If you've been searching for a brand-new home in Highlands Ranch, you've probably noticed the search results keep pointing you somewhere else. That's not your filters. Highlands Ranch is close to built out, and the new-construction inventory left inside city limits has shrunk down to a handful of listings on a couple of streets. That's worth knowing before you fall in love with a floor plan that doesn't...
Last October I had a buyer under contract on a home in Castle Rock, and the inspection report came back with a line most people skim right past: "Cooling system not operated due to outdoor temperature." The AC was a 16-year-old unit. Nobody knew whether it worked. And the seller had already blown out the sprinklers the week before, so that system sat untested too. That's the quiet reality of buying a home...
Freddie Mac's weekly survey put the 30-year fixed rate at 6.76% this week, up from 6.71% the week before. Rates have not meaningfully budged in months. If you've been holding off on buying because you assumed you needed a large cash cushion at closing, there's a program a lot of Colorado buyers still don't know enough about: CHFA down payment assistance. What CHFA Actually Is CHFA, the Colorado Housing...
A buyer I was working with last month sat down at a builder's sales office in one of the new communities out past Parker, ready to write on the floor plan she'd circled twice. Instead of the Colorado Real Estate Commission contract she'd used on her last purchase, the builder's rep slid over the builder's own agreement, eleven pages, single-spaced, with a name at the top that wasn't the state's. She asked...
A renter I've been working with in Aurora has never paid rent late. Not once, in four years. She assumed none of that mattered for buying a home, because until recently, it didn't. Your credit score has always been built from credit cards, auto loans, and student loans. Rent, the largest monthly payment most people make, was invisible to it. That changed this spring. If you've been quietly building a...
A couple I'm working with right now put a contract on a new townhome in a Castle Rock community that's maybe two-thirds built out. Great floor plan, builder incentive on the rate, the whole thing. When they asked the sales rep how the HOA reserve fund was looking, the answer was a shrug and "the builder's association handles all that right now." That answer used to be the end of the conversation. As of...
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...
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...
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 question I get more often than you'd expect: "Can I just buy my parents' house for less than it's worth?" The answer is yes, and there's actually a name for it, a gift of equity. It's one of the more overlooked ways Colorado buyers cover a down payment, and it doesn't involve anyone writing a check. Here's the basic idea. A family member sells you a home for less than its appraised value, and the...
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