Home on the (driving) range

From the Country Club estates to some of the more affordable homes in the county, not many places offer more diversity in golf-course homes than does Boulder Valley.

“I think that’s absolutely true, and a lot of courses actually have a good mixture of properties as well,” said Stephanie Lyons of Triology Real Estate in Louisville. Lyons spent the first 18 years of her career specializing in new-home sales for developing golf courses, including Coal Creek Ranch, Fox Hill, Indian Peaks, Legacy Ridge and the Ranch, as well as working in Spring Valley, the subdivision around Ute Creek.

But it’s the mixture of old and new golf courses around the Boulder Valley, as well as the development planning that made both large and small homes available on newer courses that make for such a great mix here.

Consider the nine-hole gem in the middle of Longmont, Sunset Golf Course, which was built in 1923. While there are many affordable homes adjacent to the course, some as close as a block away are well under $200,000.

The 18-hole Flatirons course in Boulder, built in the 1930s, features only about a dozen homes that are adjacent to the course on Old Tale Road, but many other townhomes and single-family residences are across 55th Street and south of the course, as well.

“Not everyone who buys a home on a golf course is necessarily a golfer,” Lyons said. “In fact, I think that it is really about 50/50 between golfers and non-golfers.

“That course and open space is really an amenity for the entire neighborhood, just as a good school is an amenity for real estate.”

Boulder Valley golf course properties, on the whole, may have fared a little better than other properties during the recession. But the overall neighborhood and municipal factors affecting prices also affected the value of golf-course homes, experts said.

Probably the best homes for holding value were close to Boulder or in the vicinity of Louisville’s Coal Creek Ranch, near Coal Creek Golf Course.

“I know of three properties that have moved in Coal Creek Ranch in just the last few months, and they are selling very well,” Lyons said. The higher-priced one of the three sold for about $800,000, she said.

Things may be heating up a little faster for golf course properties, compared with Boulder Valley as a whole.

From July 2012 to July 2013, Lyons said, 62 properties along golf courses were sold in Boulder County, ranging in price from $300,000 to $1.8 million. During the previous year, she said, only 25 such properties were sold.

Boulder Country Club is one of the valley’s oldest exclusive neighborhoods, with most of the single-family homes on the course ranging above the $2 million mark. However, the country club also features many townhomes as well, said Karen Bernardi, of the Bernardi Real Estate Group at Coldwell Banker.

“There is quite a lot of diversity, even at the country club,” Bernardi said. “You have the homes right on the course that go for $2 million, but then you have quite a range of homes from there out.”

Both Lyons and Bernardi said Broomfield’s Broadlands Golf Course probably has one of the most diverse selection of homes of any golf-course community. The course itself was built in 1999, so much of the housing was built when real estate was soaring across the nation and there may be some bargains still in the offing.

“It really is one of the most diverse golf-course communities out there,” Lyons said, with homes ranging from the $200,000 range to above $3 million.

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