Real Estate Blog

Prices for single-family homes in metro Denver continued to perform gravity-defying feats of appreciation last month, as sellers as buyers alike raced to join the spring home-selling circus.

The average price of a home sold in metro Denver, which busted through $500,000 in February, swung up another 3.8 percent in March to $522,277. For the year, it is up 11.7 percent from what were already elevated levels.

The median price of a single-family home sold in March rose 1 percent — to $440,875 — from February and is up 8.5 percent year-over-year, according to a report Wednesday from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.

Both are records and come despite rising interest rates that are adding to monthly payments on a home.

“The anticipated cooling effect of unaffordability has yet to materialize in the figures,” DMAR Market Trends Committee chairman Steve Danyliw said in the report. “All in all, there are good numbers across the board, with the same story line of low inventory and pr..

Courtesy rendering, Arvada Urban Renewal AuthorityDeveloper Trammell Crow’s project, Olde Town Residences, met opposition from the community, and initial plans for the Grandview Avenue site were rejected by City Council in January.Construction of a controversial six-story apartment complex near Olde Town Arvada moved a step forward following City Council’s approval of the project’s preliminary development plan.

Developer Trammell Crow’s project, Olde Town Residences, met opposition from the community, and initial plans for the Grandview Avenue site were rejected by City Council in January The project drew public ire because of its height, proposed architecture, a perceived lack of parking and a land purchase price commonly referred to as the “$30 land deal.”

Council approved revised plans for the mixed-use development, which will include 252 apartments, March 19 on a 6-1 vote.

The Arvada Urban Renewal Authority has worked for more than a decade to transform an old RTD park-n-ride l..

Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson on Tuesday went before the Colorado Real Estate Commission to ask for help in clearing up the thick fog that has enveloped the city’s affordable housing program and allowed hundred of families to purchase homes they weren’t qualified to buy.

“Many of these owners are coming to the closing table not realizing that these homes are affordable,” she said. “There is confusion in the market.”

Denver’s Office of Economic Development estimates that around 300 out of 1,302 homes in its affordable for-sale housing program are out of compliance with requirements. Those homes, mostly in Green Valley Ranch, Lowry and Stapleton, have income limits on who can buy them, caps on the annual price appreciation allowed at the time of sale and restrictions on their use as short-term rentals.

The affordable home covenants were recorded in the public record, and the city expected that sellers would inform buyers and title insurers would make compliance a condition of o..

Courtesy Boulder Creek NeighborhoodsA rendering of a wee-Cottage to be built in the Blue Vista community in southeast Longmont.Boulder County will soon gets something it needs desperately: More than 100 new houses at hard-to-find prices.

Louisville-based Boulder Creek Neighborhoods will next month begin selling the small single-family homes, dubbed wee-Cottages, to be built in the Blue Vista community in southeast Longmont.

The homes will be listed in the low-$300,000s, said Boulder Creek founder David Sinkey. Twenty-seven of the 102 homes will be permanently affordable, the exact cost of which is to be determined by a number of factors, but will likely be in the low- to mid-$200,000s.

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Provided by Pivot to ColoradoThe new Pivot to Colorado campaign, sponsored by state agencies and local tech firms, is spending a half million dollars on marketing to attract Bay Area tech workers to the state. Shown is a rendering of what the ads would look like at a public transportation BART station.Forget the appeal of half-price homes or the great outdoors. Colorado’s tech community launched a campaign Monday to tell Silicon Valley and Bay Area tech workers — and companies — that Denver has a thriving technology ecosystem with plenty of good jobs.

Pivot to Colorado, a $500,000 effort supported by state agencies and at least nine tech companies, doesn’t hide its goal to recruit tech talent to fill openings in a state with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation. The site says it clearly, “This is a poaching strategy.” Using billboard ads and digital marketing, the message is aimed at those who want to “really make a difference” and join a tech hub that “grows through com..

Jenn Hansen-Bates, Special to the Loveland Reporter-HeraldA prankster hung this In-N-Out Burger sign on the construction fence at a development at 57th Street and U.S. 287 in north Loveland on Sunday. The apparent April Fools’ Day joke got some Loveland residents’ hopes up, but the developer of the site said In-N-Out isn’t coming to his property.As April Fools’ Day jokes go, this was a particularly cruel one for burger lovers.

On Sunday, someone hung up a sign that said In-N-Out Burger would be coming soon to the southeast corner of 57th Street and U.S. 287 in north Loveland.

The official-looking vinyl sign got folks pretty excited on some Loveland Facebook pages. But their enthusiasm for the California burger chain was premature.

“I wish it were true, but it’s not true,” said John Hauser, managing partner of the company developing the Loveland Commons development that includes Tractor Supply Co.

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A new technology-driven real estate firm is launching in Denver this month with plans to crack the traditional real estate brokerage industry’s thick walls in a way no other startup has ever managed.

REX Real Estate Exchange, based in Woodland Hills, Calif., will roll out the large siege engines of artificial intelligence, big-data analytics, targeted social media marketing and even robots in its push to lower commissions on home sales to 2 percent from the current rate of 5 to 6 percent.

REX plans to break through the brokerage industry’s defenses by recruiting the people most likely to sell or buy a home before they ever reach an agent. Effectively, it seeks to create its own marketplace.

“We can predict who will be the buyer for your home. We are not relying on the multiple listing service (MLS) to find us a buyer,” said REX founder Jack Ryan, who in an earlier career helped automate stock trading at Goldman Sachs.

Many firms over the years have offered big discounts to sellers,..

There’s being creative. And then there’s going overboard.

What’s going on at Southwest Plaza, a mall in Jefferson County, may be a bit of both. Construction is underway on a nearly 20,000-square-foot aquarium on the ground floor, a soft pretzel’s toss from the Dillard’s.

When it opens later this spring, SeaQuest Littleton will let paying customers mingle with 1,200 sea creatures, including snorkeling in a tank of sharks and stingrays. Mall management hopes you’ll stop by the food court for a Chipotle burrito on your way in and maybe select a new summer look at H&M on your way out.

“It’s not just retail anymore. You have to have a full experience,” Southwest Plaza general manager Greg Sims said of SeaQuest and other entertainment and experience-based businesses that have opened in the roughly 1 million-square-foot center’s walls in the past few years. “We’re trying to give people a reason to come out — other than shopping — and the shopping benefits from the visit.”

Entertainment i..

Glendale’s Westgate Entertainment District is up for sale with an asking price of $142 million.

The shopping and entertainment center, which is owned by iStar Financial Inc. (NYSE:STAR) and located at 6751 N. Sunset Blvd. in Glendale, consists of 533,000 square feet of existing entertainment, and also includes 30 acres of land for future multifamily, retail and commercial development. In total the property is 46.6 acres.

The property is anchored by a 20-screen AMC Theatres (NYSE: AMC) multiplex,…

Reed Payne has spent 36 years working in real estate in California, but the new executive managing director for the company's Silicon Valley office says it's time to focus on the region he calls home.