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A $6.95 "For Sale By Owner" sign may have been the second-best investment John Piazza ever made. His best may have been his little house in Colonial Beach.
An hour after Piazza put the sign up in the yard of his home at 604 Monroe Bay Ave., a golf cart stopped. A Stafford County couple got out, looked the place over and asked "How much?"
Two hours later, Piazza had in his hand a deposit on a $208,000 deal for the 1,100-square-foot concrete-block house with a pier.
He paid $119,000 for the place in 1993.
"It's unbelievable," Piazza said of the booming real-estate market in the old resort town on the Potomac River.
Real estate is selling fast and for top dollar. Building permits for new houses and renovations are way up. And developers are poised to rebuild the town's down-at-the-heels boardwalk area and to create a new golf-course community at the edge of town.
Latana Locke and Bob Swink couldn't be happier. Both are real-estate agents in Colonial Beach enjoying record sales this year.
"Last year was very good, but we've closed more properties already this year than last year. This year will be our best year in 16 years of business," Locke said.
For Swink, "the best year we've had in 10 years" has one downside.
"We need listings so bad," he said. "We only have four or five active listings still available. We had two new listings this week and both sold before the week was out."
Mayor George W. "Pete" Bone Jr. said the real-estate boom is the result of the town being "discovered" by affluent residents of Washington-area suburbs seeking vacation and retirement homes.
Michael J. Wardman is one of them. The scion of a family long prominent in Washington-area construction, Wardman bought a weekend house in Colonial Beach and "fell in love with the view of the river and with the town."
The Wardman Cos. recently bought two adjacent commercial properties in Colonial Beach's rundown downtown: the former Hop's Place at the corner of Hawthorne and the Boardwalk and the former Olga's Art & Framing at 10 Hawthorne St.
Wardman said his company is developing "exciting plans" for the properties "that will work with the town's goals for redevelopment," but he declined to elaborate.
"We think it's a neat little town with huge potential for revitalization," he said. "We're trying to get momentum and buzz up here in Northern Virginia about Colonial Beach."
Two other companies are negotiating with the town about developing three acres of town-owned property on the boardwalk with a mix of residential, commercial and recreational uses.
In addition, Maryland developer Benjamin B. Bell Jr. has submitted to the town and Westmoreland County preliminary plans for a 913-home golf-course community on the edge of Colonial Beach.
According to the 2000 Census, the town had 2,026 houses--nearly half built before 1960. The average house in Colonial Beach had five rooms. The median value was $87,600.
New buyers seem willing to pay top prices. Courthouse records for September show that 18 Colonial Beach properties sold for 145 percent of their 2001 appraisals.
Even so, real-estate agent Locke said the town "is still very affordable." Buyers are taking advantage of low mortgage rates to snatch up houses, she said.
Locke said buyers of homes in Colonial Beach like walking and biking along the town's quiet, tree-lined streets and river beaches. They also like its golf carts.
This year, Virginia allowed Colonial Beach to become the only mainland town in the state where golf carts are allowed on public streets. The town has issued 40 golf-cart licenses since July.
Prospective home purchasers, Locke said, "are getting a big kick of seeing two or three golf carts parked outside of restaurants."
She said low mortgage rates also have resulted in a flurry of new-home construction and renovation of older homes.
Colonial Beach issued three building permits for new homes in 2000 and four new-home permits in 2001. So far this year, the town has issued 28 permits for new homes.
In addition, 45 building permits were issued in September for renovations, compared with just five last September.
"You can't drive down a street in Colonial Beach and not see a house being fixed up," Locke said.