Our heart goes out to all the people affected by the wildfires along the Front Range and in our mountain communities.

We are also so appreciative of the brave men and women who are helping protect people and property from the fires.

We want to help and we want to ask for your help.

Through the Windermere Foundation we have set up a fund to benefit the Northern Colorado Chapter of the Red Cross and the Wildland Firefighters Foundation.

The Red Cross is of course helping people displaced by the fires.  The Wildland Firefighters Foundation helps firefighters and their families.

The $10,000 fund will match, dollar-for-dollar, any contribution made by our associates, clients and friends.

Please help us reach our goal of contributing $20,000 to these two worthy places.

To contribute simply click HERE.

Thank you for your support!

Periodically we track a stat which we find to be quite interesting.

It answers this question – how many properties are selling for at least list price (asking price or higher)?

This stat tells us how active the market is and helps our buyers to realize that, in some cases, they will be in a competitive situation.

When we look at single-family home sales so far this month, this is what we find:

57% of properties in Larimer County sell for at least list price
62% of properties in Weld County sell for at least list price
So, in well over half of the transactions, buyers need to offer list price or higher to acquire the property.

The data gets even more interesting when this information is broken out by price range.

To no one’s surprise, the percentage increases for properties priced under $400,000:

81% in Larimer County
70% in Weld County
We find that for properties over $400,000 the percentages still tell a story of a very active market:

47% in Larimer County
56% in Weld County
Bottom line, in most locations and price ranges we see a strong sellers’ market where buyers need to be prepared to make a strong offer and to also compete.

At Windermere Real Estate we are taking Safer at Home and Social Distancing very seriously. Our people are following our Safe Showings protocol, staying connected to their clients, and providing help wherever needed.

Every so often we will hear a concern that another housing bubble is forming.

To help answer that question it’s valuable to look at the reasons that caused the last one.

There were three main drivers of the bubble that burst in 2008:

1. Easy Credit – loans were very easy to attain
2. Over-Leverage – people were using their homes at ATM’s
3. Over-Supply – too many new homes were being built

Now, let’s compare that to today:

1. Stricter Credit – the average home buyer today has a FICO score of 755
2. High Equity – collectively, U.S. homeowners have $19 Trillion of equity in their homes and collective mortgage debt has not increased for 13 years
3. Under-Supply – today we are building only two-thirds of the new homes being built in 2004 yet the population is much higher

Given this healthy information, we don’t see another housing bubble forming today.

If you would like to see a video recap of our annual Market Forecast you can watch that HERE.

Housing affordability is a hot topic especially after the strong price appreciation that has occurred in our market over the last 7 years.

Here’s some interesting research on affordability…

Each quarter the National Association of Home Builders measures affordability in hundreds of markets across the Country.

Their method is to count the number of homes in a market that could be purchased with that particular market’s median income.

For example, San Francisco is the least-affordable market where only 8.4% of the homes could be purchased with their median income.

The most-affordable is Monroe, Michigan where 95.3% of the homes could be purchased with their median income.

Guess where all of the 10 least-affordable markets are.  California!

Guess where almost all of the 10 most-affordable markets are.  The rust belt (cities in Michigan, Ohio, upstate New York, etc.)

The U.S. average is 63.6%.

Metro Denver comes in at 55.3% and Northern Colorado at 54.5%.

So, roughly half of the homes in our market could be purchased with our local median income.

Here is our interest rate Forecast for the next year.

Our Chief Economist, Matthew Gardner, predicts that rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage will stay between 3.8% and 3.9% for 2020.

He doesn’t see rates going above 4.0% until at least the first quarter of 2021.

This is obviously great news for buyers as their payments will stay much lower as compared to having a rate at the long-term average of 7.5%.

If you would like to see the slides from Matthew Gardner’s Forecast presentation, we would be happy to get those in your hands.  Just let us know if we can help!