A seller I worked with in Aurora had her home under contract in about a week, a great outcome by any measure. Then the appraisal came back, and it wasn't the value that was the problem. It was three items on the appraiser's checklist: peeling paint on the exterior trim, a missing handrail on the basement stairs, and an outlet with exposed wiring in the garage. None of those would have shown up on a...
An investor I worked with last month wanted to add a third rental property to her portfolio, a duplex a few blocks off Mainstreet in Parker. Her accountant had already told her the truth she didn't want to hear: two years of depreciation write-offs on her existing rentals made her tax returns look nothing like her actual income, and a conventional lender was going to struggle to approve her. Her loan...
A seller in Aurora called me a few weeks ago mid-move, a job relocation that came together fast, and realized once we ran the numbers that what she owed on her mortgage was more than the house would likely sell for even after a fresh coat of paint. She'd heard the term "short sale" from a coworker and asked me the question I hear most often about it: does this mean I'll owe money forever? The honest answer...
A buyer I've been working with found a beautiful two-acre lot in Elbert County last month, the kind of spot where you can build exactly what you want with room for horses and no next-door neighbor in sight. He assumed financing it would work like buying a house. Then his lender asked for 35% down, and the whole timeline he'd been planning got a lot more complicated. Why a Land Loan Doesn't Work Like a...
I had a buyer tell me last week that she was waiting for prices to "actually drop" before writing an offer in Aurora, and two days later a seller asked me why her home hadn't gotten a single showing in ten days even though it was priced right against the comps. Both conversations come down to the same handful of numbers, and it's worth walking through what they actually say heading into the second half of...
A seller in Highlands Ranch called me in a mild panic two weeks before her closing date last month because her buyer's lender was asking for the HOA status letter and nobody had requested it yet. It sounds like a small administrative step until it becomes the one thing standing between you and your closing date, so let's walk through what Colorado law actually requires here and how to keep it from turning...
A couple I worked with in Parker last fall picked their subdivision partly because they assumed it fed into a specific elementary school, the one two blocks from the model home. It didn't. The attendance boundary ran down the middle of their street, and the school they were actually assigned to was a fifteen-minute drive away. That mix-up is more common than most buyers expect, and it is one of the easiest...
A couple I worked with in Lone Tree last year found their next home before their current one had even hit the market. They loved it, the sellers wanted a quick close, and waiting for their own house to sell first wasn't realistic. Instead of scrambling for a specialty bridge loan, their lender opened a HELOC against the equity in their current home, and that gave them the down payment they needed to move...
A seller I worked with in Castle Rock this spring had her house nearly ready two weeks before she wanted to officially list it. The paint was fresh, the yard had finally greened up, and she wanted buyer's agents to know something was coming without fielding a flood of showing requests before the photos were even back from the photographer. That's exactly the situation Coming Soon status was built for, and...
A recently retired couple looking in Cherry Creek this year had a strong investment portfolio and almost no reportable income on paper. A standard lender looked at their tax returns and saw very little to qualify against, even though they had more than enough net worth to comfortably afford the house. That's exactly the situation an asset depletion loan is built for, and I've had more of these...
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