New single-family homes 22 miles west of Steamboat signal evolving housing market
Dry Lake Village rebounds
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — The Oct. 17 sale of a new single-family home on 984 Dry Creek South Road in the Dry Creek Village Subdivision on the east side of Hayden for $264,936 could signal a shift in the evolution of the single-family housing market in the Yampa Valley.
The stick-built, 1,400-square-foot home offers three bedrooms and two baths and represents a product that isn’t available close to that price point in Steamboat Springs. Dry Lake Village is 23 miles west of Steamboat Springs on U.S. Highway 40.
Listing Broker Michael Buckley, of RE/MAX Partners in Steamboat Springs, said Oct. 19 the sale of the house is only a beginning.
“We’ll have six homes under construction by the first of December, of which four are already under contract,” Buckley said.
The current list price for the pending homes is $279,000.
The developer/seller is Falcon Logistics Corp. Steamboat Today reported in February that Falcon’s Damon Hill and his business partners purchased 34 unsold lots in the subdivision for $610,000 from Glacier Bank. Falcon immediately sold five of the lots.
Buckley said the development team’s intent is to deliver 10 homes per year to the market.
The buyers are trending toward young professionals.
One of the pending buyers “is a single male working at the (Hayden Station) power plant,” Buckley said. “I sold the second unit to a couple — one works in Craig and the other works in Steamboat. The third, I think they’re from Hayden. They’re definitely in their 20s and have two kids. The fourth is a woman who works in Steamboat and has young kids.”
A search of comparable homes in Hayden shows a 1,920-square-foot, two-story, four-bedroom, three-bath home under construction in nearby Lake Village (which also suffered a setback during the recession) listed at $329,500.
Buckley said his developers will continue to build one-story ranch homes in the near term, but intend to begin building two-story homes in another phase of construction.
Dry Lake Village, with completed infrastructure that includes a children’s playground, was developed in the midst of the Routt County real estate boom that began in the middle of the last decade. But the possibility that 2,000 new building lots might be created immediately west of Steamboat Springs in the Steamboat 700 project put the brakes on the trend toward people living in Hayden and commuting to work in Steamboat, and the subdivision didn’t take off.
The owners of Dry Lake Village at the time attempted to sell lots at auction in autumn 2009, but there was little interest. Ironically, about a month after the auction, the Steamboat 700 project ran aground after voters in Steamboat Springs rejected an annexation agreement approved by city council. By then, the recession had taken hold, and the housing market slowed.
To reach Tom Ross, call 970-871-4205, email tross@SteamboatToday.com or follow him on Twitter @ThomasSRoss1
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