Homes And People

Homes in Denver sold faster last month than anywhere else in the country. Denver was the fastest market, with nearly half of all homes going under contract in just six days, down from 11 days a year earlier. Seattle was the next fastest market with seven median days on market, followed by Portland, Oregon, and Tacoma, Washington at 10 days. The typical home went under contract in 40 days in the united states, 10 days faster than a year earlier, making April the fastest month on record since 2010 (The earliest we can track) U.S. home prices rose 6.2 percent to a median sale price of $280,000 in April. Home sales inched up 1.2 percent over last year, constrained by a shortage in the supply of homes. The number of homes for sale fell 13.3 percent, the steepest decline in four years, marking 19 straight months of annual declines. When it comes to the housing market breaking records, The market tends to accelerate through June so I wouldn’t be surprised if new records for speed and comp...

For much of last year, Greg Rubin was looking to buy a bigger house. He has been in the same two-bedroom home for 17 years and hoped to upgrade to a place with a guest room, a home office and a workshop for his guitars, radio-controlled planes and gardening equipment. This year, Mr. Rubin has a new plan. He stopped looking and embarked on an ambitious renovation project that will begin with a new kitchen and end with a workshop for all the man toys. “My girlfriend would like to get a larger house, but right now, I’m staying put,” said Mr. Rubin, who lives in Escondido, Calif., and owns a landscaping firm called California’s Own Native Landscape Design. Mr. Rubin is the face of what appears to be a new normal in the real estate business: Homeowners are moving less, creating a drag on the economy, fewer commissions for real estate brokers and a brutally competitive market for first-time home shoppers who cannot find much for sale and are likely to be disappointed during real esta...

Denver’s fast-moving real estate market just keeps getting faster. The typical Denver home sold in just five days last month, according to online real estate brokerage. That’s down from eight days in March, when Denver and Seattle tied for the fastest-selling homes in the country. Seattle still follows close behind, with a median of 7 days on the market. Tacoma, Washington and Portland, Oregon followed at 10 days each. The trend of faster-selling homes isn’t limited only to cities in the West. Nationwide, homes sold nine days faster in April than in March. The graph above shows how the median number of days on the market has changed over time.

Mortgage rates were mostly in a holding pattern this week, which may have been welcome news to borrowers after last week’s uptick. “The 10-year Treasury yield remained relatively flat this week, as did the 30-year mortgage rate, which fell 1 basis point to 4.02 percent,” says Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Markets have been erring on the side of caution following a weak advance estimate for first-quarter GDP and the FOMC’s broadly expected decision to leave rates unchanged.” Freddie Mac reports the following national averages with mortgage rates for the week ending May 4: 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.02 percent, with an average 0.5 point, falling slightly from last week’s 4.03 percent average. Last year at this time, 30-year rates averaged 3.61 percent. 15-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.27 percent, with an average 0.5 point, the same average as last week. A year ago, 15-year rates averaged 2.86 percent. 5-year hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages...

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...

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...

Nearly 99 percent of homes in metro Denver have regained or surpassed the prices from their pre-recession peak, according to an analysis by Trulia that shows only a third of homes nationwide reaching the same mark. The report, “The Housing Recovery That Wasn’t,” said the metro area’s recovery from a decade ago is the best among the 100 housing markets it examined. Counties to the north, south and even east of Denver are showing strong recovery rates, while the rebound on the Western Slope is spottier, with median prices in most areas still below their old highs. In metro Denver, home prices have shot up 50.5 percent from the pre-recession high of $237,071, the highest percentage gain of any of the 100 metros. That has allowed individual homes over time to regain their old highs. But incomes in metro Denver are up only 20 percent since the end of the recession, making it harder for buyers to find affordable homes and pushing them further out in their search. Colorado Springs w...

This is a moving target and soon will be 101 Reasons I live where I live :) 1  Because everyone is so damn happy.  Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen. Or maybe it’s all the pot we’re smoking. Or maybe it’s that “runners’ high” everyone’s always talking about. There’s not a ton of hard-core scientific data to prove that Denverites are a cheery group—a 2011 Gallup-Healthways survey did rank Denver at 42 (out of 190 cities) on its well-being index, which analyzed factors like emotional and physical health, work environment, and healthy behavior. But the anecdotal evidence certainly suggests we’re blissfully content. We don’t have a particularly high incidence of road rage. We don’t have a reputation for being nasty sports fans. We like a good craft beer, but our bars rarely devolve into WWE-like debauchery. Our downtown sidewalks aren’t full of people who would spit on you as soon as look at you when you ask for directions. And our bevy of sunny days means we rarely get the rai...

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...