485 Stellars Jay Drive

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How did the Denver market do in 2006?

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Well, it all depends on which index you're looking at . . .

The statistic used most often to gauge the market is "average home price." According to that index, home prices in Denver rose 2% -- from $305,000 to $313,000. That increase, however, was not spread equally across all neighborhoods. There were high increases in neighborhoods like University Park (26%) and Cherry Creek (23%), while other neighborhoods took a dive. (Swansea down 17%, Barnum West down 13%, Clayton down 12%).

The problem with calculating average home price is that the figure can be skewed if bigger or more inherently "expensive" homes are sold in one year that another. That fact might be skewing some of these higher-appreciating neighborhoods, because they're the areas where smaller houses, inexpensive homes are being scraped and replaced by larger, "take up every inch of the lot", pricier homes. It's not that the same house has actually appreciated 26%, it's the there are now larger homes being sold that command a higher price and are skewing the average up. (Which makes me feel a lot better. I sold a condo in Cherry Creek two years ago, and I'd have a pretty hard time believing it could have appreciated 23% since then!)

And, on the low end, you have the issue of foreclosures. In Swansea, 81% of the homes sold were foreclosures. In University Park, only 5% were. Foreclosures generally sell for less than similar homes being sold by their owner occupants. Unfortunately, those foreclosures DO drive down the prices in their respective neighborhoods.

The index I prefer to use comes from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. They use federally held or insured mortgages (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to track repeat sales of the same properties. That way they are actually gauging the appreciation of individual properties, instead of just tracking averages for an area. The disadvantage to OFHEO's numbers is that they only track single family homes, and only those financed by conventional loans (loan amounts of $417,000 or less, last I checked). But still, I think it's a more accurate number.

According to OFHEO, the Denver market appreciated 1.09% from 1st quarter 2006 to 1st quarter 2007. They don't break numbers out by neighborhood, so I can't get more specific than that. They do say that the Denver metro area is 221st out of 285 markets tracked. The better news is that over the past five years, we've appreciated 14.78%.

Looking wider, housing prices in Colorado as a whole appreciated 3.30%, which makes us 38th out of 50 states (51 if you count the District of Columbia, which they do.) Over the past five years, Colorado has appreciated 21.15%.

So, any way you look at it, the market has been basically flat for the past year. Some neighborhoods are doing better than others, but all in all we're flat.

The best news is that my anecdotal reports about an energized market this spring seem to be confirmed by the facts. Average sales price in Denver as of mid-April was $330,000, which is a big jump over the $313,000 on December 31st. Again, big houses selling while smaller houses languish could skew the numbers somewhat, but I'm not going to argue too much with good news!

First offer, best offer

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I have a buyer who went under contract tonight.

Six months ago, he made an offer on the same property. It had just gone on the market, and he offered $10,000 under their asking price, in cash. In negotiations, he came up to $5000 under asking price. They said "no" because they wanted their full asking price.

Now, six months later it was still on the market, so we came back to them with our original offer, 10K under asking, take it or leave it. No negotiating. And they took it.

In other words, they could've sold it to us for $5000 more six months ago, and saved themselves six months worth of holding costs. (The property has been vacant this whole time.)

There's a saying in real estate "First offer, best offer." It doesn't mean that you have to roll over and take the first offer that comes along, no matter how low or ridiculous. It DOES mean that it's a good idea to take your first offer very, very seriously, because it does tend to represent the best opportunity to sell the property. These sellers were lucky -- we came back and repeated their first offer six months later. I've seen far too many people (not my clients, fortunately) turn down their first offers cold, make no effort to negotiate and/or show no willingness to come off their full asking price. Then, six months or a year later, they wind up selling for a lot less than their initial offer.

A lot of times, if a lowball offer comes in, sellers are offended. "Insult my house, insult me." That's usually not the case. People are reading that it's a "buyer's market", so they're coming in expecting unrealistic deals. I've seen more than one such lowball turn into a closed transaction, at a much higher price than the initial offer.

Take your first offer seriously.

1700 Bassett Street -- The Glass House

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6813 West 79th Court

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1555 California Street, #318

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Who Pays Whose Closing Costs?

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"No buyer in their right mind pays their own closing costs. The seller will do that."

That's what one of my buyers was recently told at a "first time homebuyers seminar." It didn't strike me as particularly useful information. But it did make me realize that a lot of buyers don't fully understand the concept of "closing costs", whose costs are whose, what those costs go toward, and who's responsible for paying them.

I think a lot of buyers lump all "closing costs" into the category of "what it costs to close the deal", figure those costs are all mutually incurred, and thus each party equally benefitting. Under that scenario, one party is as responsible as the other, and who pays what is strictly a matter of negotiation.

But that's not the case. In Colorado, the only real expense that truly benefits both parties equally is the 200 bucks or so that the title company is paid to close the transaction. That fee is usually split between the buyer and seller. In addition there are some nominal recording and transaction fees required by the various municipalities for the privilege of recording the transaction. These fees are very, very small as an overall percentage of the total closing costs.

So when a buyer pays thousands of dollars in closing costs, what are they paying for? The vast majority of that money is paid to the buyer's lender for the buyer's loan. Here's a rough overview of how it breaks down:

  • Origination fee: Most lenders charge an origination fee of 1% of the loan amount. That's a lot of money -- $1000 for every $100,000 borrowed.
  • Points: Some buyers choose to pay additional "points" (usually 1% of the loan amount for every point) to buy down their interest rate.
  • Title Insurance: The lender doesn't want to get stuck with a loan on a house that the buyer doesn't rightfully own.
  • Appraisal: Because the property is the collateral on the loan, the lender will take it back if the buyer fails to make payments on the loan. The lender therefore has a vested interest in making sure that the house is worth what they're paying, and so they require an appraisal of the property to. Does the lender pay for that? Of course not -- the buyer does!!
  • Days of Interest: Most buyers are delighted to find out that they won't have to make their first house payment until the first day of the second month after closing. In other words, if the purchase closes in June, they won't have to make their first house payment until August 1st. There's a reason for that. Mortgage payments are made "in arrears", which means you're always paying for the previous month. An August 1st payment is paying the July interest expense. But where did June's interest go? It's collected at closing, when the buyer pays the interest on their loan for the rest of the month. If the loan closes early in the month, that can be equal to almost an entire month's loan payment.
  • Escrow: Most buyers set up their loans to take a certain amount every month for property taxes and insurance. Their lender will then require that the buyer set up a reserve in advance (ie at closing) so that those escrow accounts start out with a positive balance.
  • Fees, fees, fees: Processing fees and handling fees and overnight shipping fees, blah, blah, blah. If the lender incurs an expense along the way, it's passed on the the buyer.

    • All of these fees are the buyer's expenses. They benefit the buyer, and paying them is the buyer's responsibility.

    Sometimes buyers, especially first-time buyers, don't have the thousands and thousands of dollars on hand that they need to close their loans. So, as a part of their offer, they ask the sellers to pay a certain amount toward their closing costs. Sellers will often agree to this because they realize it's the only way this particular buyer could buy the house. But they mentally subtract that amount from their net proceeds, and negotiate the price accordingly. In other words, if they're agreeing to pay $4000 in closing costs, they're going to ask for $4000 more in the purchase price than they would have if they weren't paying closing costs. Because essentially it's money they're giving to the buyer to pay costs that are the buyer's responsibility and for the buyer's benefit.

    Remember, the sellers have their own closing costs, and they're generally much more than the buyer's costs. Seller pays:

  • Agent commissions: The seller pays both real estate agents. Yes, the seller generally pays anywhere from 5% to 7% of the purchase price of the home for commission, including 2.8% that goes to the buyer's real estate agent. That's a pretty good deal for the buyer!
  • Title Insurance: This is purchased for the sake of the buyers, to assure them that that they're not ending up paying for a home they don't legally own.
  • Property Taxes: The seller pays the buyer for whatever property taxes are owed for the days of the year the seller lived in the house. (The buyer will turn around and give that money to the county when the tax bill comes!)
  • HOA Transfer Fees: Oddly, this can add up to lots of hundreds of dollars. HOA management companies often charge into the three figures just to write a letter.

    • So will the seller pay the buyer's closing costs? That depends on a lot of factors. How long has the house been on the market? How "motivated" (anxious, desperate) is the seller? Can the seller make up enough in the purchase price to justify the money they're giving back in the form of closing costs?

    Sometimes asking the seller to pay for closing costs is the right thing to do. But just know that "it all comes out in the wash." Purchase price or closing costs, sellers are going to be looking at their bottom line, and negotiating accordingly.

    Slow Market?

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    "I'm sorry. That house just went under contract."

    "Please submit your offer, but know that we've already received two other offers on that property."

    We haven't hear talk like that too often in the past couple of years, but I'm certainly hearing it now. Over the past several weeks, I have faced the following scenarios:

  • I take buyers to look at a house that's been on the market for three days. While we're there two other potential buyers come through with their agents. My buyers like the house and make an offer that evening. Agent has already received another offer, and he receives a third the next morning. We're in a three-way bid situation. We get the house
  • I take buyer to look at house that's been on the market for two days. She falls in love with it. Having learned my lesson, we go straight back to write up the contract. I call the listing agent to tell her an offer is coming in. She tells me "Oh, that property just went under contract."
  • I take a buyer to look at a condo. She likes it a lot, but has a couple of questions. I call the listing agent, who tells me "Oh, that property just went under contract."
  • I take a buyer to look at houses. She likes two of them, and wants to go back and look again a couple of days later. Both have gone under contract.

    • If I'm with a buyer and we find the property they want, I am encouraging them to work with me to submit the offer ASAP. I would obviously never pressure anyone to make a decision before they're ready or submit an offer before they're certain. But once they're certain, it's time to act. I'm tired of seeing my buyers disappointed!

    So I think the market is picking up! Granted, this is the case for certain well-priced properties in good condition in desirable neighborhoods. There are still plenty of homes languishing on the market for various reasons. Some sellers still think it's 1999 and that their homes have been appreciating at double-digit rates for the past few years. Some homes just aren't desirable. And some perfectly good, well-priced homes just haven't found the right buyer yet.

    But, all in all, I'd say the signs are good!

    Champagne Tastes on a First-Time Homebuyer's Budget

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    When I'm wearing my "buyer's agent" hat, I work with a lot of first-time homebuyers. I love my first-time homebuyers. They're open, eager to learn and very excited about the prospect of owning their own home. Every single one of them has been smart, reasonable and a lot of fun to work with.

    It's other realtors' first-time homebuyers who are getting on my nerves lately. I'm hearing more and more about a trend among first time homebuyers making offers on listings. They can't afford a new house, or they want to live in a neighborhood where there are no new houses. So they make an offer on an older home, and then they expect the sellers to turn it into a new home.

    It doesn't work that way.

    Of course, most homebuyers -- unless they're buying a "fixer" house -- want their new home to be relatively free of major defects. That's what an inspection is supposed to reveal, and what the inspection notice is supposed to address. But I'm hearing more and more about buyers -- mostly young buyers -- who are contractually agreeing to purchase homes, and then during the inspection period they are asking for enormous concessions to replace perfectly good fixtures and systems simply because they aren't shiny and new.

    Older homes, especially those not located in "hot" neighborhoods, are generally priced lower than newer homes for a reason. They're older. The upside to that is that they often have more "character" than their sometimes bland newer counterparts. But the downside is that the laws of nature dictate that everything disintigrates eventually, and an older home may be a little further down that road than a new home.

    I don't know why this is happening. Maybe it's some kind of sociological condition brought about by the expectations of the current generation. If that's the case, it isn't universal, because I already told you that my young clients are all fabulous. Maybe these buyers have just been reading the newspaper for too long. (Or the internet -- twentysomethings don't read the newspaper, do they?) They read about the "buyer's market" and maybe they start to believe that all sellers are desperate.

    Generally, they aren't. And exhorbitant, unreasonable inspection demands tend to make them very cranky and more apt to say "so long" than to continue negotiating.

    Whatever the reason, it's not a good trend. Sellers lose weeks of exposure to potential buyers while their houses are "under contract," only to be faced with unreasonable and really impossible inspection demands that kill the sale. Buyers, aside from wasting the sellers' time, waste their own time, their realtors' time, the title company's time. I guess it's good for the inspectors, but I really don't see where anybody else benefits.

    It's important to be reasonable in the inspection period. Sure you should to ask them to address the sagging roof or the furnace that's about to blow. But don't expect sellers to wave their magic wands and turn old houses into new.

    Because what is old is not always new again.

    No More "Wop Burger" at The Blue Parrot

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    I'm annoyed.

    I've been eating at The Blue Parrot in Louisville (a very cute little town north of Denver that is rapidly becoming a suburb) since I was a little kid. Other peoples' little kids have been eating there since 1919, when Michael and Emira Colacci decided to open a restaurant to serve spaghetti to their fellow Italian coal miners. Their family runs the place to this day. My grandfather, being Italian, a former coal miner and a former bar owner, loved The Blue Parrot.

    Also since 1919, there has been an item on the menu called the Wop Burger. I never thought anything of it. After all, the Colaccis were Wops. We were Wops. So there was a Wop Burger. Made perfect sense to me.

    Apparently, it didn't make sense to one James Gambino, who apparently moved here from New York and found the Wop Burger offensive. (The name, not the burger itself. As far as I know.) He confronted the Colaccis and demanded that the name be changed.

    Joe Colacci, age 90, instructed the next generation of Colaccis to leave the Wop Burger alone and "show him the door" if he complained again.

    Not content with the door, Gambino complained to the National Italian American Federation in Washington DC, who wrote the Colaccis a letter "informing" these Italian Americans, whose family has served Italian Americans for nearly 90 years, that "Wop" is an offensive term to Italian Americans.

    Not to this Italian American, it's not.

    I've been a Wop my entire life. It's never been an offensive term in my world. My grandfather Dante Bonacci, who came from Italy to Colorado via Ellis Island in 1913, used the word all the time. We were Wops. I know the word was initially intended to be insulting (it stood for "with out papers", implying Italian immigrants were here illegally). But the Italians I knew embraced it and made it a term of endearment. And that's how I grew up. I was an adult before I knew there had ever been negative connotations associated with the word.

    The Colaccis were holding firm to the Wop Burger, until the Boulder County School District called. The district buys sauce from the Colaccis for their lunch program. They informed Richard Colacci that the district is proud of its stance on ethnic equity, and that the Wop Burger just wasn't kosher (my word, not theirs) in their world. They asked him to rename the item. They didn't flat-out threaten to stop ordering the sauce, but the implication was there.

    And so the Wop Burger is now the Italian Burger.

    And that makes me kind of sad.

    Choose your mortgage broker carefully

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    As long as the rate is good, it doesn't really matter who does the loan. Right? Wrong. It does matter. It matters when you (or, more likely, I) get the call saying "Umm. We're not going to close on time."

    Seriously. I get some variation of this call far too often. Sometimes it leads to a wildly stressful closing day, postponing and rescheduling the close time, wondering if the funds are going to come in. Sometimes it leads to a close "in escrow" before the funds have arrived, which leads to me spending the entire next day on the phone begging the mortgage officer to push the wire through so we can complete the transaction.

    Sometimes it leads to weeks and weeks delay. And sometimes, after all of that delay, it leads to no closing at all.

    That's why it scares me to death when a buyer tells me "Oh, yeah, my buddy/handyman/manicurist/whomever has started doing mortgages, so that's who I'm using for my loan."

    Mortage interest rates don't vary too much from lender to lender. They're set by the market. But in a real estate transaction, a good mortgage broker is worth his or her weight in gold.

    In a real estate transaction, mortgage brokers have deadlines they need to meet in order to keep the transaction running smoothly. The two most important are the appraisal deadline and the loan commitment deadline. If those deadlines are missed, it throws the entire transaction into chaos. Often the close is delayed. And the longer a close is delayed, the greater the chances that the transaction won't close at all.

    Or sometimes mortage brokers "approve" borrowers they have no business approving, or approve them for loan amounts the borrowers can't qualify to borrow. There's no time like a few days before closing to find out a buyer doesn't really qualify to buy a house he's planning to buy.

    If I'm working with a buyer who doesn't have a relationship with a good, reputable lender or mortage broker, I sent them to Deana Hollstein at Colorado Mortgage Alliance. I get nothing for referring clients to Deana. No referral fees, no trips to exotic locales.

    What I do get is the knowledge that Deana takes her commitment to her clients as seriously as I do, and she has taken very, very good care of any buyer I have sent her way. Deana shares my business philosophy of "first look out for what is best for the person." She's honest with them about what they qualify for and how the loan programs work. And she seriously cares about making sure they aren't getting in over their heads or borrowing more than they can afford. Deana also takes her deadlines very seriously. She'll move heaven and earth to make sure that everything is done when it is supposed to be done. When Deana's handling my buyer's mortgage, I can breathe a whole lot easier.

    Whether it's Deana or someone else, a good mortgage broker can make the difference between a stressful, delayed closing and a stress-free transaction that closes on time.

    Trust me, I know.

    Think twice before pulling equity out of your home

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    I know, I know. You hear all of those commercials. “Consolidate your debt.” “Refinance to one low payment.” And even “Your house is your bank.” It all seems so easy. Refinance your home and all of your “debt” goes away.

    But I see the other side. People come to me because it’s time to sell their homes, and I’m the one who has to tell them that they probably can’t sell it for enough money to cover what they owe on the mortgage.

    I really hate it when that happens.

    But how does it happen? In many of these cases, people actually owe more than the initial purchase price they paid for the home. That’s because at some point they refinanced the property, the appraisal showed that the property had “appreciated”, and the mortgage company gave them the difference in cash in exchange for a loan based on the new appraised “value” of the home. In other cases, the homes’ owners have taken out a second mortgage or a line of credit on the property, also based on its appraised value.

    Problem is, homes don’t always sell for their appraised value. Appraisals often tend to run on the high side of what a home is really worth. Plus, in this market and many others, values on some properties are slipping slightly. Plus it costs money to sell a home. Put it all together, and people frequently find that they’re “in” their homes for more than they can get “out.” In other words, there’s a good chance they’re going to have to show up at the closing table with cash in hand.

    The situation gets even worse when you combine low equity with an adjustable rate loan. As interest rates rise, monthly payments go up. Many people find that they can no longer afford their mortgage. But when they go to sell, they find that they can’t sell the home for as much as they owe. So they can’t afford to sell and they can’t afford to stay.

    The next step is foreclosure.

    This is when people tell me “I have to sell it for $xxx price.” Believe me, I’d love to sell it for $xxx price. The problem is those darned buyers. They really don’t care how much the sellers owe. All they care about is the market value of the property. They (unfortunately) aren’t going to pay more just because they want to help the sellers pay off the mortgage.

    I understand that some people make a conscious business decision to pull equity out of one property in order to invest the money elsewhere. That’s called “leveraging.” They’re putting the money to work for them to make more money. That’s a lot different than using the money to pay off credit cards or travel to the Bahamas. They’re taking the same risk, especially if they leave little or no equity in the first property. But at least they’re using the money to make money.

    I also understand that sometimes people pull equity out of their homes because they have to – to pay medical bills or take time off to care for a sick loved one or whatever. In that case, thank God the money is there – and know that the downside is that it may be harder to sell the house down the line.

    Different people have different philosophies regarding the equity in their home. Some work hard to pay their homes off as quickly as possible. Others like to pull equity back out to invest elsewhere and grow their net worth. Neither approach is right or wrong.

    But leaving little or no equity in a property can be very dangerous to your financial health.

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    2339 Holly Street

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