Gillians’s Blog & REsources Portal: A Source for Buyers and Sellers of Montana Real Estate

This 4 bedroom/ 2 bath, 1574 SF west side home has been updated with new bathrooms and more. Fenced yard and oversized 1-car garage. Great starter home@$159,000.

You can move right in to this fully renovated 3 bedroom/ 2bath, 1527 SF home on Livingston’s east side. Wood floors, high ceilings, 2 new bathrooms, and more. Small lot keeps yardwork to a minimum! Hobbies? You’ll love the extra shop room in the garage. Just listed @ $179,000.

You’ll love the floor plan of this newer 3 bedroom/ 2 bath home in Northern Lights. Open kitchen/dining area, vaulted ceiling in the spacious living room. Master suite w/ walk-in closet & walk-in shower. Kitchen has hickory cabinets, black granite tile counter tops, gas range, wood laminate floor. Super clean! Full unfinished basement has 1 egress window and is plumbed for bath. $249.000.

Beautiful northside Victorian with the perfect blend of character & an elegant 2005 remodel. This 3 bedroom/ 2 bath 1880’s home sits above the historic Livingston railyards & looks south towards Paradise Valley & the Absaroka Mtns. Beautiful cook’s kitchen w/skylight, great entertaining flow & wonderful living/dining areas. Hardwood floors & high ceilings too, with loads of historic character. Lovely yard with shady arbor in summer and only minutes to Main Street. A beauty listed at $269,000.

Wondering what’s going on with our friend Mr. Wade Dokken, of Ameya Preserve & Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalogue fame? The folowing information was taken from a recent article in the Bozeman Chronicle.

Wade Dokken has sold roughly 4,000 acres of his proposed Ameya Preserve development to a neighboring landowner, Giorgio Perfetti, an heir to an Italian candy empire that includes Mentos mints.

Ameya touts itself as an environmentally sensitive development that blends ecology and culture, with a nature program as well as music, paleontology and other programs. Plans call for putting about 300 homes plus commercial facilities in the Bullis Creek drainage about four miles south of Livingston.

Perfetti proposed the purchase, one Ameya executive said, because he didn’t want to look at development from his own property.

“He came to us, and for us, it seemed very hard to pass up,” said Jaime Prieto, one of the Ameya partners in charge of marketing. “He said he doesn’t want to develop it.”

Perfetti wants to preserve his own viewscape on a ranch he owns at the head of the neighboring Strickland Creek drainage. Perfetti could not be located for comment.

* Ameya sold the block of land on the west end of its holdings March 5 and some of it had been slated for development, Dokken said Monday.

“He would have looked right down on it,” Dokken said of Perfetti.

Dokken said the sale eliminates all of Ameya’s debt and puts cash in the bank, though he did not reveal the purchase price.

“We have no debt and no interest costs,” Dokken said. “It’s a very attractive position for us to be in.”

Ameya earlier had taken out a $13 million mortgage, according to Park County records, as well as a $6 million line of credit.

Forbes magazine said in 2004 that Perfetti and his brother have a fortune estimated at $2 billion.

Phase one of the Ameya development has received preliminary plat approval from county officials, and reservations have been taken for several parcels, Dokken said. Those parcels can’t be sold until final plat approval is granted.

Future phases will bring about 300 homes to the scenic valley, Dokken said.

Park County Planner Mike Inman said he will be meeting with Ameya representatives April 3 to discuss final plat approval for phase one, which includes about 40 homes, according to a map on Ameya’s Web site.

A large part of Ameya’s marketing program has focused on the access buyers would have to the entire property, which includes about 9,700 acres of deeded land and 1,300 acres of land leased from the state of Montana.

Dokken said the sale to Perfetti will reduce the number of hiking trails Ameya residents can use, but didn’t think it would make a huge difference to potential owners.

“We probably valued that footprint more than they (buyers) did,” he said. People will still have access to about 5,700 acres of land, and another 1,300 if Ameya’s efforts to buy the two state sections are successful.

The lots are expensive: $2.1 million for a little less than 10 acres, according to the Web site for Hall and Hall, a Billings firm that specializes in high-end properties.

Dokken has said he wants Ameya to be a model of low-impact development, that it will use green building materials and buy carbon offsets and wind-generated power.

Some local critics have scoffed at the notion that 300 vacation homes in an important wildlife area could be good for the environment.

One of those critics, wildlife biologist Pete Feigley, said Monday that he doesn’t know enough about the land sale to say what impacts it might have on the wildlife or the project.

The Ameya property is host to a herd of several hundred elk, plus a wide variety of other wildlife.

Dokken said he hopes to begin construction of some commercial facilities in the summer.

It’s been a really busy week for me: lots of phone calls from people thinking of putting their homes on the market in the next couple of months, wanting to get an opinion as to price and what should be done to get the place ready. It’s a very fine line to walk right now, in terms of pricing a property. Too high, and it will sit around for ages; too low, and the worry is that the seller is leaving money on the table.

I tend to stick to the comparable sales of the last six months when determining a list price range, and sometimes, sellers wince a little when they hear the number I give. But most people really have got that prices are not shooting up the way they were a few years ago — it’s sunk into all of our conciousnesses that the market has adjusted.

Nonetheless, I am tremendously optimistic about our market and the coming selling season. We have what people want, here in Park County — comparatively affordable housing, a safe and beautiful place to live and great communities. When I read the weekly reports from the virtual tours on each of my listings, I see that people are looking at Park County from every corner of the country — Texas, Colorado and California seem to like us the most!

With careful pricing and seriously focused marketing, any property can be sold. If you’re thinking of selling, it’s often a good idea to get a couple of agents from different companies in to look at your property — the more informatuion you can gather the better. Remember that nine times out of then, the most important decision you’ll make when selling is who you will use as a Realtor. There are really marked differences between the local companies agents in this area — more than you might imagine!

Here’s a house at 806 Nebula, in the Northern Lights area, that’s a little ahead of the Spring rush — just came on the market this week. It’s a really spacious house with loads of bedrooms, great indoor/outdoor flow with a good sized yard and deck. I would have taken a photo, but there was a brief snow storm when I was up there today! If you’d like to take a look at this new listing, call me at 556 6829 for an appointment.

New Listing
806 Nebula
$244,000

If Location, Location, Location is real estate’s mantra, then the current location to be in is 12th Street in Livingston – in the last month, three homes have been listed & sold in the first few weeks on the market.

711 North 12th — a newer home built by Tom & Niam Moody, with spacious rooms and a warm, peaceful palette — was listed in my office in February. A couple of weeks ago, I sold it to a young couple from Colorado, who plan to move here at the end of March. I know that Dave & Carla Pettit, owners of Pickle Barrel, Livingston’s favorite sandwich shop, who live next door will miss the Moody family, but I’m sure they’ll love their new neighbors, Ellie & Doug Fales and their magical daughter, Miss Tova.

A recently remodeled home I listed at 405 South 12th also went under contract quickly, after only a week on the market.

Next, a really sweet starter home at 526 South 12th Street, which I listed at $179,000, sold & closed in the same month that it was listed for $173,000.

Even with all of this selling going on, there is still ample opportunity to purchase your own piece of 12th Street because I just I listed 715 N. 12th for an asking price of $242,500 — a great buy in absolutely move in condition, with three bedrooms, two baths and a spacious, waiting-to-be-finished-to-your-floor-plan basement. Here’s a link to the property’s virtual tour.

Feel like building your own place? There’s a great building lot available for $60,000 on North 12th Street, as well as a larger (1/2 of a city block) parcel with a variety of possibilities listed at $400,000. If you’d like to look at any ofthese properties online, be sure to go to my Search Property feature, and from there, navigate through all of the listings in our MLS system. Have a great weekend — I’ll be working, so never hesitate to call me in the ogffice at 556 6829, or on my cell at 220 4340.