A buyer I was working with this spring toured four houses with another agent before ever hearing what that agent would be paid, or signing anything at all. That was completely legal at the time. As of August 12, it isn't anymore. Colorado just closed a gap in real estate license law that's existed for decades, and it changes the very first conversation you have with any agent in Parker, Aurora, Highlands...
For three weeks straight, mortgage rates drifted lower. This week, that streak ended. It wasn't a spike, just a one basis point tick up, but it landed right before the Fed's next meeting on September 16, and three of the people who vote on that decision already wanted to raise rates back in July. That combination is worth understanding before you decide whether to lock a rate this week or wait. This...
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...
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...
I had two buyers under contract within a few weeks of each other this spring. Both homes appraised within about fifteen thousand dollars of each other. One was a resale in Highlands Ranch, the other a newer build in Castle Rock still finishing out its street. When their lenders ran the final numbers, the estimated annual tax bills came out well over a thousand dollars apart, on homes that were nearly...
I had a closing this spring where my seller signed every document from a hotel room in Tokyo, at two in the morning her time, and the whole thing still closed exactly on schedule. A few years ago that would have meant overnighted paperwork, a scramble to find a notary near her, and a closing date that moved. Instead, she used remote online notarization, and it took less time than a typical in-person...
I've had three separate showings this week where the buyer's first question wasn't about the kitchen or the primary bedroom. It was "what's happening with rates?" That's a good question to be asking right now, because the answer actually moved in a helpful direction this week, and it's landing in a market that already has more room to negotiate than it has in years. This builds on what I covered in my...
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...
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...
Almost every buyer I work with says some version of the same thing early on: "we want to be close to Denver." It's a completely reasonable starting point, and it's also not specific enough to actually plan around. Close to Denver for a job at the Denver Tech Center is a different commute than close to Denver for a job downtown, and the neighborhoods that win on one can lose on the other. I've watched...
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