A self-employed client in Castle Pines this spring had 15% to put down on a house and did not want to pay mortgage insurance for the next several years while her income kept growing. Instead of putting less down and paying PMI, or draining her reserves to hit 20%, we structured her purchase as an 80-10-10, sometimes called a piggyback loan. It's not a new idea, but I've had more clients ask about it this...
A seller asked me recently whether it mattered that the agent bringing her a full-price offer also represented the buyer. It's a fair question, and the honest answer is: it depends on what "represented" means in that specific transaction, and Colorado's rules on this are more layered than most people realize.Colorado's default isn't full representation at allHere's the part that surprises most buyers and...
A buyer called me last month convinced she had to waive her inspection contingency or she would never win a house in Highlands Ranch. She was half right. The market has been competitive enough this year that waiving inspection contingencies has become common again, but "common" and "right for you" are two different questions, and I want to walk through both sides honestly before you decide.Here's what the...
A buyer touring Castle Pines Village for the first time usually asks me the same question halfway through the gate: is this Castle Pines or Castle Rock? The honest answer is both, in a sense. Castle Pines Village is a gated golf community that carries a Castle Rock mailing address, and that small detail trips up more buyers than you would expect. Here is what else people miss before they make an offer.What...
Something I notice almost every week: buyers say they want to move to "Parker" or "Castle Rock" when what they really mean is Douglas County, and they have not looked at the county as a whole yet. That is fair. The county is big, the towns blur together at the edges, and nobody hands you a map when you start looking.Here is what actually makes up Douglas County, what it costs to buy here right now, and the...
A client called me last month, worried she had priced herself out of Parker before she had toured a single home. The number in her head was close, but not for the reason she assumed. She had budgeted for the mortgage payment and forgotten almost everything that comes with it.Here is what Parker actually costs right now, based on current listing data and the numbers I see on real closings, not a marketing...
I've had three separate buyer conversations this year that started the same way: "We love the idea of being close to Denver, but can we actually afford it?" Lakewood keeps coming up as the answer. It sits right on Denver's western edge, and it gives buyers something increasingly rare in this market: real space, real mountain views, and a price per square foot that still makes sense. Where Lakewood...
I keep having the same conversation twice a week right now, once with a buyer who's tired of waiting for the "right" house and once with a seller who's convinced their home is worth what the neighbor's sold for two years ago. Both are a little right, and both need to hear what the numbers are actually saying heading into July. Where Mortgage Rates Stand Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the...
I closed a sale in Colorado Springs this spring, a $651,000 home on Burl Wood Drive, and it reminded me how differently the city sits compared to the Denver metro suburbs I work in most. It's not a suburb of Denver. It's its own market, about an hour south, with its own pricing, its own pace, and its own reasons people choose it.If you're weighing Colorado Springs against Parker, Aurora, or Highlands...
A family I worked with last spring was living in Ohio, had two kids in school, and needed to be settled in Parker before the fall semester started. They flew out exactly once before closing. Twice, counting the day they picked up keys. Everything else happened over video calls, a shared folder of listings, and a lot of texting back and forth at odd hours because of the time difference.It worked. But it...
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