Real Estate Blog

LAKEWOOD — Voters in Colorado’s fifth-largest city on Tuesday approved a cap on residential construction that will be among the strictest in the metro area.

Almost 53 percent of the tally, or 18,771 votes, was in favor versus 47 percent, or 16,913 votes, against, according to results released by the Jefferson County clerk’s office at 10:30 p.m. Only 587 overseas and military ballots had yet to be counted in Tuesday’s special election.

Question 200 limits the construction of new homes and apartments each year to no more than 1 percent of the existing housing stock in the city and would require City Council approval of large development proposals. Cathy Kentner, who led the fight for 200, was pleased the measure passed nearly two years after she first started pushing for it.

“I hope this encourages other people in other communities and other people in Lakewood to press their issues with elected bodies and if their voices are not heeded, to exercise their right to direct democracy,” sh..

When a 19-story, purple-blue building goes up on an entire city block next door to the city’s main transit hub, it’s bound to turn heads. When that big, purple-blue building gives people the opportunity to own a condo in downtown Denver, it can create a stampede.

Take it from the developers of the Coloradan building at 1750 Wewatta St. The 700,000-square-foot tower casts a long shadow over the rail platform at Denver’s Union Station. In the works since August 2016, it was completed in February of this year.

Aside from its uniquely colored terracotta exterior, the Coloradan stands out in the Union Station neighborhood because of what’s inside: 334 condos, including 33 income-restricted, affordable units. That’s for-sale housing a few steps from bus and rail lines.

Colorado-based developer East West Partners first began selling units in the building in August 2017. When people started moving in this spring, the building was 95 percent sold out, according to Jenny Jacobs, East West’s d..

Tiny homes are small, obviously. The movement behind them is anything but.

The popularity of tiny homes has risen in recent years, and it seems they are more popular in Colorado than any other state.

“Colorado is the hub for the tiny house movement,” said Art Laubach, director of the Colorado Tiny House Association. Laubach founded the organization, which began in March, to advocate for the development of tiny homes.

Colorado is at or near the top for number of builders compared to other states, according to Laubach, and it is one of the leading states for tiny home living.

The state has over 20 builders who are constructing more than one tiny home unit at a time, and over 40 companies that have built at least one tiny home. On tiny home websites, other states with a growing number of manufacturers include Oregon, Washington and Texas.

The tiny home movement is being driven by people who are more interested in prioritizing experiences over material goods, Laubach said. Colorado is..

Now that residents of Lakewood have passed a strict growth-control measure limiting how many new houses and apartments can be built each year, will this city of 155,000 become the place in the metro area that developers avoid?

Reid Davis, a developer who is behind the 293-unit Brickhouse at Lamar Station apartment project in Lakewood, thinks so.

“We’ve had a lot of investors unwilling to take the risk (of building), even with (Question 200) swirling,” said Davis, founder of Riverpoint Partners. “I don’t think people know how difficult it is to get housing permits. It took us 18 months to get permits, and we had to put up millions of dollars.”

And that was before Question 200 passed in a special election Tuesday by a 53 percent to 47 percent margin. The measure limits the number of new residential units that can be built in Lakewood to 1 percent of existing housing — or about 700 permits in the first year — and requires development proposals with 40 or more units to first get City Co..

At the start of the decade, apartments renting for under $1,000 a month were easy to find in metro Denver. Last month, only one neighborhood in the city still had decent availability in that price range, according to a price survey from Rent.com, one of the country’s largest websites for rental listings.

That rare oasis of affordability is the multi-family enclave of Indian Creek, along south Quebec Way and Cherry Creek South Drive, south of Louisiana Avenue and north of Evans Avenue.

Rents for a one-bedroom apartment available there last month averaged $969.14 a month, up from $952.52 in May 2018, according to Rent.com.

The survey looked at the listed rents for one-bedroom apartments on Rent.com and Apartmentguide.com in Denver neighborhoods with five or more units listed.

“This data includes all neighborhoods in which Rent.com has inventory,” said Brian Carberry, who ran the analysis of around 40 neighborhoods.

RELATED: Denver is the most expensive city to rent an apartment in t..

Copaken Brooks and 3D Development are scheduled to hold a first-look event for Corrigan Station II from 4-6 p.m. Friday. Scheduled during First Friday, the co-developers will be showing off the second phase of the $50 million-plus Corrigan Station project.

Corrigan Station II is a three-story, 22,910-square-foot mixed-use building located at 1881 Walnut St. in Kansas City's Crossroads Arts District. The new building was designed by Helix Architecture + Design. The general contractor was Miller-Stauch…

The Birmingham City Council's plan to rezone the proposed site for a Sherman Industries concrete plant on Fayette Avenue could take another step forward next week.

On July 10, a joint meeting between the Birmingham City Council Planning & Zoning Committee and the Committee of the Whole will consider an application to change the zoning from I-2, heavy industrial, to mixed-use high district a t the properties, located at 3240 and 3250 Fayette Avenue.

Sherman Industries, which previously sold the…

This submarket has some of the highest rents in Central Florida.

Spectrum Medical Commons, a 43,355-square-foot Class A medical office building adjacent to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, has been sold for $17.75 million in a deal involving two Milwaukee companies.

The per-square-foot price of $409.41 is the highest price per square foot ever for a multi-tenant medical office building in the Phoenix area.

Brian Ackerman of JLL brokered the transaction. Hammes Partners, a Milwaukee-based private equity platform focused exclusively on the U.S. health care real estate…

Miami University is looking for a design-builder to construct a health sciences facility.