Most buyers assume a home inspection would catch something as serious as drug contamination. It won't. A standard inspection checks the furnace, the roof, the outlets, and the water heater. It does not swab the walls. And methamphetamine residue, the thing I'm talking about here, is invisible, odorless, and sits on drywall, cabinets, and inside ductwork for years after the person who left it there has...
At noon Denver time yesterday, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate for the first time since July 2023. By 12:07 I had a text from a buyer client in Highlands Ranch asking if her mortgage rate had just gone up. The honest answer was: not because of the vote. It went up about half an hour later, and for a different reason than most of the headlines are giving. Three weeks ago I wrote that a hike...
Last October I had a buyer under contract on a home in Castle Rock, and the inspection report came back with a line most people skim right past: "Cooling system not operated due to outdoor temperature." The AC was a 16-year-old unit. Nobody knew whether it worked. And the seller had already blown out the sprinklers the week before, so that system sat untested too. That's the quiet reality of buying a home...
If your well and septic system have worked fine for fifteen years, it's easy to assume nobody's going to ask about them when you sell. In Douglas County, somebody will, and it isn't optional. Any property on an onsite wastewater treatment system, what most people just call a septic system, needs a Use Permit before the sale can close. This isn't new. Douglas County has required it since July 1, 2011. What...
I've walked more driveways in Stonegate than I can count at this point, and there's one thing that always throws people off. It doesn't feel like a Parker neighborhood that got built in a hurry. Streets are lined with trees that have actually had time to grow, and most of the landscaping looks like someone's been tending it for a decade, because someone has. That's the whole draw, honestly. Buyers come to...
I had a client this year who accepted a job transfer to Tokyo three weeks before her Highlands Ranch condo was set to close. She panicked, assuming the sale would fall apart because she couldn't physically be in Colorado to sign. It didn't fall apart. She used a power of attorney, and someone else signed the deed on her behalf, in front of a Colorado notary, using a document her title company had approved...
Everyone keeps telling me the luxury market is cooling off. After spending time with DMAR's August numbers this week, I don't think that's the right way to describe what's actually happening. Something more specific is going on, and it depends entirely on what you're selling. DMAR's August Report Splits the $1 Million-Plus Market in Two The Denver Metro Association of Realtors published its August 2026...
Freddie Mac's weekly survey put the 30-year fixed rate at 6.76% this week, up from 6.71% the week before. Rates have not meaningfully budged in months. If you've been holding off on buying because you assumed you needed a large cash cushion at closing, there's a program a lot of Colorado buyers still don't know enough about: CHFA down payment assistance. What CHFA Actually Is CHFA, the Colorado Housing...
Freddie Mac's weekly survey put the 30-year fixed rate at 6.71% the first week of September, up from 6.66% the week before and about a fifth of a point higher than a year ago. Rates have been stuck in that band for months now. If you own your Colorado home free and clear, or close to it, that stubborn number is part of why "seller financing" keeps coming up in listing conversations this fall. What "Seller...
Every year, right after the first real snowfall, I get some version of the same message: "My street still hasn't been plowed, is that normal?" It usually comes from someone who moved here from a place where every road gets cleared within a few hours, no matter how small. In most of the South Denver suburbs, that's not a mistake or an oversight. Your street is probably sitting exactly where the town's plan...
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