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...
Every August I get some version of the same question from sellers in Parker and Castle Rock. "Should we just wait until spring?" It's a fair question, and for a long time the answer was almost automatic. Spring is when Colorado listings come alive. This year I think the honest answer is more interesting than the automatic one. Denver Metro had 13,115 active listings at the end of July, and new listings...
A buyer I was working with in Parker got the builder packet for her new build about two weeks before closing. It was thick. Warranty registration, HOA documents, appliance manuals, a paint schedule, and buried in the middle of it, a stapled report full of borehole logs and a table of numbers she had no idea how to read. She asked me if any of it mattered. One document did. That stapled report is the...
A seller in Parker called me last August with what she thought was a simple question. Her roof had been hit in a July storm, the adjuster had already walked it, the first insurance check was sitting in her account, and she wanted photos taken in three weeks. Could she just sell it the way it was and let the buyer deal with the roof? She could. It would have cost her somewhere north of eleven thousand...
A buyer I was working with in Aurora found a house she loved on a Saturday, wrote a strong offer, and had it accepted the same night. On Tuesday her lender called with a question nobody had thought to ask. Who owns the solar panels? Nobody knew. The listing remarks said "solar" and nothing else. It took nine days to get a straight answer out of the solar company, and when it finally came, that answer...
A buyer called me last spring, genuinely thrilled. She had just gone under contract in the Pinery, and she wanted to know how fast the Town of Parker usually turns around a deck permit. The Town of Parker was never going to see that permit. Her house had a Parker mailing address and a Parker ZIP code, and it sat entirely outside Parker town limits, in unincorporated Douglas County. I have that...
The average asking rent across metro Denver is $1,758 a month. That is the same figure this market posted in the first quarter of 2022, dollar for dollar, four years ago. Rents here have been falling for two years straight, and most of the renters I talk to have not really registered what that means for their own decision yet. What Actually Happened to Denver Rents The short version is that a lot of...
I've shown a handful of homes in Park Hill and Congress Park this year where the listing paperwork flagged something before we ever walked in the door: the house was built before 1978. Most buyers treat that like a fun fact about the era. It's actually a legal trigger. If a home was built before 1978, federal law requires a specific disclosure about lead-based paint before anyone signs a contract, and it...
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