Border Street: Discount townhome sales vex some, animate others
By Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published March 5, 2007 at midnight
Of the four houses that went into foreclosure on Border Street over the past nine months or so, two have been resold at deep discounts. This news is not welcomed by longtime homeowners, who know it does not bode well for their own property values.
The still-new and well-kept townhome at the end of block was the most recent sale. It went for $123,300 last month. The previous owners, a Spanish-speaking family, bought the house for $197,000 in 2003. They owed almost $205,000 when they left.
In December, a young white couple from Littleton bought the other townhome in foreclosure for $86,000. The previous owners, two white women, paid $41,000 more than that in 2001. At least one of them also lived there.
If these women felt the sense of accomplishment and pride that typically follows home ownership, it was never evident to neighbors. Instead, it became obvious that the owners had been consumed by their own private demons - drugs, the neighbors figured - and had stopped engaging in the world in any normal fashion. Police dispatchers sending cars out to the address last summer twice warned officers that a man in the house should be considered "very dangerous and possibly armed."
When the previous owners abandoned the townhome, they appeared to leave most of their possessions. Clothing and furniture lay in heaps throughout the place, a television blocked the front door; the basement was filled with trash, the kitchen with rotting food.
No one talks much about them anymore. They are part of the past, and this is a neighborhood that by necessity focuses on getting through the present. The chaos of a summer ago is far away on Sunday when the new owners show up to finish their remodeling job. The day is bright and warm, holding, finally, the promise of spring. It is the kind of weather that lifts most spirits, and it lures neighbors outside to putter in their yards or wash their cars or to simply sit on the front porch, taking in the sun.
The neighbors observe the comings-and-goings of the new townhome owners with mild curiosity, but, by and large, they leave the couple alone to do whatever it is they are doing. Your business is your business until it interferes with mine, remains the unspoken rule governing Border Street.
The new owners admit to some nervousness about how they were going to be received on the block. They are a friendly couple in their 30s with a 5-year-old daughter. The husband is a middle school teacher.
We obviously knew it was a Hispanic neighborhood, he says.
We didn't know what they would think, here we are, white people fixing up a house here, his wife says, but everyone has been so welcoming.
She says the neighbors on the other side of the duplex came over and introduced themselves, and one day, her car got stuck in the snow and two men came out of the apartments on the corner and got her moving again.
The day the couple came to see the townhouse for the first time, she says, the weather was beautiful and the neighbors were having a family gathering.
"There was a lot of people, a lot of kids," the wife says. "It just made us feel good. We liked that it was a family area."
They do not intend to live on Border Street. The townhouse is an investment, their second in the past six months, their second ever. Their first was a home on the west side of Montbello. They bought and then rented it to a family with bad credit. "We wanted to help them," the wife says. This might sound puzzling to people who do not know them. It helps to know that he represents a group of rock climbers called "Climbers for Christ." And it is her voice telling callers to "have a blessed day" on the family answering machine.
A couple of years ago, they traveled to Juarez, Mexico, with a church group. They helped build houses - not much more than snug, sturdy shelters - in one of the colonias. They went again last September. They hammered nails and painted and hung drywall.
"We were really looking for some way to reach out beyond our community," the husband says. "Without having experienced it, it's impossible to describe the feeling you have when you are done. When you come back into the U.S., it's sort of culture shock - it changes what you think really matters, what you need to live on.
"The amazing thing is watching the people down there who have no running water, no plumbing, and yet they love the Lord to no end."
They say it was their experience in Mexico that led to their fledgling real estate investment business.
"We're doing this as an investment," he says, "but we are investing in a way so that we can provide quality, affordable housing for people as a service to the Lord."
"We kind of jumped into this with both feet," she says. "We put everything we have into it."
They are almost finished with the remodeling. They have replaced the kitchen, the upstairs bathroom and all the windows. They finished the basement, adding two more bedrooms and a bathroom. The home they have created is bright and airy. They plan to put it on the market soon.
They pray as they work. They say they like to imagine the family that will live there and the children who will one day call it home.
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