You know how things are for weathermen in the Denver area during the summer months? That’s right — the forecast is pretty much the same from one day to the next: Clear in the morning with a 20% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. Skies clearing at night. It’s a bit of a broken record. …
We’ve got a strong seller’s market in metro Denver at the moment. Houses sell quickly and often with multiple buyers fighting to be the successful bidder. This raises a question: Is it worth taking any time and effort to get a house in tip-top showing condition – to do what agents call “staging”? Isn’t a house going to sell even …
Home prices have been rising rapidly in most of the United States over the last three years. Inevitably, this gives rise to fears that we are creating a new housing bubble. Aren’t we just creating the conditions for another real estate crash? It turns out that we actually have a way to measure the health of a real estate market. …
We’ve rolled into a new year. Let’s take a quick look at how metro Denver real estate fared in 2014 and what the landscape is looking like for 2015. Review of 2014: The inventory of homes on the market was at historically low levels in 2014. Right? That was the big story all year. When you hear that, however, it makes …
No. That’s not a typo. Everyone knows that LEAD is bad for the environment, which is why we got it out of gasoline. Did you know, however, that an LED (lightbulb) is good for both the environment and your pocket book? You want to get LEDs out of the store and into your light fixtures. LED stands for “light emitting diode”. LED technology has …
Everyone knows to winterize sprinkler systems when cold temperatures arrive. However, did you know that your landscaping could benefit also from some winterization and tender loving care during the winter? It is worth spending some time and effort on your landscaping. We did a recent blog post about the fact that landscaping can contribute greatly to your property value – …
“Inman Connect” is a semi-annual national conference for real estate agents. At the most recent gathering in June of this year, held in the beautiful city by the bay (San Francisco), we heard a lot of discussion about the luxury home market. What is a luxury home? Are different strategies required when you are buying and selling in this market segment? Is …
Solar energy is HOT, pun intended. It’s getting lots of attention these days. Solar is also COOL! A bit of a status symbol & statement to the world that you are “going green”. We’re big fans of solar, in theory. We’re sure that 100 years from now the world will largely run on solar power. It’s the wave of the future. However, it may not …
What Does a Good Agent Do For You? You’ve probably never heard of “disintermediation” unless (1) You’re an economist, (2) A complete nerd or (3) You attended the big Inman real estate agent convention in San Francisco earlier this year. We learned about it through option 3 with maybe a dash of option 2 thrown in. Disintermediation is when intermediaries are cut out of …
One of our agents got an interesting email from a client a couple weeks after closing on a home: “Thanks for all your work on our house purchase – much appreciated! We are particularly grateful in this case that you kept after us to see the drawbacks of the property on [particular street name] even after we were under contract …
Why does the public think of real estate agents as salespeople? Why does the industry think of itself that way? I suppose it is because we imagine that real estate agents sell houses in the same way that car dealers sell cars. In contrast, we don’t think of lawyers or doctors or accountants as salespeople. Why? When it comes right …
There are some truths that everyone knows: (1) You don’t tug on superman’s cape. (2) You don’t spit into the wind. (3) Denver real estate prices are moving up strongly due to the low inventory of homes on the market. By now, everyone except Rip Van Winkle has heard a lot of news about Truth #3. So we won’t dwell …