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Steamboat Springs — Fairview has always been a charmingly funkified neighborhood on the edge of Steamboat Springs where neighbors pull together and tolerate each other's architectural idiosyncrasies. There are folks occupying a yurt in Fairview and probably a couple of early 20th-century machine sheds.

Fairview also is a place where historic lots from another era that never got built on, spell opportunity. The handsome new home nearing completion on Manitou Avenue is a prime example.

Contractor B.J. Diehl, who lived in Fairview for years, is building the home with unusual attention to detail. His home, on a narrow, deep lot with a shared driveway, is co-listed for sale at $996,500 by Penny Fletcher and Joy Rasmussen of Colorado Group Realty.

The home was shown six times in two days during the middle of last week, Fletcher said.

Diehl said he had the good fortune to move his family to Fairview more than a decade ago, when the streets still were unpaved and he could purchase a nice home for a price that included a couple of undeveloped lots. A pole barn used to shelter horses once occupied the site of the new home under construction, he said. Another historic shed on the lot was salvaged and moved to another site.

Diehl was convinced that every piece of the property in the neighborhood was undervalued.

"We felt like we were ahead of the curve," Diehl said. "Not that other people weren't seeing it, but we were among the first to act on it."

Diehl said he recognized that Fairview offered all of the advantages of Old Town Steamboat.

"There are houses in Old Town that are further from Lincoln Avenue than we are," he said.

Rasmussen pointed out that the skiing, snowshoeing, hiking and trail running available off the Blackmer Drive trailhead is just a half-block away.

The 3,810-square-foot house being built by Diehl originally was intended for his own family. It has three bedrooms, two full baths and two powder rooms, plus a one-bedroom caretaker's unit with its own entrance.

"If you went to buy this on the mountain, you'd be looking at $2.5 million easily," Rasmussen said.

Fletcher said Diehl has gone out of his way to build in every possible storage closet and nook the structure affords.

Diehl has splurged throughout the home on large windows, not all of them rectangular in shape. Each window frames a view of a nearby ridge or distant mountain. The master bedroom looks at the upper slopes of Mount Werner across the flank of Howelsen Hill.

The children's quarters are separated from the master, with their own staircase. Dark, stained Douglas fir timbers and hand-scraped oak flooring set the tone.

The three large closets plumbed for laundry facilities offer the opportunity for unheard of convenience in a family home.

Fletcher and Rasmussen each have shown the home to couples that envision the children's bedroom suite as twin home offices for home-based businesses.

Rasmussen is convinced the lifestyle offered by the proximity to Emerald Mountain, with downtown services just a few blocks away, makes a strong drawing card.

Diehl said he has noticed that the prospective buyers coming through the home are primarily longtime Steamboat residents who have been around long enough to trade up in the housing market more than once.

"This house is attainable for them," he said