When NBC’s Today Show ran a segment last week projecting Denver as the market with prospects for making the nation’s first comeback from the housing slump, more than a few Realtors were already expecting the news.

Becky Kenny of RE/MAX Professionals shows a listing at 179 Satsuma Place in Plum Creek, Castle Rock, priced at $699,000, backing to the Pete Dye-designed golf course.

“We’ve been predicting for six months that we’d begin seeing appreciation in the lowest price ranges, and that the effect would begin creeping into the middle ranges,” says broker Jack O’Connor, a principal owner of the newly combined RE/MAX Professionals. He issues a monthly report to agents on market prospects. more »

By Mark Samuelson
Most of the 300 families who’ve bought homes at RidgeGate in Lone Tree over the past three years have come from Denver’s southeast corridor…but among the remainder are some arriving from California, who instantly recognize what the developer is creating here: a community with a suburban address, but with a new urban feel.

Darryl M. Jones, Development Manager for RidgeGate, takes in view toward DTC from a trail up bluffs above Sky Ridge Medical Center. Luxury homes in foreground are sold out.

“We’re calling it ‘Urban Scape,’” says Coventry Development Corporation Vice President Keith Simon, who has a view across the changing landscape from his office near Sky Ridge Medical Center.

One buyer from the Bay Area started exploring their move to the Mile High by Googling “new urbanism Denver.” That turned up web sites of the two, big Denver city redevelopment projects…and RidgeGate’s. The family visited all three…and were probably impressed by the master plan taking shape here. But the clincher, says Simon, may well have been the pretty terrain around Lone Tree. more »

By Mark Samuelson
The limos and busses have departed, the private jets are plowing the skies back to L.A. and Chicago, and commentators and bloggers are all over the map as to who came out well and by how much. But there’s little doubt about how Denver did this week. It won big.

Larimer Square, three blocks from the Pepsi Center

While 40,000-plus convention visitors were taking in the café scene and nice weather on the Mall, the Case-Shiller Home Price Index issued by Standard & Poor’s arrived showing the Mile-High City leading the entire nation in home appreciation–up 1.5% May to June–the only major market, save for Boston, headed upward.

“The reason we’re having success is that the downward trend in inventory is already affecting prices,” Jack O’Connor, managing broker at Prestige Real Estate Group, told me. O’Connor, who authors a widely read report, is predicting price increases for 2009, particularly in the under-$300,000 range where listings are disappearing fastest. more »