Home tours on 2 wheels

Buying a home isn't usually as fun as riding a bike.

But at least one Colorado Springs real estate agent hopes bike riding will make house hunting more enjoyable, if not more informative, for home buyers.

On Saturday, Pedal Home Tours, a service being launched by Dorrie Stewart of McGinnis GMAC, will take homebuyers on bicycle tours of homes for sale. It's a trend that's gained popularity around the country, in part, as real estate agents try to boost home buying in slumping markets, according to recent national news reports. Agents are also looking for properties to accommodate biking enthusiasts and families that want to live closer to work and school so they can reduce driving and offset rising gas prices, the reports said.

For decades, real estate agents and their clients have jumped into a car and driven around neighborhoods to stop at homes for sale, a practice Stewart says she's not abandoning.

But touring homes on two wheels instead of four will give biking enthusiasts a better feel for the location and accessibility of nearby bike paths; the time and distance to commute to jobs, shopping centers or schools on their bikes; and maybe something as simple as determining how they could store their bikes at the home or its garage, she said.

"They can visualize what it's like to ride," Stewart said. "They can see it, they can do it, they can try it."

Saturday's tour will be the first for Stewart, and will probably travel only a few miles; the location of the homes to be toured will depend on where riders want to go. Participants should take their own bikes, wear helmets and, if possible, take locks since bikes will be parked outside, she said.

Also, tour participants don't need to be hard-core bikers.

"They don't have to be in great biking shape or serious shape," Stewart said. "It's something they could do with their families."

But Stewart said she'll also take individual clients on daylong tours.

Tour participants will receive packets with information on public transportation and carpooling and a trails guide published by the Trails and Open Space Coalition, Stewart said.

Stewart, 50, said she started riding in 1981, and once made a 700-mile trek from Portland, Ore., to San Francisco. She hasn't been as active lately; she rides a 20-year-old Diamondback Apex.

Terry Storm, chief executive officer of the Pikes Peak Association of Realtors, said he was unaware of other association members using bike tours to market and view homes.

"If it would help somebody looking for that kind of property, that would be great," Storm said.

For more information or to sign up for a tour: (719) 337-5135 or dorrie@pedalhometours.com.