I had a seller in Lone Tree a few weeks ago who wanted to list with photos her nephew took on his phone. Nice kid, decent camera, but the photos made her kitchen look like a hallway. I told her the truth: in a market where buyers are scrolling past dozens of other listings before they ever get to hers, that choice costs real money. She hired a photographer instead. The listing got more showings in its...
I had two buyers under contract within a few weeks of each other this spring. Both homes appraised within about fifteen thousand dollars of each other. One was a resale in Highlands Ranch, the other a newer build in Castle Rock still finishing out its street. When their lenders ran the final numbers, the estimated annual tax bills came out well over a thousand dollars apart, on homes that were nearly...
I had a closing this spring where my seller signed every document from a hotel room in Tokyo, at two in the morning her time, and the whole thing still closed exactly on schedule. A few years ago that would have meant overnighted paperwork, a scramble to find a notary near her, and a closing date that moved. Instead, she used remote online notarization, and it took less time than a typical in-person...
I've had three separate showings this week where the buyer's first question wasn't about the kitchen or the primary bedroom. It was "what's happening with rates?" That's a good question to be asking right now, because the answer actually moved in a helpful direction this week, and it's landing in a market that already has more room to negotiate than it has in years. This builds on what I covered in my...
Here's a scene I see more than I'd like: a buyer walks into a Colorado builder's model home on a Saturday, falls in love with the floor plan, chats with the friendly on-site sales rep, and hands over their name and phone number on the sign-in sheet. Three weeks later they call me wanting help negotiating upgrades or reviewing the purchase contract, and I have to tell them the honest thing. Once you've...
Picture this: your buyer's lender won't fund the loan until a cracked section of driveway gets repaired, and it's the last week of October. Every concrete contractor between Parker and Castle Rock is already booked into spring. Under a normal contract, that could kill your closing. In Colorado, it usually doesn't, because of a tool called an escrow holdback. What an Escrow Holdback Actually Is An escrow...
Almost every buyer I work with says some version of the same thing early on: "we want to be close to Denver." It's a completely reasonable starting point, and it's also not specific enough to actually plan around. Close to Denver for a job at the Denver Tech Center is a different commute than close to Denver for a job downtown, and the neighborhoods that win on one can lose on the other. I've watched...
I get some version of this question almost every week. Someone finds a house online, falls for it a little, and then sees the word "Contingent" stamped across the listing. They assume that means it's gone. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it really doesn't, and the difference matters more than most people realize. Colorado's contracts have their own vocabulary for this, and it's more specific than what you'll...
Denver Metro just posted its highest active listings count in years. If you only read that headline, you'd think this is finally a buyer's market across the board. It isn't, and the county right around Parker is a good example of why. I've been watching the gap between the metro-wide numbers and what's actually happening in Douglas County this month, and it's wide enough that it changes the advice I'd...
The title commitment almost always lands the same way. An email on a weekday evening, a PDF attachment with a file name that is mostly numbers, and no note explaining what you are supposed to do with it. Forty pages of underwriting language. Most buyers scroll for about ten seconds, decide it is paperwork for the lawyers, and close the file. I do not blame anyone for that. The document is written for...
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