Two of my clients this month were weighing the exact same decision: build new in Sterling Ranch, near Highlands Ranch, or in Painted Prairie, out toward Aurora. They're the two biggest new-construction communities in their part of the metro, and both have long waitlists on their most popular floor plans. Each sales office will hand you a glossy binder that makes its community sound like the obvious choice....
A client called me last week convinced the Denver market must be swinging back toward sellers. Her reasoning made sense on paper: active listings across the metro are down almost 19% from last year, and less inventory is supposed to mean sellers hold the cards. Then she checked how long her neighbor's house had been sitting, six weeks and still unsold, and the theory fell apart. That contradiction is...
A client outside Castle Rock called me in June holding an insurance renewal letter that had jumped almost $900 for the year, and buried in the fine print was a line about her home's "wildfire risk score." She'd never seen that number before, had no idea how it was calculated, and had no real way to push back on it. That's about to change. Starting July 1, 2026, Colorado law requires insurers to actually...
A seller in Castle Rock called me in June hoping I could just pick up where her old listing left off. Her home had been on the market for four months, the listing had quietly expired the week before, and she wanted to know if she could relist at the same price with the same photos before anyone noticed the gap. That conversation happens more than most sellers expect, and it's worth understanding exactly...
A buyer I worked with in Highlands Ranch looked at her closing statement last month and saw a line that read "seller credit, property taxes" for a few thousand dollars. She assumed the seller had just knocked that much off the price as a parting gesture. That's not what happened, and if you buy a home in Colorado without understanding property tax prorations, you'll probably have the same reaction she...
A lot of people hear "homestead exemption" and assume it works like a tax break you have to apply for every year. In Colorado, that's not what it is, and I've had homeowners find that out the hard way, usually after a lawsuit or an old debt shows up and they're trying to figure out how much of their equity is actually safe. What the Homestead Exemption Actually Does This isn't a property tax discount....
I've had three different buyers this month ask me the same question: Anthology, Trails at Crowfoot, or Pradera? All three are still actively building new homes in Parker, all three get lumped together as "new construction," and that's about where the similarities end. Once you look past the fact that the drywall is new, they're really three different products for three different budgets. Anthology: The...
I've had more calls this summer from military families with PCS orders to Colorado Springs than any other kind of buyer. That's not an accident, May through August is peak PCS season, and Fort Carson, Peterson Space Force Base, Schriever Space Force Base, and the Air Force Academy all sit in or near a city where the market has actually loosened up a little this year. If you just got orders, here's the...
A deal I was part of this spring didn't fall apart over the inspection. It fell apart over the roof, and not because the roof leaked. It fell apart because the buyer's insurance company took one look at the age of those shingles and said no. The Contingency Nobody Talks About Until It's a Problem Every buyer's contract has an inspection contingency and a financing contingency. Almost nobody thinks about...
The 30-year mortgage rate just touched 6.55%, the highest it's been all year. If that number alone makes you want to put your plans on hold, I'd slow down before you decide anything. The rate move is real, but it's not actually the most interesting thing happening in the Colorado market this month. The Rate Move, and Why It's Smaller Than the Headline According to Freddie Mac's weekly survey, the 30-year...
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