I'm thinking of buying a new home in Pueblo West (Aurora: for sale, real estate market)

[mechanic]

We are looking at new homes in Pueblo West area. Don't know if it is a good or bad decision in reference to property values or the possible loss of the COA.
Any thoughts for us? We moved here from Missouri and are staying with a relative temporarily in Aurora.

[McGowdog]

I'm not well versed in real estate or the value of the current market in this area relative to others. I do know Pueblo County to be competitive on value versus cost across the board.

It's a growing area and it's become fairly well established from the little suburb of Pueblo that started out in about 1976.

I do know that there are a lot of empty newly built nice homes here. They're not all brand new, but they need a little landscape and some a lot of TLC. I would hope that if you come here to live that you consider checking out what's already here and don't just build new. That market, I would hope, has saturated. It was the thing to do, however, about 8 years ago (building new).

[ryanek9freak]

eh, you'll be near the resiviour. (sp?)

[Bideshi]

Ibelieve if you rent for a year you'll be able to buy at a much lower price.

[CherryMagic]

Originally Posted by mechanic

We are looking at new homes in Pueblo West area. Don't know if it is a good or bad decision in reference to property values or the possible loss of the COA.
Any thoughts for us? We moved here from Missouri and are staying with a relative temporarily in Aurora.

If I could just add my .02 cents in here on this one. Someone can correct me if I am wrong - you won't hurt my feelings

Pueblo West was developed by McCollough around 1969. Mr.M bought alot of land at the time for developement - Lake Havasu & Pueblo West - Lots (tracts) of land were selling for about $10K. +/-. (per acre, etc..) That really was alot of money at the time, lol. My mom bought a corner lot - right on McCullough Blvd - and it has sat there ever since. I inherited it when she passed away in 1991. Taxes were cheap enough "back then". I believe 2 years ago, they doubled.

Village Profile Presents - Pueblo West, CO

My first trip was in 1994. It's unbelieveable how much growth that area is experiencing. I spoke to a REA in May 07 - who said that during the previous 6 yrs, they had massive amounts of folks move into the area. He stated me a number, and IIRC, it was over 15,000....Can't remember....I have that CRS disease. lol

Anywho...was up there in May & Oct 07. Then again Aug - Sept 08 and could not believe how many new houses had gone up in just 10 months.
There were quite a few for sale and they are scattered all over Phase 1 & 2. I am frequently checking land prices for comps.

I love the location of PW...not too far from CoS; Canon City. There is always something to see and explore no matter which way your compass takes you.

On a side note about land in PW...
I've been told to watch out for Radon in the ground out there. (when drilling for water, etc...) Not sure if you should test for this during inspection, as I am not familiar with RE practices in Co.

I have alot more research to do myself before taking that big leap of faith.

Good luck with your search for a new home in the area.

[Crematia]

I bought my house in PW at the end of August. I had spent two years researching the market before I came out here to look at homes. In PW, you get the most house for the money, the most bang for your buck. Although it is slow, the RE market is not dead out here, homes are selling and have been. I don't think you will save much by waiting to buy in this town, other places sure it may pay to wait a bit longer.

There are many things to love about living out here, and if you do a search on PW in this forum, you can read them all. The list of negatives (in my opinion anyhow) are a short one: very few good places to eat, terrible roads, bad job market. So if you don't mind commuting to the Springs for work, it's great!

[McGowdog]

Very nicely done, CherryMagic. I heard McCulloch brought over the London Bridge to Havasu as well.

We got a 1.2 acre lot for 9k. If you can see the reservoir from your lot, they start at about 20K. This was over 8 years ago, so the values have probably increased from there and crashed a bit.

P Dub may have started in 69, but the first time I saw it was in 76 when we were visiting one of my favorite aunts in Colorado City when we were living in the San Fernando Valley before we moved here. We were on our way to the Royal Gorge and stuff and we stopped at the Pueblo West Inn for the all you can eat King Crab Legs for 12 bucks. It's the first time I ever had the stuff and the people working there had to tell this 9-10 year old kid that 3-4 pounds of Crab Legs was enough. Bogarts.

[mpsgirl]

We're finalizing our offer on a house in P.W. and I can honestly say you get the most house and land for your money out there right now. Most of it is because the real estate market is just so terrible right now (it may get worse, it may get better). My husband is stationed at Ft Carson so we wanted a place that wasn't more than a 35-40 min drive for him. Our realtor took us to literally about 80 houses, we looked at another 20 new-build communities on our own and hands down, our best option was P.W. We're getting over a full acre of land and a house that, once fully finished, will be almost 4000 sq ft. We did comps on our house and the same home in places like Falcon would have cost us nearly $350K-$400K.

There are downsides but can be bearable if you are handy. Absolutely no landscaping in most homes. The builders don't do any of that w/ their new homes...and many current homeowners don't seem to have done much with their property after buying either. We visited a bunch of pre-owned homes down there also and it seems like they were lucky if a fence was even put up. It is a desert though, so watering a large lawn gets expensive out there and I can see why many people don't do extensive landscaping. You see more xeriscaping than anything.

My personal thoughts are these: P.W. is going to expand and eventually be a better place to live than even Falcon (where many people seem to be moving now). They have FAR more space to expand in the direction of the Springs for people that want to work in the Springs but live outside of the city (yet still have a reasonable commute), whereas Falcon and the area north of the Springs is pretty limited on growth CLOSER to the city. There is the Banning Lewis development which won't all be houses, and then there is the area north of Woodmen (Forest Meadows, Cumbre Vista). Other than that, their expansion on that side of the city will all continue to go further north, and thus further away from the city....meaning a longer commute.

I personally think there is also a lot of potential for industry in that area too given the large amount of space to develop. If you truly do get that development then your property value will definitely increase. The most appealing thing to us for the area though, aside from the property size, was that the houses weren't all the same like you see in all the subdivisions AND taxes are far less than in the city. Plus, gasoline is a good bit cheaper that way, so even if you have to commute, you won't feel the shock like you think.

Downside for me was that they all use propane. I would prefer natural gas. If you have kids (we don't yet), there aren't going to be many parks the further north you go in P.W. if any at all. Many unpaved roads, but given time and development, they'll pave the roads.

Something I'm on the fence about is the lack of HOA's. While I quite frankly am not terribly fond of them and like to be able to do what I want, unfortunately so can your neighbors, and you can't control your neighbors. We're very neat and tidy people that take pride in things we own....I've walked away from MANY homes for sale down there simply because the neighbors had trashy homes that they didn't take care of, nor care what was thrown out in the front or back of their homes. We lucked out for the time being because all 3 homes surrounding the one we're buying are very well groomed. Neighbors can affect your resale ability if you choose to do so in the future.