Ranch-style homes for sale in Fruita, CO

Ranch-style homes in Fruita, CO are expectedly popular with retirees.

In 2013, more than 170 ranch-style homes sold in Fruita in the $100,000 - $300,000 price range.

For more than twenty years the Grand Junction, CO area has prided itself on being a prime location for retirees. In Grand Junction and Fruita you can get away from the traffic and other congestion of big city life while also enjoying an active, outdoor lifestyle. 

Fruita is a fairly geographically compact community of about 12,500 residents. The town, founded in 1882, was originally based on apple growing but that has long since ceased to be the basis of the economy. Over 75 years ago a blight hit the fruit trees and there never has been a recovery.

The original town was laid out, like so many others in Colorado, with a central town square and a grid pattern of streets checkerboarding out from there. That town square and a nearby traffic circle-park remain popular with residents to this day. The two blocks between those features is the main business district of Fruita lining both sides of Aspen Street.

Local population grew slowly for more than Fruita's first century. Then between the 2000 and 2010 census' population nearly doubled from 6,480 to more than 12, 650 residents. A large part of that population explosion was driven by a healthy oil and gas economy centered on Mesa and adjacent Garfield and Rio Blanco counties. Even today as the natural gas economy in these counties has slowed, the booming oil fields in Vernal, UT 140 miles to the northwest, supply home buyers and residents for Fruita and surrounding areas.  

Ranch-style homes for sale in Fruita, CO drove the housing construction during that decade of rapid population growth and still does today. Most of the ranch-style homes in Fruita, CO were built during that same decade; and, since. 

Of the 170 mid-priced ranch-style homes sold in Fruita in 2013,  128 were built between 2000-2012.  Only four of the ranch-style homes sold in Fruita during that time period were older than 1970 construction. 

To give an idea of how popular ranch-style homes for sale in Fruita, CO have been recently, of seventeen new construction home sales in the $100-300,000 price range in 2013, sixteen are ranches. Of the ranch-style homes for sale in Fruita, CO there are also sometimes a few that are bank-owned (REO) or others being sold as short sales.

Ranch-style homes for sale in Fruita, CO have been a key element in local home sales and a reflection of the popularity of this west-side, small town neighbor near Grand Junction.