A client called me a few weeks ago thinking about listing her house in Parker. She's owned it since 2015, raised her kids there, and figured selling would be simple: pay off the mortgage, pocket the rest, move on. Then she asked me what she'd actually owe the IRS. I told her the honest answer is "it depends," and she was surprised that depended on anything at all. Most sellers never run this math until...
I had a seller in Lone Tree a few weeks ago who wanted to list with photos her nephew took on his phone. Nice kid, decent camera, but the photos made her kitchen look like a hallway. I told her the truth: in a market where buyers are scrolling past dozens of other listings before they ever get to hers, that choice costs real money. She hired a photographer instead. The listing got more showings in its...
Picture this: your buyer's lender won't fund the loan until a cracked section of driveway gets repaired, and it's the last week of October. Every concrete contractor between Parker and Castle Rock is already booked into spring. Under a normal contract, that could kill your closing. In Colorado, it usually doesn't, because of a tool called an escrow holdback. What an Escrow Holdback Actually Is An escrow...
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 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...
I've had a few sellers ask me some version of the same question lately: "I got my loan in 2021 at under 3%. Is there any way to actually use that when I sell?" It's a fair question. Freddie Mac's weekly rate survey put the average 30-year fixed at 6.69% as of August 6, an 11-month high, and I'm hearing more buyers do the math out loud during showings. If your loan happens to be assumable, that gap between...
Picture this: you've accepted an offer on your Parker home. Good number, reasonable terms, everything you wanted. Then you get to the fine print and see it, the buyer's purchase is contingent on selling their own house first. Suddenly your "sold" home isn't really sold. It's sold if their house sells too. This is one of the most common questions I get from sellers who are otherwise thrilled with an offer:...
Most Colorado sellers assume they'll owe some kind of state transfer tax on closing day, the way people in California or New York do. It's a fair guess, and it's almost always wrong. Colorado doesn't have a real transfer tax at the state level. What you'll actually see on the settlement statement is a tiny documentary fee, and unless your home sits in one of twelve specific mountain towns, that's the...
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 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...
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