By Mark Samuelson

It was June, and Boulder-based Coldwell Banker agent

Scott Franklund had already broken past the whopping

$40 million in sales he’d posted for the entire year

of 2012. But one of those purchases struck him as

particularly poignant: For $4.9 million, a 43-year-old

Silicon Valley CEO had closed on a Boulder resale that

he had no plans to occupy for at least two years. “He’s

placed it with a management company,” Franklund said

over lunch at Twenty Ninth Street Mall, adding that the

client also has an agreement with the tech firm he’s

chaired, not to leave California before 2015.

list at $2.3 million – after eight rapid showings and

two offers – up from an estimated $1.4 million at the

start of the 2008-09 downturn. Any future expansion

of a home in unincorporated areas is hemmed in by

ordinance to a max of 6,000 square feet depending on

surrounding development. Heading northeast from

the airport across a landscape dotted with farms and

newer subdivisions, Franklund shows how this unfolds

to consumers: Landowners get compensated for

‘transferable development rights’ – TDRs – in exchange

for turning land over to open space. Buyers, meanwhile,

may be able to buy credits to build bigger.

Buyers clamoring for the Boulder lifestyle will do about anything to get it; even pay now for a home they won’t be able to occupy for years

A Space Race in Boulder County

Coldwell Banker Previews agent Scott Franklund shows a new listing near Niwot at $2.795 million

A recent sale by Scott Franklund at $4.750 million

“He knows there’ll be nothing like it here by

then,” Franklund added. “It’s not about what

it is; it’s about what it could be.”

The market that urges such frenzied moves

is the product of too many buyers chasing

too few homes and lots, in a county with a

program controlling 97,000 acres of open

space, while seeking more. “There’s just a

handful of developable lots left,” he added.

In addition to the supply-demand dynamic,

that system tends to generate premium prices for what

Franklund calls ‘beachfront lots’

like the one under contract to the

Silicon Valley CEO, backing to the

open space perimeter.

“It’s exponential,” he said, noting

that sales volume in Boulder

County’s luxury market is up

around 55% year-over-year, with

prices running 25% higher. That

puts a larger, semi-custom home

in a mixed-quality subdivision near

Boulder’s old airport on his ‘sold’ Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall

coloradohomes.com