Tag: David Dlugasch

Half-Duplex Overlooking Standley Lake with Mountain Views Just Listed by David Dlugasch

This half-duplex at 8581 Jellison Street is a patio home, requiring no exterior or grounds maintenance by owner. Snowfall over 2 inches is cleared by the HOA up to the covered porch and garage. On the top floor it has both a primary suite and guest suite, both with ensuite bathrooms and walk-in closets. In the basement is a third bedroom with egress window and ensuite bathroom. The interior was entirely repainted prior to listing, and all new carpeting was installed. This home is move-in ready, for sure! The exterior will be repainted this summer by the HOA. In addition to its awesome views of Standley Lake and the foothills (including Longs Peak), this home is adjacent to a pedestrian/bike path adjacent the Highline Canal. It also has the largest backyard (maintained by HOA) in the subdivision. You can view a narrated video tour below or at www.ArvadaHome.info, then come to David’s open house Sat., May 13th, 11am-1pm.  Or call David at 303-908-4835 for a showing.

On the MLS, a Half-Duplex Is No Longer a ‘Single-Family Home’

The single-family home that David Dlugasch listed this week, a half-duplex, will not be found by buyers searching the MLS for single-family homes, thanks to a big change made in January 2020, when our MLS began conforming to a standardized set of property descriptors which all MLSs were expected to adopt.

Under the new system, a duplex must be listed under the “Multi-Family” Sub-Property type, with  “Duplex” under Property Structure. This replaced the earlier system, which had “Single-Family Attached” as well as “Single-Family Detached” as property types.

You can search by address and find the listing, but most people searching for homes are unlikely to include “multi-family” in their search criteria, even though they would love this single-family home if they saw it.

Lakewood Development Site Just Listed by Austin Pottorff

This 0.86-acre parcel at 730 Kipling Street comes with plans for 16 townhome-style units and an open case number with Lakewood Planning & Zoning. It was just listed for $1,600,000. It’s a flat site adjacent to Lakewood High School and near the Kipling/6th Ave. Freeway interchange. That makes it close to both the Denver Federal Center and St. Anthony’s medical campus. Colorado Christian University is also just a few minutes from the site, along with other schools. From this site, you’re only minutes to downtown Denver or downtown Golden, and it’s centrally located in the metro area for ease of travel in all directions. For more details, visit http://www.LakewoodDevelopmentSite.info, or call Austin Pottorff, 970-281-9071,or David Dlugasch, 303-908-4835, for more info or to submit a contract.

Lakewood Duplex Just Listed by David Dlugasch

This is a great duplex at 1802-1804 Simms Street! It works for a mother-in-law and family or as a 2-rental unit with great rental income. One unit, 1804 Simms, is 1600 sq. ft. and has 3 large bedrooms with double closets. The primary bedroom has a 3/4 bath. It has a large carpeted living room with a non-functional wood-burning fireplace. The kitchen is open with an eating area and a laundry closet with washer and dryer. 1802 Simms measures 950 sq. ft. Its primary bedroom has new carpeting, new paint, and a double closet. Another room is a non-conforming bedroom and can be used as an office or hobby room.  The entrance has a foyer with slate flooring that leads into a very large and bright living room with hardwood floors. The eat-in kitchen can use some updating and has a newer bay window. Each unit has a well-maintained fenced yard, great for entertaining. The two-car garage is shared, and there is extra parking in the driveway.  There is a basement area under 1802 Simms accessed from the back of the structure. This is a solid brick duplex home with good bones. You can view a narrated video tour below or online at www.LakewoodDuplex.info. Open this Saturday, March 25th, 11am to 2pm.

Did You Know? Potting Soil Presents a Fire Hazard

Earlier this month, a Jefferson County home almost burned down. Thanks to a quick response by the local fire department, damage was contained and is estimated at $30-50,000.

Here’s what happened, as documented by surveillance cameras: A person tried to put out a cigarette by sticking it in the soil of an indoor potted plant. Unfortunately, the plant was in potting soil that contained nitrogen, and within a few hours the soil started smoking and quite suddenly burst into flames.

When told of this, David Dlugasch, one of our broker associates, told me that the exact same scenario caused his own house which he had sold in Gunnison to be burned to the ground the day after he sold it.

This issue was new to me, so I wanted to share it with readers. Below is a picture I took of the ingredients in a commonly available potting soil. Nowhere on the package does it mention that it is flammable and could cause a house fire.

The “helpful hardware man” at Ace told me he was aware of the danger and reminded me that nitrogen fertilizer can be used to create a bomb, as in the Oklahoma City bombing.

David Dlugasch Is Golden Real Estate’s 2022 Top Producer

Congratulations to David Dlugasch, our top-producing Broker Associate for 2022! Last year he sold $5,625,700 worth of his own listings and represented buyers in the purchase of $5,278,900 worth of listings.

Since joining Golden Real Estate in October 2014, David has closed 47 listings and assisted buyers in closing on another 39 listings. He moved to Arvada from Crested Butte, where he owned his own brokerage, choosing to join Golden Real Estate because he was regular online reader of this very column. Thanks, David, for being one of our hardest working and most consistently productive broker associates.

David lives with his wife, Carol, in the Candelas subdivision in northern Arvada.

I’m Reconsidering the Advice I’ve Given About What to Fix or Improve Before Listing Your Home  

Recent experience with my listings has caused me to rethink recommendations I’ve made in the past about fixing up a home before putting it on the market.

Despite a moderating seller’s market, two recent listings went under contract for way above their listing prices, and I think it was because of the effort and money that was expended on dressing them up for sale.

In previous columns I have said you don’t need to do much to sell a home. Only fix “eyesores,” I wrote.  If the carpet is old but not damaged or rippled, just have it professionally cleaned, don’t replace it.

My most recent seller, however, spent significant time and money dressing up their home before putting it on the market, and I think it paid off. The home was listed at what the comparable sales suggested it should sell for, but it attracted 12 offers and ended up going under contract in five days for 20 percent over the listing price. 

The new carpeting was well chosen and beautifully installed. The seller followed our stager’s advice to the letter. The deck was re-stained. The concrete flatwork which had settled was mud-jacked. Windows were washed and screens labeled and put away. I asked the seller to describe all they had done over several months, and it’s super-instructive. Here’s a link to what they wrote.

Another effort — by me — really paid off, too.  The narrated video tour with drone video which we put on YouTube and linked to the MLS and our website was so effective in showing off the home that a buyer from the East Coast submitted the winning offer without seeing it in person. That’s because our videos simulate an actual showing, starting out front (just like a real showing) and going through the home and into the backyard, narrating all the time.

As I wrote in a previous column, we are amazed that more agents don’t shoot live action narrated videos. They’re easy to do once you get the knack of it, and they cost nothing to create and edit if the listing agent does it himself.  And who better than the listing agent to “show” a listing?

Come on, dear colleagues, get with the program. It can pay off for you as it pays of for Golden Real Estate agents week after week!

Golden Heights Ranch Listed by David Dlugasch

Come see this beautiful ranch home at 15820 W. 3rd Ave. with 3 bedrooms and 1½ updated bathrooms in a quiet location. It was just listed by David Dlugasch for $498,000.

The living room and hallway have newer hardwood floors and the bedrooms have wood-like COREtec vinyl flooring. A bay window with mountain views and a wood-burning stove make the living room very bright and cozy. The rest of the home has double-pane windows, a 4-year-old roof and new Hardie Board siding, newer furnace and water heater. The spacious family kitchen has maple cabinets and stainless steel appliances. The master bedroom has a double and single closet plus its own half bath. In addition to the carport, there is room for additional cars or an RV through the double gate into the backyard. The large backyard has a deck with canopy, a fire pit and a 10’x16′ custom Tuff Shed. From the elevated rear of the yard you get a great view of the mountains. Nearby 6th Ave. Expressway can get you to downtown Denver in 15 minutes or downtown Golden in 10 minutes. Or take I-70 up to the mountains. The basement has a workshop, is framed out and ready for a new bedroom, 3/4 bathroom, game room, home theater, or whatever you can imagine.  Take a narrated video tour by clicking on the thumbnail below, or visit www.SouthGoldenHome.com, then come to the open house on Saturday, August 7, 11am to 2pm.  Or call David at 303-908-4835 for a private showing.

Golden Real Estate Wins Sustainability Award

Broker/owner Jim Smith and broker associate David Dlugasch pose with the Golden Sustainability Award in front of their two Teslas.

Back in 2010, Golden Real Estate was awarded the “Sustainability Award for Business” from the City of Golden for the brokerage’s solar-powered office. Eleven years later, we have been awarded this recognition a second time because of how much further we have taken our passion for sustainability.

Back in 2010 we had a 5kW solar array on our roof — enough to power our office, but little else. We had a couple other features — sun tunnels to daylight our office reducing the need for artificial lighting, extra insulation to reduce the amount of natural gas needed to heat the office, and we accepted polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) for recycling.

Now, we have 2 ground-mounted solar arrays adding another 15kW of solar power, providing enough electricity to heat and cool our office with heat pumps and to power our five agent-owned Teslas as well as offering free EV charging to the general public. We had our gas meter removed in 2017 and now our Xcel Energy bill is $10 to $11 per month, which is the cost of being connected to the electric grid. We are now a “net zero energy” facility — and we’re taking two truckloads of Styrofoam to a reprocessing center in Denver every month.

Thanks to “net metering,” the electric grid functions like a battery, receiving our excess energy during sunny days and giving it back to us when we need it. We like to consider our office an example that other businesses can aspire to, and we are grateful for this week’s recognition by Golden. Click on the following 2-minute YouTube video tour of our net zero office:

Lakewood Earth Day 2021 features this video tour of Golden Real Estate’s Net Zero Energy office.

Readers Appreciate Our Free MLS Neighborhood Alerts

Back in April 2019, I offered to set up Free Neighborhood Alerts for any reader who wanted to keep track of real estate activity in their subdivision or larger area. The response was overwhelming. I myself have 42 readers who currently receive such alerts for their neighborhood.

I’m not complaining. My broker associates and I are pleased to make this service available to everyone who wants it, and we’ve become pretty efficient at creating these free alerts.

The MLS allows members to set up an unlimited number of email alerts, designed to assist buyers in searching for homes. We have adapted it to provide neighborhood alerts. Once set up, the alerts are generated automatically by the MLS. Just give us your address and the boundaries of the area you wish to monitor. The initial alert will tell you all the coming soon, active, under contract, sold, withdrawn and expired listings in that area, going back 90 days or longer.

Future alerts will come to you within 15 minutes of a new or changed listing being entered on the MLS. You will literally be up-to-the-minute in your knowledge of real estate activity in your neighborhood!

I’m happy to handle every request I get from readers, but feel free to ask any of our broker associates to create a neighborhood alert for you. They are listed below with their email addresses and are more than happy to provide this free service. Send your requests by email only, please.

In addition to setting up the neighborhood alert for you, we can also send you valuation reports on your home using two different software packages — Realtor Property Resource (RPR), which is only available from members of the Realtor association like us, and Realist — that you will find are much more accurate than Zillow’s “Zestimates,” which home owners are used to seeing.

I also like to provide a spreadsheet of active, under contract and sold listings that are comparable to your own home, which serves as a double-check on those two software valuations.

Jim Smith, Jim@GoldenRealEstate.com

Broker Associates:

Jim Swanson, BrokerSwanson@aol.com

Chuck Brown, Chuck@GoldenRealEstate.com

David Dlugasch, David@GoldenRealEstate.com

  Carol Milan, Carol@GoldenRealEstate.com

  Ty Scrable, Tyler.Scrable@gmail.com