While Winter Park works to shed its image as a slightly dated ski town with a bit too much chalet-gingerbread architecture, one market that hasn’t minded are vacationers from the British Isles.

An exceptionally snowy winter and the low dollar are adding to the allure of Grand County to purchasers from the British Isles, who have long favored Winter Park.

“Winter Park has always appealed to the British,” says Denise O’Connell, Broker Associate with Coldwell Banker Mountain Properties, who was part of a team of local real estate specialists who flew to London several years ago to present at a travel exhibition.

Now, O’Connell’s newest buyers for a custom home in Grand County are British. “They’ve had fabulous packages on Winter Park travel for years,” she says, adding that those opportunities have only become better as United has begun offering London-DIA non-stops in competition with British Airways; and as the dollar’s fall has made a vacation to the U.S. something akin to the way Americans view travel to Mexico.
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While agents in other parts of the state were marveling at the strong performance posted west of the divide in Colorado River counties of Eagle, Garfield and Mesa last year, brokers in the region’s big town of Grand Junction were noting a slight cooling off…but one that appears as a respite, not a trend.

Custom home on 35 acres ten miles southwest of downtown Grand Junction is on market at $1.45 million

“We’re maybe down a little now, but we’ll have a good year,” says Sharon Vaughn, who along with husband Larry are part owners of Coldwell Banker Home Owners Realty in Grand Junction. A major factor fueling recent growth—oil, gas and shale oil production in the region—is likely to keep bringing relocations, including to Grand Junction itself, where some employees are willing to commute 45 minutes up the valley to Parachute near many of the energy industry ventures.
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By Mark Samuelson

So, where in the metro area did Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony plop down a reported $12 million last year for a 16,000-square-foot Tuscan-style pad on a sprawling, gated estate? Was it Cherry Hills Village? Franktown? North Boulder County?

Actually, Littleton. Polo Reserve is off Platte Canyon Road, designed around a polo field for a Parade of Homes in the early ’90s.

The Parade was in The Farm at Polo Reserve: giant customs clustered around the field created for the Denver Polo Classic (300 yards long and equaling nine football fields…as backyard open space goes, very open indeed.)
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