The numbers just came out through July of 2009 and there’s a couple of key points that you should know whether you’re a buyer or a seller. These are important, relative to selling your home or finding the right home to purchase.

The first important fact is that we have dropped below 5 months of inventory on the market.  There’s about 20,000 properties between detached single family homes, condos and town homes that make up this amount of inventory. Importantly, there’s a little over 4,000 homes a month that are selling right now. Meaning, if no other homes were listed today, it would take about a little under 5 months to clear out all of our inventory.

Obviously, that’s a moving number and moving target because there’s always more homes listed and more homes sold. It’s very fluid. But the significance of this number is that the National Association of Realtors says that, ‘Over 6 months of inventory is a buyer’s market, under 6 months of inventory, is a seller’s market.’

Now I don’t want to get you too excited as a seller because one of the reasons the inventory is down so much is there’s a lot less foreclosures on the market. I’ll explain that at another time. What’s important to know right now is that inventory is down, mortgage rates are still down and actually dropped a little bit in the past couple of weeks and the home buyers out there, if they’re first time buyers, still can take advantage of the first time home buyer tax credit.

With over 20,000 listings to choose from, it’s important that you find the listings that meet your criteria and that you’re able to act quickly in order to make offers and purchase the properties that you want. I can’t tell you how many times in the past month that we’ve run into competitive offers for our buyers, and even for our sellers, when they list a home in a hot neighborhood that’s priced right.

To sort through all of this, I have lots of tools and services available for both buyers and sellers. For buyers, you should visit, www.EasyDenverHomeSearch.com, to start searching for your home today, and sign up for the E-mail alert service that will get you all the new listings first thing in the morning or whenever during the day you’d like to see them.

For sellers, visit, www.SamWilsonGroup.com, to see some of my tools and advertising mechanisms to market your home, to get it sold quickly and attract only the most serious buyers. With the market changing almost every week and definitely every month, I also offer free consultation services either for a buyer or a seller. I’ll give you a 1-hour free consultation to help you determine the best way to market your home or the best way to find and purchase a home in the Denver Metro Area.

Contact me directly 303-526-2606 or email me at Sam [at] SamWilsonGroup.com and we’ll set up an appointment to help you sort through this quickly in the rapidly changing market.

Until next time

Did you know that on May 1st there was a new regulation passed by the mortgage industry called the Home Value Code of Conduct (HVCC)? While this had good intentions, the HVCC has caused a ton of problems over the past couple of months in getting Real Estate transactions closed and approved by lenders.

What it says is that lenders can no longer talk directly to appraisers. Yes, this is a good thing, and something that should have been in place several years ago. It would have prevented a lot of the escalating values that were hard to justify in your local Real Estate market.

However, the pendulum has swung too far once again. Now this has caused a ton of problems because using this system prevents mortgage brokers and mortgage bankers from going directly to an appraisal source that they know and trust. One who knows the area where your house is selling or the area where you are buying.

What this has created is a buffer between the mortgage industry and the appraisers where now a mortgage person has to order an appraisal through a computerized website. Then appraisers pick up these work orders that may not even be familiar with your neighborhood. This is causing a ton of problems, let me give you one example.

I recently had sold a home in the Highlands area of Denver. The appraiser came from some place other than this neighborhood and turned in an appraisal $29,000 below the contracted sales price. I was able to solve it by switching the buyer to a new lender and getting a new appraisal which came in at market value.

So, you have to wonder, how can an appraisal have a $29,000 swing? Well, it’s because we’ve found a lot of problems in the first appraisal where that appraiser just didn’t understand the neighborhood and what kind of comparable properties they should have been pulling. And let me tell you, in fact, they have the wrong purchase price on the appraisal! The lender wouldn’t even deal with it. They wouldn’t agree to do a review of the appraisal. They wouldn’t do a new appraisal. We had to completely switch lenders.

I know how to get these done. I know how to solve these problems. So, if this is something you’re concerned about and you want that service, then please give me an opportunity to list and sell your home. These problems aren’t going away anytime soon with this new system.

There is legislation to put a moratorium on this process but I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. Instead, you need a realtor that does understand your neighborhood values, understands how to solve these problems and if needed take drastic action to make sure that you get fair value for your home.

If this is something you want to discuss further, please contact me today, at: 303-526-2606 or just visit my website: www.HomeSam.com and click on, ‘What is My Home Worth?’

If you’re thinking about selling your home, everyone knows spring time and summer time are the highest volume markets. But there are other great reasons why you should consider selling in the current market:

1. Prices have stabilized. Prices have not declined here in the first 4 to 5 months of the year. Our May results will be out next week and I’ll talk about those at another time.
2. The 1st time home buyer tax credit is bringing a lot of buyers into the market that weren’t there before.
3. Interest rates remain low at or about 5%.

If that’s not enough, then you may have heard on the National News last week that Denver has been selected as the No. 1 picked city for a housing market recovery. It was on the Today Show last week. On May 19th  Barbara Corcoran, the real estate expert talked about the criteria she used to pick her top cities for a housing market recovery.

I’m just thrilled to tell you that Denver was No. 1 for picked cities. And I can see this as a real estate professional that has been in this market through all the changing times. It is definitely on the upswing now and a great time to think about selling. Especially if you have wanted to upsize or downsize and trade into another home. It’s a perfect time to do that because when you turn around to buy the replacement home, you’re going to save a ton of money because prices are at some of their lowest points.

However, as a seller, because things are stabilizing, you can probably get the money that you want for your home and get it sold quickly. Inventory is also down, reducing selections for buyers. As always, if you’d like to find out what your home is worth, just visit my website www.HomeSam.com, and click on, find out what your home is worth. It’s easy and I’ll return the information to you very quickly.

So, let me get into the report from the Today Show.

Here are the 8 Reasons why she selected Denver as the No. 1 picked city for a recovery:

1. Job Growth. We have a lot of that here in the metro area and in the state.
2. We have a growing population.
3. We have good or great weather. Many people don’t realize this, but, Denver or Colorado actually has as many sunny days as San Diego, California.
4. We have a large base of 1st time home buyers. Which helps the market especially if you’re a seller thinking about trading up.
5. We do not have overbuilding. As you may know, Denver was 1 of the 1st markets with a lot of foreclosures before a lot of the bigger markets fell.So, our foreclosure rate was high to begin with but much lower now. Therefore, builders stopped building and overbuilding about 2 years ago. So, our inventory has been adjusted appropriately.
6. A vital downtown. If you’ve ever visited downtown Denver, it’s just awesome! There’s so much to do, there’s great culture and restaurants. And a great place to live, in fact.
7. A well-educated population. We have 1 of the highest educated populations in the country.
8. We had a large amount of foreclosures first.And, I already commented on that. We were about 2 years ahead of the curve when it comes to foreclosures. And even though the countries foreclosure rate is up 30-35%, the Denver metro area foreclosure rate is down 20-25%.

So, there you have it! Denver was picked as the No. 1 city for a housing market recovery on the National News Scene. So, if you’re thinking about selling or even buying in this market, please contact me directly at: 303-526-2606 E-mail me at Sam (at) HomeSam.com, or visit my website: www.HomeSam.com

Until Next Time