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A Reinvigorated CFPB

In the last 2 weeks I have read several articles on the expected tightening of regulations in the mortgage and financial sector. President Biden has selected Rohit Chopra to lead the CFPB and the first head of the CFPB, Richard Cordray, told Housing Wire that “Chopra’s appointment will reinvigorate the CFPB, returning the watchdog to…

A Great Jumbo Loan with 15% Down

One of our lenders recently started offering a great jumbo loan up to $1 million with just 15% down and NO PMI at a great rate! The rate currently is 3.125% on a 30 year fixed rate loan with NO PMI! Borrowers do need to have a 760 Fico, 12 months of payment reserves left…

Will Apartment Construction Move to the ‘Burbs?

Aldo Svaldi wrote a great story last week in The Denver Post about apartment construction in Denver and the suburbs and I will highlight a few points. This data comes RENTCafe and Yardi Matrix- Over the last 5 years 26k new apartments were built in Denver. Over the last 5 years 15k new apartments were…

You Won’t Believe Denver’s Ranking in Appreciation

The Case-Shiller Home Price Index was released last week with results through last November. Nationally home prices appreciated 9.5% over the past 12 months. The 20-City Index increased 9.1% over the last year. Here in Denver home prices appreciated 8.04% from November 2019 to November 2020. Since 2011, Denver home prices have appreciated 95% since…

Rising Rates Don’t Mean Lower Home Prices

First American Chief Economist Mark Fleming was interviewed last week by Housing Wire on the potential impact to real estate sales and home prices if mortgage rates were to rise substantially. “What we basically discovered is that when you look at the pace of home sales, it’s mixed bag of results. Sometimes rising rates actually…

New Listings are Increasing

Every week I get a graph from Invest Success showing weekly data for these 3 data points-Pendings, Solds, and New Listings. For the last 3 weeks we have seen 900-1000 new listings each week and last week new listings and closings were the closest I have seen since September as there was 1001 closings and…

5 Signs of Stock Market Euphoria

The legendary investor Jeremy Grantham of GMO recently reviewed the dramatic events he has observed over his 50+-year career managing money. He describes the current bubble as one of the “four most significant and gripping investment events of my life.” The others are Japan in 1989, the 2000 tech bubble, and the 2008 housing and…

Appraisal Guarantees Don’t Have to Be Dangerous

A very common strategy for winning a Bidding War is appraisal guarantees in which a buyer writes into the contract that they are willing to spend “xxx Dollars” above the appraised value if the home doesn’t appraise for the sales price. If you have clients who are doing this make sure they are talking with…

Five Reasons Why There Won’t Be a Housing Crash Soon

Logan Mohtashami at Housing Wire is on my favorite reads every week. Here are his 3 reasons why housing will not crash in 2021 or anytime soon- We would need a lot of forced selling and foreclosures and short sales. However, our new President has proposed extending the national moratorium on foreclosures until September 2021.…

DACA Recipients Can Get A FHA Loan Now

FHA announced last week that we can now lend to DACA recipients on properties that will be primary residences, they have a valid SSN, and the borrower is eligible to work in the U.S. as evidenced by their Employment Authorization Document issued by USCIS. If this document will expire within 1 year of closing we…

Commercial Office Space is Soaring

According to the CBRE office leasing dropped by 45% last year in Metro Denver and sublease space reached levels not seen in at least 20 years and there is another 2.4 million square feet of speculative office space coming to the market soon. In fact, there is now 4.7 million square feet of sub-leased space…

#1 Feature for CO Homebuyers

Realtor.com recently analyzed keyword home search data in every state to determine must-have features among those searching for a home. Here in Colorado our top must-have feature is…a main floor master bedroom, closely followed by searches for ranch-style homes or single-level homes. However, throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s home builders built almost exclusively tri-level homes…