Johnstown Feedback (Denver, Fort Collins, Loveland: hardwood floors, transplants, foreclosure)

[SantaCruzer]

Hello all! My wife and I are re-locating from Santa Cruz, CA to Colorado. We have done a ton of research, but we would like to hear what the locals have to say about Johnstown and possibly Ryland Builders as well? Thank you.

[Tom Emmerling]

Johnstown is a nice small community close to several cities. It really does not have shopping or things like that but it is close to many cities. There is easy access along the front range because it is close to I25. There is a low crime rate, and friendly people. I am not sure what the school systems there are like. I also have not heard about Ryland Builders. I work with a lot of builders but I have never heard of them.

[SantaCruzer]

That is just what I wanted to hear! No shopping, nice people and close to the city where the pro-sports teams play(Rockies, Broncos, Avalanche... ). My wife is looking into the schools in surrounding areas. She is a High School Math Teacher with tons of experience. I have a home business re-selling ink and media to print shops and marketing companies. Does it snow in Johnstown? What would be benefits to living closer to the front range? I hear it quite a bit.

Thank you for your time and feedback. We are excited to see all the great posts on Colorado. We visited Fort Collins for a wedding a few years back and made a vacation out of it. We left feeling sad and that we wanted to move there someday. Now that California is too expensive and crowded we want a small town like we once had hear in Santa Cruz, Ca. We will definately look forward to assimilating, as I wish many of the transplants here in SC would have considered trying to assimilate a bit more!

[sumisu]

Hi SantaCruzer - I have a Ryland home in the Denver metro area and am happy with the product/company. I've been in the (new construction) home for 3 years and think it was very well built. The company has also been very good about any warranty issues. Don't know the Johnstown area well. Good luck. Sumisu

Originally Posted by SantaCruzer

Hello all! My wife and I are re-locating from Santa Cruz, CA to Colorado. We have done a ton of research, but we would like to hear what the locals have to say about Johnstown and possibly Ryland Builders as well? Thank you.

[tfox]

Johnstown is closest to Loveland. That's probably where you're going to go for shopping, etc.

On the plus side, you're going to find very, very cheap housing there. The foreclosure wave has decimated Weld County, yet the builders continue to construct new homes as fast as they possibly can. To say it's a buyers' market there would be understating things.

However, my big concern would be the traffic. Realtors and city planners have a habit of talking about I-25 as "Northern Colorado's Main Street" -- which basically means that they want the state to build the transportation infrastructure for them rather than having the municipalities do it for themselves. This, in my view, is exceedingly irresponsible. The state has NO money for transportation beyond maintenance, so the essential problem is that traffic will get worse and worse in northern Colorado and on I-25 from now on. Meanwhile, Weld County continues to encourage rapid development along I-25 regardless of consequence, attempting to quickly convert every agricultural parcel with highway frontage into new subdivisions and shopping malls.

[Tom Emmerling]

TFox
I am not sure what Realtors have to do with the road ways. This is all up to the planning and zoning departments. I do agree that there is a lot of irresponsiblity going on, but unfortunatly realtors like myself have nothing to do with it.

[tfox]

Originally Posted by Tom Emmerling

TFox
I am not sure what Realtors have to do with the road ways. This is all up to the planning and zoning departments. I do agree that there is a lot of irresponsiblity going on, but unfortunatly realtors like myself have nothing to do with it.

Tom,

You're right of course about realtors not having any "power", at least not individually. However, there is a big push by the development interests to see freeway oriented development along I-25, and (some) realtors are a in the middle of promoting that agenda, along with city and county planners, developers, etc.

[aronshaw]

I know that it was a couple of months since your posting, but I did not know if you were still looking for info. I live in the Pioneer Ridge subdivision in a Ryland home. We have been in this neighborhood for 3 years. I will tell you that NOW is the time to buy a home here. They just dropped the prices by 70K dollars---yes, seventy thousand!!! There is a brand new elementary school in the middle of the neighborhood. Our son attends school there and we really love it. Class sizes are currently in the mid 20's which is high for this area, but they are re-establishing boundries and some children are going to be enrolled in the other 2 elementary schools so the class sizes should go down next year. I love the teachers and you can be really involved in the schools. We have a good size high school in town and the middle school is in Milliken which is an even smaller town about 3 miles east of Johnstown. We have a great family-owned market in town (Hays Market), a few restaurants, a Mc Donalds (it's about 5 years old), Subway, Dominos (just came). We have a great shopping mall just 8 miles North of us off of I-25. Denver is about a 40 minute drive. Loveland is close. We do our major grocery shopping in Frederick (about 12 miles south of us). We have a great variety of churches. We have lived in Johnstown for 7 years-we moved from the metro Denver area and we LOVE Johnstown. Best of luck to you and welcome if you choose to make Johnstown your home : )

[dezi69]

Hi

My Fiance and I have been in the process of building and buying a Ryland home for the last 4 months. Our home is almost complete but we are not sure we want it. We have had many problems with the builder as to craftsmanship and attention to detail. If you just want to say build me a home I won't look at it durring the process and you don't want to visit often and check things out maybe it will be fine. But, right now there is a leak in our basment, spit out sunflower seeds on our as yet unfinished hardwood floors, and upside down stone moldings in our master bath, good luck!

[jworld2]

Johnstown is the perfect place to live in.
I have a question though- is there a way to find out how many houses are in a specific subdivision?