12501 McKay Way NE

Drive west off Tramway on Spain, turn north on Royal Oak, and you run into a gate. Behind it sits Albuquerque Ranch Estates, one of the smaller custom-home pockets in the far Northeast Heights. Most people who go looking at Albuquerque Ranch Estates homes for sale want the same two things: a substantial house on a real lot, and the Sandias close enough to hike before work. Placing it is easy. One block west of Tramway Boulevard, between Academy Road on the north and Spain Road on the south, entirely inside the 87111 ZIP. Royal Oak and Walkerway are the street names you'll see on listings. What the houses are actually like Custom and semi-custom, and older than the gate suggests. The development company behind the name was incorporated back in 1954, but the homes standing today went up much later. I've been in one from 1972 and one finished in 1995 on the same short street. Most of the gated section filled in through the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. Architecture cover...