Ever since the Waldo Canyon fire and Black Forest fire decimated parts of Colorado Springs, we’ve had our hands full working on building new homes for families who have lost their homes due to the fires. One aspect of rebuilding from the fires that you may not be aware of is that we aren’t just “rebuilding” the exact same home that was there before, and we’re not building on the same foundation as before. Due to the heat of the fires, in every case, the foundation is demolished and the entire lot is scraped clean. In essence, rebuilding from the fire means building a brand new home, starting from scratch.
One of our clients’ homes that was lost in the Waldo Canyon fire
Because of this, we’ve been able to help home owners completely re-imagine their homes, by asking questions not only related to old home, but also about how they would like it to be this time around. Many, many times, we’ve talked with home owners who say things like “I liked my old kitchen but it was really small” or “I always wanted a three-car garage,” or, more commonly, “We bought that house 25 years ago when we had four children living with us but now we’re empty-nesters and don’t need five bedrooms.”
Conversations like these are commonplace in our office, and we’ve spent more than a year helping people come up with a better home than what they had before. And the good news is that the settlements being paid out by insurance companies have no strings attached—you are generally free to build whatever you wish, as long as you stay within your budget constraints. …and you might be surprised at just how cost-effectively you can build a custom home—just look at some of the fire rebuild photos in our gallery. We built several of them for close to the same price that a semi-custom home with no options would cost.
Less than one year later—they’ve already moved back in!
One thing we’ve learned in rebuilding people’s homes from the fires that you might not expect is how people rebuilding a home after a catastrophe have a different mindset than clients we’ve built for in the past. Our Waldo Canyon fire and Black Forest fire clients often tell us “We had never planned on building a custom home!” …the entire process is new to them. Unlike couples who have been planning their dream home for the past twenty years, these families really just want to get back into their homes as soon as possible. Due to this, we’ve worked hard to accommodate their desires, and we’ve been able to build quickly—some of our clients have moved into their homes in just under a year after the fire started. We can’t guarantee this, but we’ll do everything we can to fast-track your build.
If you’ve lost your home in a fire, we want to extend our sincere apologies and let you know that we’re here to help however we can to rebuild. This includes talking to your insurance adjuster, working with your mortgage company, helping you understand how to fill out the paperwork to get the most money to rebuild, and much more. We understand that this is an emotional time, and that you will never get back what you lost, but we’d love to help ease the sting a little bit by building you a nice, new house that you can call home. Contact us and we can schedule a time for you to come down to our office for a no-pressure meeting. We would love to show you more about our building process and, more importantly, we’ll be happy to learn more about you and your story. We can show you what we’ve learned over the past year in dealing with eight different insurance companies, seven different mortgage companies and at least a dozen insurance adjusters! Contact us to learn more.