Months ago, it was suggested that I should familiarize myself with a lot of the communities on the eastern plains, what would be considered the southern end of our brokerage's territory. For years, I thought of these places as little farm towns, so far on the other side of the interstate that they might as well have been in Nebraska, for all that they related to me. But now, the greater Denver area is growing so rapidly, these rural communities are suddenly no longer easily dismissable as "the sticks." There are thousands of brand new houses (or at least new in the sense that they are less than five years old) in subdivisions all over where farms used to spread. People are moving out east in search of affordable homes, or at least more house for the money. A lot of these places are giant houses on big lots. It's harder to build developments like that on the west side of town, where land is more limited. The trade-off, of course, is how difficult it is to find homes very far away from storage tanks or methane vent pipes of the fracking industry.
So today, we took a little drive. Okay, a big drive. We went way out all over the east side, getting a feel for how far out these little towns were, and where they are in relation to each other and us. If I want to sell houses out this far, I needed to know what I'd be looking at, including the basics of which town was which. I spent time today trying to contact leads who are looking in these areas. I'm ready. I swear. I just need to have some of them be open to me when I reach out to them.
Once again today, I was struck by the great views to be had in the strangest places. Whenever we drive through industrial areas, where the buildings aren't so densely packed, you really see wide swaths of the mountains. It's been a freakishly warm winter, but there is still snow visible on the peaks behind the first ridge. I always want to take pictures, but I don't want to stop in some of these places, just to have train tracks, electrical wires, or dumpsters in the foreground. I tried to take a picture from the Jeep junkyard where I sat, waiting on the man, to prove my point. While we drove around, we passed a rural cemetery on a hill, with what felt like a hundred-mile view of mountains. Even as I admired the vista afforded to the headstones, I was painfully aware of the McMansions being built up across the street behind me. I wonder how long the dead will be allowed to occupy that space, when land is at such a premium.
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