On a recent trip on I-70 to evaluate some land for a client, I was confronted with sad but beautiful image of red forests stretching for miles across the hills. The image of a red "evergreen" contrasting against the green scenery is mesmerizing at first until you take a closer look at red death destroying millions of trees in Colorado. Beetle epidemics across the western United States are becoming more obvious every season with entire landscapes turning red and brown as trees die. In northwest Colorado the beetle epidemics, triggered by extended drought in aging forests, are intensifying at an alarming rate, and there is little that can be done to stop them. Actions can be taken to protect high value areas such as ski areas, developed campgrounds and trees in people’s yards. Hastening Death: Pine beetles carry a fungus on their body and legs. Once they enter the tree, the fungus multiplies and spreads. This blue stain fungus blocks the transport of water up the tree’s trunk
There is nowhere in this country where someone working a full-time minimum wage job could afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment. Downsizing to a one-bedroom will only get you so far on minimum wage. Such housing is affordable in only 12 counties located in Arizona, Oregon and Washington states, according to the report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. You would have to earn $17.14 an hour, on average, to be able to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment without having to spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing, a common budgeting standard. Make that $21.21 for a two-bedroom home -- nearly three times the federal minimum wage of $7.25. The minimum hourly wage required to afford rent on a two-bedroom apartment, of course, depends on where you live -- ranging from a low of $11.46 in some counties in Georgia to a high of $58.04 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The most expensive state for housing is Hawaii, where workers would need to make $35.20 an hour to afford
Home sales in metro Denver took an unexpected dip in April, but that didn’t prevent home prices from reaching new highs or temper the frenzy for lower-price properties, according to a report this week from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors. The average price of a single-family home sold in metro Denver reached a new high of $487,974, up 4.2 percent from March and 10.3 percent from a year ago. Buyers closed on 4,389 residential properties last month, according to Wednesday’s report, down 7.4 percent from the number of homes sold in March and down 4 percent from the same month a year ago. The number of homes and condos available for sale at the end of April rose 8.9 percent from the 5,361 on the market at the end of March, a much larger percentage increase than is usually seen between the two months. Very expensive properties can skew the average home price. Another way to look at prices is the median, or the point where half the homes sold cost more and half cost less. T
Protest, protest, protest . Front Range homeowners may have that reaction when they first see how much county assessors increased the value of their homes over the past two years amid worries that next year’s property taxes will shoot up as well. Neighborhoods throughout metro Denver have recorded double-digit price increases, which reflects the region’s hot real estate market. The biggest percentage gains are coming in lower-income neighborhoods that lagged in past cycles. The first steps for those who disagree with value placed on their home is to figure out how much the value should be adjusted and whether a protest has a chance of winning. And with a June 1 deadline for protests, homeowners need to act fast. Should I protest? While a big jump in property value may come as a shock, in most cases it is probably justified. But county assessors can have basic information about a property wrong, and they won’t know details about a home’s condition versus others in the neighborho
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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