I have spent my working life on buildings: designing them, building them, planning around them, and now helping people buy and sell them. That order matters. By the time I came to real estate, I had already spent years learning what a house is actually made of.
I moved to Denver in 2005 and have been here since. I joined West + Main Homes as a Broker Associate in January 2022.
How I got here
My first training was in architecture — a five-year professional degree at the Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, in Kathmandu. Years later I took a Master of Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Colorado Denver, which taught me to read a house in the context of the street, the block, and the decades of zoning decisions that shaped both.
Between and around those degrees I worked across the building industry: design, construction, engineering, historic preservation, and project management. From 2015 to 2016 I was a planner for the State of Colorado, working on site development and long-range master planning.
None of that was preparation for real estate. It just turned out to be the most useful preparation I could have had.
The three things I check in every house
I believe a house only works when it fits the person living in it on three counts: functionality, durability, and aesthetics. I hold every home I show to the same three.
Functionality
How the plan actually works once you live in it. Where the light falls at the hours you are home. Whether the storage is where you need it, whether the flow suits how your household moves through a day, and whether the systems serve you or you serve them.
Durability
What the structure, roof, foundation, and mechanicals are going to ask of you, and roughly when. I would rather tell you that before you are emotionally committed to a house than after. This is the part of a showing where my background does the most work, and it is the part most buyers have nobody to do for them.
Aesthetics
Whether the house lifts you. This one is not soft. You will walk through these rooms every day for years, and how a space makes you feel is a real part of what you are buying.
Outside the work
I came to Colorado as an immigrant. I speak English, Nepali, and Hindi, and I am glad when that makes an intimidating process easier for a family going through it in a second language.
Most of the rest of my time goes to my kids — driving them to their sports and events and watching them compete. Beyond that: family, meeting new people, and travelling somewhere I have not been. If you want a Colorado hiking trail or a camping spot, ask me. I will have an opinion.
Why this matters for you
Buying or selling a home is the largest financial decision most people make, and it is usually made partly on feeling. I am not trying to talk anyone out of the feeling. I am trying to make sure that when you act on it, you already know what the building underneath it is going to cost you.
— Machhendra Thapa, Broker Associate, West + Main Homes