Builders in survival mode: frugality may be rewarded as signs suggest front range real estate recovery.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: [who owns] COLORADO

Front Range real estate has turned the corner.

There, we said it.

The market remains a buyer's market, but still.

Who Owns Colorado bases this semi-bold announcement on two sources of evidence: statistical and anecdotal.

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Statistical evidence tends to be kind of boring even when it's dramatic, as it is in Front Range real estate today.

So we'll start with a couple of anecdotes.

Some years ago MDC Holdings Inc., parent of Colorado's biggest homebuilder, Richmond American Homes, had its headquarters in southeast Denver near the intersection of South Yosemite Street and Hast Hampden Avenue.

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The company acquired a couple of vacant lots, one to the rear of the office, one across the street next to a fire station.

Decades passed. Richmond American Homes became one of the top 10 U.S. homebuilders. The company moved 10 minutes south. The government built a post office next door to the lot across the street.

Recessions came and went, and then the big one hit a few years ago.

And come 2010, Richmond American finally built a couple of small developments on the vacant lots it had held for about 20 years.

One, Sunset Village, has six home models on 22 lots selling for up to $459,950 plus options. The other, Creekview, has two models on 15 lots selling for between $269,950 and $324,256 plus options. Average lot size is about 7,000 square feet.

Sunset Village and Creekside are going to be shiny and new, and they are located within the Denver city limits. As of mid-February, seven had sold between the two, and tire-kickers were buzzing all over their respective model homes.

Richmond American also has been buying land around the metro area, our sources say. Do they know something?

Remington Homes has been building houses around the metro area for four generations, including Ron Hauptman.

Hauptman ceded the reins to son Regan Hauptman some years ago. But Ron remains on the board and works day-to-day as well.

This has been his fourth major recession in 45 years in the homebuilding business, he says. He started after graduating from the University of Colorado in 1968, when dad, "was branching out to build a few new developments," Ron Hauptman recalls.

The big one was the Jimmy Carter recession, Ron says, when construction loans ran around 20 percent; today lenders charge around 5 percent, he says.

For Remington Homes, maybe the main thing about this last downturn was its readiness for it.

"It's tight, obviously...