By Mark Samuelson

One of the things to be had at bargain prices this spring are views…such as one you can get from a semi-custom home above the 14th fairway at Plum Creek Golf & Country Club in Castle Rock: Devils’ Head Peak in the Rampart Range (a great 3-hour family climb) so close you can touch it…Mount Evans and Long’s Peak to the north.

Bob Brown of RE/MAX Alliance 3000 shows off a bank-owned semi-custom home with a view over Plum Creek Golf Course.

No. 1074 Whitekirk Place has all of that, plus 3,316 feet of finished space and a deck, over an unfinished walk-out…for $499,950. That’s down from $525,000, where it was last month…down even further from around $697,000 when the builder sold it in 2007.

“It ought to be $600,000,” Realtor Bob Brown with Re/Max Alliance 3000, who has the listing for a California bank, told me during a walk-thru Tuesday.
The plan is a classic 2-story bridge plan with lots of brick on the front; entry between formal rooms, with a big study beyond, opening to a wide kitchen-family area. There are four bedrooms up…one of them a guest suite with private bath, the other two on a hall bath. Across the bridge is a luxury master with a fireplace, separate his-her vanities, a big walk-in closet, and more of the golf course below.

Not just the house but the club itself is a value right now, according to Brown, a former president of the Colorado Association of Realtors, with enough years in the business to have seen other booms and busts. Plum Creek’s associate golf membership initiation, regularly $1,500, goes for $750 as a special now; and the city of Castle Rock…just 46,000 people…has just picked up another 700 acres of open space for its amenity package.

“How could you find a better time and opportunity to be part of a community like this?” Brown asked, noting that he and other agents are seeing multiple offers on listings in the lowest ranges. “It’s the best lot on the block,” he added. No. 1074 is at the top of Emerald Drive in Plum Creek. Take Plum Creek Boulevard south from Plum Creek Parkway a mile to Emerald, then up the hill ¾-mile to Diamond Head and right.
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If you go…