In a week when Forbes Magazine named Denver ‘Best City to Buy a Home’ in the nation, Oakwood Homes is showing you a great place to do just that–Green Valley Ranch, where last week Oakwood CEO Pat Hamill helped officials break ground for Green Valley Ranch’s E-12 campus, an ‘energized platform’ for learning that will blend high-tech with green/sustainable energy features.

Turning the first ground for Green Valley Ranch’s new E-12 Campus are, from left, DPS Operations Director Kelly Leid, Oakwood President and CEO Pat Hamill, former Councilwoman Allegra ‘Happy’ Haynes, School Board Member Kevin Patterson, and Councilman Michael Hancock.

“You’re seeing Green Valley Ranch develop a sense of identity, a sense of place,” says Denver Public Schools’ Operations Director Kelly Leid, who five years ago was with Oakwood when he began work on a vision for E-12…a School of Science and Technology campus (plans call for a laptop for every student), covering all grades, K-12; the first new high school built in Denver in 30 years.

All of that doubles some opportunities Oakwood has created a few blocks from the school’s site. Come tour Oakwood’s seven models on view (Green Valley Ranch Blvd. at Ceylon Street, east of Tower) and you’ll find New Beginning’s designs priced from under $130,000…so low that at current 30-year rates, you could put 3-1/2% down and be making a monthly payment of just $860…taxes and insurance included.

Better yet, you can see a few New Beginnings II plans on track to deliver this fall…in time for you to take advantage of the up-to-$8,000 federal tax credit being offered to first-time buyers (you have to be moved in by Dec. 1 to take advantage).

One of those is an Emery plan…with two bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, 1,378 square feet plus a 2-car garage. It’s walking distance from Green Valley Ranch’s town center with King Soopers, coffee shop, Mattie Sopranos and other eateries…and like the new school, comes with high-performance energy features…30% better than code.

Move in by December…and by next fall your kids could be part of the opening of Green Valley Ranch E-12 Campus. No surprise that coming into this weekend, Oakwood is close to marking its 100th Green Valley Ranch sale of 2009…23 New Beginnings sales last month alone.

The school will be open in 12 months…but in a year when Denver’s inventory of homes under $300,000 has already dropped into “seller’s market” levels, don’t expect those prices to be there then. “You’re seeing the emergence of a great community,” adds Mike Tinlin, Oakwood’s Sales Manager, “but these prices will never be the same.”

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Mark Samuelson is president of Samuelson & Associates, a homebuilding/real estate communications firm. You can e-mail him at mark@samuelsonassoc.com.

IF YOU GO:

WHERE: Pre-sales prices on ‘New Beginnings” single-family homes by Oakwood Homes, close to new Green Valley Ranch E-12 Campus (opens next summer), seven models to tour. Green Valley Ranch; take Pena Blvd. north 1 mi. to Green Valley Ranch Blvd. (48th); east 1 mi. past Tower, past Argonne to Ceylon St., right

PRICE: From $129,700 Carson & Parkwood series from $190s, $240s
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