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In 1987, Mike Casey was living in Divide and working for Texas Instruments in Colorado Springs. His commute took him past Manitou Springs, and he found himself pulled to the town.
“Manitou draws you in. I really believe that,” Mike said.
He followed that pull. His first home in Manitou Springs was less than 500 square feet in size and needed a lot of work; he paid $24,000 for it. There were a whopping 68 stairs leading up to it. He lived there for five years without a television, and “loved every minute of it.”
“I had all of Manitou valley in the front of the house and wilderness in the back, and it was just such a cool house,” he remembered.
Cool houses are definitely his thing. Today Mike is an independent broker running Homes of Manitou Springs. We spoke in his office on Manitou Avenue – a building known for the dogs on the door, Rez and Biko, painted by local artist David V. Gonzales.
As the door art suggests, Mike is a dog person – his friendly pooch Lilly, who is 7 but still has a puppyish charm, joined us for our interview. She frequently keeps Mike company at work.
Mike recounted how he moved on from that first home but later returned for a nostalgic look at the house with permission from the new owner, George. While there, Mike saw that the roof was in desperate need of replacement. Mike told his assistant about it, and she hopped on the phone and quickly learned of a program administered by the county that could help George with a new roof, a project that was completed and helped keep George comfortably in his home for the rest of his days.
Helping out in the community is Mike’s way. For example, just a few months ago, the City of Manitou Springs recognized Mike for his volunteer work in Carnegie Library Park cleaning the flagstone patio and restoring the retaining walls, plus other improvements both functional and aesthetic.
Mike got an early start learning how things work and how to fix them. In an autobiographical account he wrote for a local realtor magazine (he’s also a solid writer), he recalled how his parents bought a small, vacant lakeside lot in rural Michigan when Mike was a kid, and how every free moment they’d leave their home in southwest inner-city Chicago to work on the Michigan property.
“We dug a hole, poured the foundation and built a small house from scratch,” Mike wrote. “I learned about home wiring, plumbing … drywall, and every other detail about the inner workings of homes.”
Mike wrote that he never dreamed of becoming a realtor when he headed off to college – in fact, he hadn’t really planned on attending college, as it wasn’t common in his social circles. But his mother gave him encouragement and got him a small grant, and he attended Northern Illinois University, which he called “a magical experience.” He succeeded in his classes and held down work, including a drafting job at an automobile water pump manufacturer (technical drawing is another one of his skills).
His senior year, he discovered his college’s Office of Off-Campus Recreation which led to world-expanding trips canoeing on the Mississippi River and the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota. and hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail as well as in Rocky Mountain National Park.
The Colorado hike was spectacular but ended badly; Mike and his companions returned to their vehicle to discover a window broken and valuables, including all their gear, stolen. But the misfortune wasn’t enough to dampen Mike’s enthusiasm.
“I remember sitting by a stream in the rain wearing my rancid clothes (fresh clothes were robbed from the van), getting ready to drive back to Illinois thinking, ‘This place is unbelievable. I need to live in Colorado!’ My mission was set,” he wrote.
Postcollege, working for Texas Instruments in Dallas and not loving the location, he made friends with someone in upper management and mentioned that he wanted to transfer to the T.I. plant in Colorado Springs – and within weeks, he was on his way to Colorado with (of course) his dog Durkin in tow.
Mike’s technical skills and tenacity served him well when the Colorado Springs T.I. plant closed a few years later. He bounced around a few different area manufacturers, but the industry was in flux and job security was scarce. So, he bought an old house in Manitou Springs and spent hundreds of hours restoring it “to its original grandeur,” rewiring and replumbing, putting in new floors and windows – “pretty much everything,” as he put it.
Manitou draws you in – Mike Casey
To sell the home, Mike hired a realtor “and got killed by the commission,” he said.
And thus, Mike’s own dream to become a realtor was born.
He bought another house close to Downtown Colorado Springs and completely restored the 1920s bungalow. This time when he went to sell, he had his real estate license and so “life was better,” he said.
He and his wife Lisette married in 2002 and share fun times with Lilly.
Check out Mike’s listings at HomesOfManitouSprings.com.
