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!
Jan
25
Keeping up with…
Filed Under blog | Leave a Comment
Keeping up with the low interest rates: . I haven’t seen rates on a 30 year fixed this low in years. Yet for some strange reason people are playing the “wait and see” game. Personally I hate this game mainly because people don’t know jack about the mortgage market. The rate cut means nothing to the mortgage market. Nothing. My advice is simple, if rates are low enough for you to act, then act.
Keeping up with the Joneses: . I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine in California who said “It’s hard to keep up with the Joneses especially when the Joneses are totally out of control.” Foreclosures are rampant in California and it’s getting worse. Maybe now people will try to keep up with their other neighbors, the ones with the older model cars.
Keeping up with Tom Brady. I have a lot of respect for Tom Brady, however, I seriously question why he’s in NY the week before the big game. Shouldn’t he be in Mexico where the weather is much warmer.
Keeping up with the weather: Being an avid skier it pains me to say that I hate snow and i’m looking forward to the 50 degree weather in Denver this weekend.
Keeping up with a 20 month old: Having a child means reliving your childhood. Except my childhood didn’t include visits to the stockshow.
Keeping up with DirecTV: I dropped satellite television the first week of the year. I was sick all week and instead of watching Rome is Burning and SportsCenter I had to endure Dr. Phil and Oprah. I must say that watching daytime television is more painful than watching Fox News.
Keeping up with the Rebate: The feds are implementing a rebate to invigorate the economy. Some people weigh in on what they’d do with the money. The Federal Government is giving us money to spend it elsewhere. Give a man a fish and they’ll keep up with the Joneses….
Jan
11
Pavilions, Argonaut, and more
Filed Under denver | Leave a Comment
Interesting articles from the Denver newspaper conglomerate Post/News :
Denver Pavilions goes on market: The developers of the Denver Pavilions are putting the downtown retail development on the market.
Argonaut Liquor moves: The storied Argonaut, one of the oldest and most successful liquor stores in the Denver area, is getting a new home after about a half-century at its current site on East Colfax Avenue in Capitol Hill.
57-acre Evergreen estate on market for $24 million: Denver entrepreneur Richard Bard is selling a mansion on a 57-acre estate in Evergreen.
Treasury secretary: No simple fix for housing: The Bush administration is working to combat the country’s severe housing crisis but there is no simple solution, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Monday, adding that a correction in the housing market is “inevitable and necessary.”
Efforts to spark economy may be too little, too late: As leaders in Washington turn their attention to efforts to avert a looming downturn, many economists suggest that it may already be too late to change the course of the economy over the first half of the year, if not longer.
Dec
8
Double Dealing
Filed Under real estate | Leave a Comment
Last night during the Sunday Night Football between Indy and Baltimore I managed to steal a glance or two at the Sunday Paper. This article entitled The art of the double deal. The first two paragraphs seemed rather interesting:
To real estate investors, a good day is when they can buy a piece of property or sell it. A better day is when they can do both.
Buying and selling the same home before sunset yields a quick profit to the fortunate investor who can work both transactions. It is the stuff of “get rich in real estate” schemes advertised in infomercials.
While the rest of the story is rather mundane.
Dec
7
Gates Project or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Urban Redevelopments
Filed Under business, denver, economy, real estate | 3 Comments
I have never been a big fan of the new Denver urban redevelopments: Lowry and Stapleton. When I first moved to Denver, Lowry was an aging military base and Stapleton was an airport. Things changed when friends of mine moved into these urban redevelopments. They’re vibrant neighborhoods. They’re near the airport, city, zoo, museums, restaurants, and more importantly for my friends they’re family friendly.
Enter the Gates Project:
From fan belts to greenbelts - at long last the urban revival of the former Gates Rubber plant is taking shape.
Read the full story: Long-awaited Gates project gathers steam
It’s going to be a while before the Gates Project will be complete. I’ve learned to embrace these urban redevelopments and I’m looking forward to having another Linens and Things, Office Depot, Chili’s, et. al. fill our landscape. Who knows they may even add a Chipotle or a Qdoba or both.
Oct
29
Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage lender, plans to offer refinancing or modifications on $16 billion in loans whose interest rate is set to adjust by the end of 2008.
Rocky Mountain News: Countrywide to push refis, modified loans
New York Times: Countrywide to Help Restructure Loansm
Or are they simply trying to get more business?
Mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp., whose loan volume is down sharply in the wake of the housing downturn and the sub-prime meltdown, is aggressively trying to get its customers to refinance. Here are excerpts from two pitches the company sent recently to homeowners:
Exciting news — we are now offering a Special Online Rate Discount. . . . If you qualify, you could get up to $511,006 to pay off credit cards and other loans.
– Countrywide e-mail
No need to show bank statements or verify other assets . . . no paycheck stubs or proof of income required . . . no new appraisal needed (in most cases).
– Countrywide flier
Could be a combination of both. However, this uber annoying Countrywide commercial has been in HEAVY ROTATION:
Oct
12
Oct
9
Coors Field, great views on and off the field
Filed Under mortgage, real estate, rocky mountain news | Leave a Comment
Interesting article from the Rocky Mountain News:
Prospects of the Colorado Rockies playing in the World Series could cast an even-brighter spotlight on whether the mountain view from Coors Field should be protected.
Read the full story: Some call the views from Coors Field picture perfect
Sep
27
File this under another real estate article from the Rocky Mountain News:
Fresh evidence suggests the Denver-area housing market may be in the early stages of recovery, even as the national housing market faces an even bigger slump.
I don’t know why Denver’s housing market would ever fall into a slump, we’ve got mountains! We’ve got trails. We’ve got parks. We’ve got golf. We’ve got 300 days of sunshine. We’ve got the most franchise restaurants in the entire country - Applebees, Chilis, Hops, Cheesecake Factory, you name it we’ve got it! We’ve got 75 degree on September 27th.
Read the full story: Home prices hint at turn