Feb
10
File under small victory: Colorado cracks down on mortgage brokers
File under mortgage + home equity loan + checking account : Aussie ARM can pay off
File under conforming loan limits: It’s still $417,000 in Denver and Colorado. California is a different story.
File under money from the Feds: Rebates, What you need to know
File under 16th & Court makeover: Adam’s Mark sale done
File under not a lopsided trade after all: Manning for Rivers
File under an interesting experiment: Due to Top Five Fridays I rank well for Mailman Newman
Feb
4
Monday Morning Quarterback
Filed Under colorado, rates, sports | Leave a Comment
Microsoft may be buying Yahoo. They also might be buying the Sun complex in Broomfield. Despite Google’s meteoric rise, Microsoft is/are still the Joneses and Google knows it!
The caucus in Colorado is Tuesday. Isn’t twenty years of Bush (4) + Clinton (8) + Bush (8) enough? For the record, I’m a huge fan of Barry. If you read his bio, you might become one too. He’s half African, half Caucasian. Raised in Hawaii. Lived in Indonesia. Schooled in California and NY. Senator for Illinois. He’s got the whole country and a lot of ethnicities covered plus according to the NY times he’s a MAC.
Rate cuts, rate cuts, and more rate cuts.
I’ll be the first to admit that I really didn’t think the Giants had a shot at winning the Superbowl. I grew up watching both the Jets and the Giants but since my brother liked the Giants, I adopted the Jets as my team just to spite him. Boy do I regret that move big time!
Despite being a Jets fan, it’s hard for me to hate the Patriots. New England line backer Tedy Bruschi is the same ethnic chop suey as I am.
Why do we love sports? My brother said it best, it’s unscripted drama.
My brother is now a Broncos fan.
Suck it Peter King!
Sep
17
Random sports observations
Filed Under blog, sports | Leave a Comment
I’ll always like sports more than mortgages so here are some very random sports observations:
- Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees is a BIG BOY and ESPN should televise EVERY Yankees vs Red Sox game. It’s 18 games of pure baseball magic.
- Willie Randolph of the Mets and Clint Hurdle of the Rockies have the same problem, they both have terrible bullpens. Clint Hurdle is better at managing his putrid pen.
- For all the traffic issues the Rockies cause in downtown Denver, they finally made up for it with a decent season and “meaningful games” in September.
- The boys from Florida State are much faster than the crew CU has from Texas, California and some parts of Colorado. Cody Hawkins will be very good in a year or two.
- Matt Holiday is having a great year playing left field at Coors Field. I have a feeling Ryan Spillborghs will be playing left field next year.
- The Broncos are a very lucky team. Two weeks of pure luck. I hope that they’re lucky when they play the Colts or the Patriots in the playoffs in January.
- The NFC is up for grabs but in the AFC it will really come down to the Patriots and Colts. Unless of course Tom Brady finally gets the beating of the week by the Red Sox nation for wearing a Yankees cap in public.
- Tiger won the Fed Ex Cup. Did we really needed more assurance that Tiger is the best?
- Charlie Weis brought respectability back to Notre Dame just like Britany Spears brought respectability back to Britany Spears at the 2007 VMAs.
Nov
10
8.5% or 6.6% in Two Years
Filed Under mortgage | Leave a Comment
Here’s an article from the Rocky Mountain News discussing Rates, Home Sales and Housing Bubbles.
Rising rates won’t stunt home sales, builder says
By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News
November 10, 2005Mortgage rates will rise to 8.5 percent in two years but won’t trigger a massive slowdown in Denver-area home sales or a housing bubble, Pat Hamill, CEO and president of Oakwood Homes, said Wednesday.
Hamill said rates were that high in 1995 and 1998, which were good years for home sales in the Denver area. But Hamill also pointed out that rates actually were falling during those years. Thirty-year, fixed- rate mortgages now are hovering around 6.5 percent.
Economic growth and job creation are far more important than higher rates, Hamill said.
Hamill was among the speakers at the 2005 Rocky Mountain Commercial Real Estate Expo Fall Forecast, held by the University of Denver’s Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management.
Other speakers gave mostly rosy outlooks for the office, industrial, apartment, retail and land markets.
“We’re finally clawing our way out of the trough,” said Natasha Felten, president of Colorado Commercial Cos.
Hamill said one reason there won’t be a housing bubble is that homes aren’t as liquid as stocks. Even if home values fall, most people won’t be forced to sell, which is what often happens when stock prices drop, he said.
Also, speculators - who are artificially driving up home prices in other markets, such as California and Las Vegas - no longer are a factor in Denver, he said.
And home buyers in the U.S., on average, pay a smaller portion of their salaries to buy homes than do homeowners in other parts of the world, making them less vulnerable to falling values, Hamill said.
In the U.S., a typical buyer spends the equivalent of 3 1/2 times their annual income to buy a home, while in England, an average buyer spends seven times their income, he said.
People stretching to buy homes in hot markets such as California and Las Vegas, though, may be getting close to what U.K. homeowners pay, he said.
“We’re going to see that in our lifetime,” Hamill said.
rebchookj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5207
Copyright 2005, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
However, according to the National Association of Home Builder’s website, they predict rates to be 6.6% in 2007.