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Property Taxes in Colorado How are they determined and what can I do about it?

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Colorado’s system of real property taxation can leave homeowners confused and frustrated. This may be especially true if a homeowner receives a Notice of Valuation reflecting an unexpected increase in the value of his or her home which results in an increase in taxes owed. This article will provide an overview of the process by which property values are determined for the purposes of taxation and the options for homeowners who believe their properties have been incorrectly valued. Colorado has a two year cycle for valuing real property for the purposes of assessing property taxes. In odd years, properties are revalued; even years are considered “intervening years” and properties are generally considered to have the same value as in the prior year. In intervening years, notice of the value of property is often contained in a short form along with the property tax statement issued in January. However, in odd years assessors are required to mail a Notice of Valuation, or NOV, to taxp...
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Read if you think you are the next Donald Trump

We've all heard the nightmare stories about so-called "fixer-upper" homes. Sometimes things go smoothly, sometimes there are "surprises" you couldn't possibly imagine. For those of you that have seen "The Money Pit" with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, everything went wrong for the aspiring homeowners, but how would you like to be the poor folks featured in this story ? Sometimes reality is scarier than fiction.
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Slowing New Home Construction? Not in Colorado!

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Although more home buyers eagerly seeking the dwellings of their dreams, fewer new homes are in bloom this summer. In not-so-promising signs for the housing market, permits to build new abodes, housing starts, and the number of new homes completed dipped in April from the previous month, according to the seasonally adjusted numbers in the latest residential sales report. The numbers of new permits, housing starts and finished homes hitting the market were all up year-over-year in April, according to the report. Housing starts are construction projects that have been started for new residences. It's too early to tell whether the slowdown is temporary or will continue, worsening the housing shortage. There's not enough homes on the market, and the shortage of homes is most pronounced at the low end of the price range, As prices continue to rise, millennials and households with low and moderate incomes will find it more difficult to take the homeownership plunge. The num...
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Can Your Home Survive a Wildfire?

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Whether a home survives a wildfire is not random, nor is it a function of luck, most homes that exhibited attributes promoted by the FireSmart program -- including keeping combustible vegetation away from the house, uncluttered yards and low-flammability roofs and surfaces -- survive fires. It seems clear that the survival of homes was a function of resistance to ignition and not a random event or a matter of luck, Beyond doubt, risk mitigation (FireSmart) guidelines demonstrated their effectiveness in mitigating risk under the harshest of wildfire conditions. Most homes caught on fire as the result of embers from the forest fire landing on their property. "Based on site visits, no instances were observed where home ignition could confidently be attributed to direct contact by flames of the burning forest, and there were very few observations where home ignition was likely due only to radiant heat from the forest. Other studies have shown that embers generated by burning vege...
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4 Things You Should Never Do After You Get Pre-approved For A Mortgage

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You've done the work to clean up your credit score, scrape together a down payment and pry a preapproval letter from your mortgage lender. Cheers! Getting preapproved is a smart move, especially in a seller's market characterized by tight inventories and, in some regions, bidding wars. Having a lender's letter in hand signals to sellers that you're a legit buyer whose offer merits serious consideration. Even so, a preapproval letter is just a conditional commitment. It can be withdrawn if your financial situation changes in a way that makes your lender nervous. The best advice? "Maintain the status quo," says Scott Schang, branch manager at BuyWise Mortgage in Anaheim, California. There are a few surefire ways to get rejected after you've been preapproved. Among them: Quitting your job There's nothing wrong with leaving a job to take a similar or better-paying position at another company, so long as you remain a full-time employee who get...
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