Luxury home sales soar 45%

• Tolls Brothers is putting a fully furnished model home in Parker on the market.
• The asking price is about $900,000.
• The transaction is a microcosm of the overall market.

Toll Brothers has puts its Valmont model on the marker for just under $900,000.

In the latest sign of how hot the high-end, new home building market has become, Toll Brothers announced it has put its fully furnished model home on the market in a community in Parker, because almost everything else has been sold at the Estates at Pine Bluffs.

The model home with almost 6,000 square feet, including the finished walkout basement, is priced at just under $900,000.

“The market is very hot and we are going to be see more models going on the market as new home subdivisions sell out,” said Denver-area housing consultant, S. Robert August.

“In 40 years in the business, the market has never been like this,” August said. “The only way to talk about the market from a few years ago was doom and gloom. Builders getting to the point of selling models was inconceivable just a couple of years ago.”

There has been a sea change in the market, he said.

“There is pent-up demand from the last seven or eight years,” August said. 
 “Consumers are now more comfortable with their jobs and consumer confidence is high,” August said. “The Denver unemployment rate is the lowest in four years. And, of course, mortgage rates are crazy low.”

Due to the lack of inventory for new homes and resale homes, the biggest problems facing builders is that they need land, he said.

“Many builders won’t be able to come out of the ground with new product for six to 12 months, as they sell out their communities,” August said.

More builders in the Denver-area will increasingly be selling their models, as they sellout subdivisions and begin searching for new land in the area, said Jeff Whiton, president and CEO of the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver.

He noted that Toll, for example, recently announced it is buying 387 lots in Anthem Ranch in Broomfield, expanding its active-adult “Active Living” brand in the Western U.S.

“The ultimate objective of every builders is to sell through their community and go out and find a replacement for it,” Whiton said.

There has been a huge demand for new homes, as prospective buyers have struggled to find resale homes, Whiton said.

There were only 6,798 unsold homes on the market at the end of February, a 32.7 percent drop from the 10,086 at the end of February 2012, according to an earlier report based on Metrolist data by independent broker Gary Bauer.

“There is nothing for sale on the market right now other than mid-rise and high-rise units,” August said.

‘The lack of resale inventory is part of,” what is driving demand for new homes, Whiton said.

“The other thing is that new homes have all the latest gadgets and technology and design,” Whiton said.

“The other advantage of new homes is they are far more energy-efficient than resales homes,” Whiton said. “The homes built today are probably 30 percent to 40 percent more energy-efficient than homes built five, 10 or 15 years ago, much less the older stock of resale homes.”

New home building permits in the metro area last year were up about 45 percent, he said.

“The market basically died after 2007,” Whiton said. “However, we are still down 35 percent or 40 percent from the peak, so we have a long way to go.”

Toll’s model home for sale is the two-story Valmont Craftsman design with 4,246 square feet of space on the first two levels, plus a 1,724-square-foot, fully finished basement.

To learn more, please visit: Estates at Pine Bluffs.