A4HB Homebuyer's Blog

What to do after an Urban Fire

What to do after an Urban Fire After the Marshall Fires destroyed so many homes in 2021, the lucky people whose homes were spared from the fire but still suffered from smoke damage were left wondering, what is the next step for us? Weecycle Environmental has provided their suggestions for the best cleaning protocol to make your house safe and healthy again. What When combustion occurs during a fire, not all materials burn cleanly, resulting in smoke and soot. These waste products – solids, liquids, and gases – may be composed of various chemicals which are harmful to your health.

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Market Update for March 2021

Market Update for March 2021 Eight years ago, in March of 2013, we suddenly found ourselves conducting most showings with 3 to 10 groups in the house with us. It felt like all the buyers who’d put off buying during the Great Recession had re-entered the market the same week, fundamentally transforming our business and the challenges buyers faced. Rather than adding contract clauses that gave our clients additional leverage or protection, we were drafting clauses that limited our clients’ rights to negotiate over inspection issues, low appraisals, and other issues. Rather than trying lower the price through negotiations, we

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Uncategorized
A4HB Team

Home Prices Way Up, but Interest Rates Keep Costs Down

Home Prices Way Up, but Interest Rates Keep Costs Down Home prices have increased dramatically in Boulder County and the Denver Metro area over the past 10 to 20 years, but lower mortgage interest rates have limited increases in housing costs for most home buyers. For the lucky few who can pay cash for their home, home prices and buying costs are essentially the same. But for most home buyers, the interest rate on their home loan has a big impact on buying costs.Check out the chart below and you’ll see that the median price for what we call a midsize home in Boulder

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2020 Market Stats

2020 Market Stats For a year that started out with a 6-week prohibition on home showings, what jumps out from our real estate market stats is that they show very little change from the strong seller’s markets of the past decade. The insanely tough market we’ve had since 2013 quieted just a bit in 2018 and 2019, with price increases dropping from 10% a year to about 3%. But despite the pandemic and slowing economy, the average price increase for single family houses in the communities we cover jumped from 3.2% in 2019 to 5.7% in 2020. Consistent with this, more properties sold

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Comparative Housing Prices in Local Communities

Comparative Housing Prices in Local Communities Anyone familiar with the our real estate market knows that Boulder has always been the most expensive city in the area and that home prices have consistently increased there year after year. When we started tracking housing prices in 1997, the median price for midsized house in Boulder was $260,000, a price that had jumped to $960,000 by June of 2020. This is the pattern of price increases we’ve seen for other communities in the area as well, with Louisville prices moving from about 200K in 1997 for this size home to 700K now,

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Median Price: Mid-Sized Houses Sales through MLS Systems Only: Excluding New Construction
From the Newsletter
A4HB Team

COVID-19, Home Prices & the Great Recession

COVID-19, Home Prices & the Great Recession There are many people concerned right now about the wisdom of buying a house with a pandemic-induced recession looming. It probably makes sense to hold off for a few weeks to see how things begin to shake out. However, there’s pretty reliable data from the Great Recession of 2006-2007 suggesting that the risks of buying a home in our area are relatively low. Mark Twain is reputed to have said that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” The local impact of any COVID-19 recession is likely to “rhyme” with that of the

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A4HB clients at closing with masks on during COVID-19 pandemic
From the Newsletter
A4HB Team

Market Impact of COVID-19

Many of you are wondering what’s going to happen to the real estate market given the corona virus pandemic and its impact on the economy.  We’re just a few weeks into this, but the data below may provide some initial insight.  Effects on Showings First, as public concern with the virus and social distancing began to increase, the number of home showings in Colorado, and nationally, dropped dramatically, beginning March 11th and running through March 31st.  Nationally, this leveled out at about 50% of normal by March 31st, but in Colorado there was a second steep drop beginning April 6th, with showings

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Meth formula, Agents for Home Buyers, Boulder, CO
Buyer Agency
A4HB Team

Meth Contamination Testing as Part of Your Inspection

Meth Contamination Testing as Part of Your Inspection After attending a 5-hour home inspection of a wonderful house he had under contract in Arvada, our client left with a headache and some nausea. He went home, laid down and slept for 3 hours. Because he worried that it might have something to do with the house, he called the inspector the next morning. The inspector reported the same set of symptoms. Later that afternoon, we got the lab results from the meth screening samples we took from several rooms in the house. Unsurprisingly, the meth contamination levels in the house exceeded 100 to 400 times

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How quickly they sell graphic
From the Newsletter
A4HB Team

What Time of Year Do Prices Increase?

What Time of Year Do Prices Increase? by Norris Minick Prices Increase More in the First Half When people hear that house prices are going up 12% a year, it sounds like they are going up 1% a month over the entire year. However, that’s not really how it works. In a market where prices are surging, nearly all the price increase occurs between January and June. So, when we have a 10% price increase, a house that sold for $500,000 house in January would sell for $550,000 by the end of June. For clients who are starting their house

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Prices and appreciation graphics
Home Buyer Issues
A4HB Team

The Market in 2018…and 2019?

The Market in 2018…and 2019? by Norris Minick Is the Market Slowing? The Denver Post has published several articles suggesting that the housing market in the Denver metro area is slowing. Signs show that we may be returning to a more balanced market than we’ve seen since 2013. Since the market always slows in the fall, it pays to be skeptical of these articles, but it does seem to have slowed a bit more this fall than normal. The Post cites some interesting data, noting that closings on residential properties dropped 20% from August 2017 to August 2018, while the

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