ranch by Berkeley Homes, showing three decorator show homes going on the market. Take Quebec south from C-470 into Highlands Ranch, past University/Lincoln Ave., one more mile to McArthur, right 1/3-mile to Heatherton and left.
PRICE: From mid $300s, decorator models from $399,900
PHONE: 303-470-1166 WEB: www.liveberkeley.com.
Is it a bad market or a good market? If you’re buying rather than selling, there’s not much doubt: “I wish I were a buyer, not a seller,” says Rich Laws, president of Berkeley Homes…and he’ll show you why in Colorado’s most enduringly popular community, Highlands Ranch; even give you a $10 Starbucks card for looking.
Rich Laws, president of Berkeley Homes, shows off two of three decorator show homes coming on the market in Highlands Ranch.
Highlands Ranch performs terrific in good markets, and pretty well in not-so-good ones, too. “Master-planned communities have always performed best over time,” Laws said, showing me his nearly built-out neighborhood “The Hearth”…walking distance from Highlands Ranch’s newest rec center, Southridge, and from Rock Canyon High, rated by 5280 Magazine as second best high school in the Denver-Boulder area…better than the private academies, better than Cherry Creek High.
Berkeley Homes is a seller, and what they have to sell now are three decorator model homes…on the market from $399,900, far cheaper than the least expensive new single-family home marketed by any other builder in Highlands Ranch. They’re loaded with goodies that in a better market, buyers pay a premium to get: built in shelving, window treatments, custom landscaping, sound and security systems, upgraded appliances. Even the decorator furniture.
The models are coming on the market because Berkeley has only a handful of homes left to sell, including some coveted opportunities to buy on open space. (You can tour a “Presidio” plan, ready for delivery, 2,345 feet plus a garden level that looks out to the trail corridor. The price, after a discount, is $427,963.)
“If you’re buying a finished home like that, you’re getting a $12,000 added finish package, plus over $20,000 as a discount,” adds Laws. That’s in addition to Berkeley’s other typical finishes: the 10-foot ceilings, art niches, slab granite, crown molding, wrought iron staircase, full-sized basement.
That’s true, as well, in two other communities where Berkeley is running short of homes: In the Village at Centennial, three miles east of I-25 off Arapahoe Road at Potomac, from the low $4s; and at Southlawn Park in the new community of Reunion, 104th and Tower Road, from the mid $2s. As at The Hearth, there are decorator models on the market at no premiums, and Starbucks cards for coming to look.
Tags: Denver, DNC, Highlands Ranch, real estate market, recovery
