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….

and where did 2007 go?

Everyone makes New Years resolutions: Lose weight. Save more. Read more. Get out of debt.

For 2008 I really only made one resolution – eat more fruits and vegetables.
What’s your resolution?

I have several friends who live in the DU area. Why? It reminds them of the East Coast:

With wide streets lined with mature trees and elegant homes set on deep lots, prices in University Park – or Observatory Park, as newer residents call it – have skyrocketed in recent years as people discover its storybook feel and prime location.

Read more: DU neighborhood worth observation

Want to live there? With average prices hovering around a cool half mill fughettaboutit!

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.

In case you missed me, my site was down for almost 12 hours. I’ve been getting A LOT of spam comments and to curb the comments I’ve been testing different wordpress plugins. Unfortunately, some plugins aren’t tested thoroughly. My apache server went bonkers (is that a technical term) around noon and after a couple of calls to my hosting company (bluehost) the problem was fixed.

The feeds should be resolved soon.

Thanks for your patience and thanks for visiting!

I was asked by a reader, what’s with the ads? I don’t plan on keeping the google ads for long. It’s only a test. I’m testing different placements. According to those that make money with ads, ad placement is key.

I did switch to a SEO based theme for wordpress. It looks marginally better than my previous site. If you hate the new look, please let me know.

I ran a quick search in Google for the term “Denver Homes”

The top ten results that Google fetched is fairly interesting:

1. The National Association of Realtor’s website, the heavyweights in the real estate game. They’ve been around for quite some time on the web circa 1997.
2. A real estate agent’s site. On the web since 1998.
3. recolorado.com, a consumer portal to the Colorado MLS. On the web since 1998.
4. American Home Guide is 4th. Not sure what’s the purpose of this site. It’s not a real estate agent, broker, or company. On the web since 2003.
5. A real estate agent’s site. Around since 2000.
6. New Home Source, a site that basically allows you to search for properties with limited ads. Around since 1999.
7. A real estate agent site. Around since 2004.
8. House.Info allows you to search for properties. Around since 2005.
9. A BLOG. Around since 2005.
10. A BLOG. Around since 2006.

Conclusions:

• The real estate agents who’s site rank well, probably paid a substantial amount of money to get ranked well and to keep their rankings.
• The 9th ranked site for Denver Homes is run by Todd Carpenter, who runs a series of mortgage and real estate blogs.
• The 10th ranked site, was a blogging project of mine that I abandoned.
• Unless you’re site has been around on the web since the late 90′s or you plan on paying a ton of money to get your site optimized, plan on blogging.
• Google loves blogs!

If you’re savvy real estate agent in Denver and want to meet with me to discuss blogging and what it can do for your web presence, contact me for a consultation. If you’re a total dumbass who whines constantly and expects me to do everything, don’t bother contacting me.

Interesting links from the web:

The Denver Post has a great article, Sales surge for digs over $1M, on why the upper end homes are selling like hot cakes. Denver homes in the million dollar range are doing very well because move up buyers have done well with their investments in the stock market. Moving up like George and Weezie!

Speaking of luxury properties, I ran into my friend Dan at the Denver based real estate and mortgage blogger meet up last week. He now works for LuxuryProperty.com, a site that specializes in million dollar homes nationwide. Look for their launch very soon.

Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel discusses when prices rise, people remodel. Anyone who links to a Roxy Music clip is pure genius in my book!

Just like every kid, I grew up playing soccer. It’s the premier sport in the world. Somehow it just doesn’t have mass appeal in America. Consider that Denver just hosted the Major League Soccer all-star game, did anyone care?

Chinatown real estate is hot according to CBS. This begs the question where is Chinatown in Denver? My best guess is Alameda & Federal area with their wide array of Chinese restaurants.

I got an email from a reader that was one line – “Are you dead?” Every now and again I get similar emails when things slow down on my blog.

I’ve been busy, extremely busy….

On Wednesday I spent most of the day at a Blogger Fiesta. The boys from Sellsius were in town and as an ex-pat New Yorker, I had to meet them. Rudy and Joe are two of the coolest mofo’s in the blogosphere.

Spending the mornings with my daughter. Rather than shuffle her off to daycare first thing in the morning, we’ve enjoyed watching Sesame Street before heading out the door.

Loans. Rates are in a holding pattern and people want to get those ARM’s fixed!

Software development. What can I say, once a geek always a geek so I have a side gig as a software developer/contractor. Microsoft Access database projects always seem to be in abundance.

Remodeling my bathroom. I told my wife I’d have it done in a weekend. Then a week. Now it’s looking like 2 weeks. So much for milestones.

August should be a fairly slow month. I hope!

I’ve been blogging for well over a year here at Denver Lender. It’s my third blog iteration. My first blog was on blogspot, google’s blogging platform, however, I didn’t like the platform. My second blog was on Active Rain, a real estate networking site. Active Rain is a neat place but again, I didn’t like the platform. For my third blog, I chose wordpress as the platform since I’m quite proficient in PHP and MYSQL. For the name of my blog I had to choose between www.Denver-Lender.com and www.denvuh.com. Would people get the NY pronunciation of Denver? I wasn’t too sure so I went with a domain name that was fairly easy to say and even easier to remember.

In a few weeks, I’ll get to meet others who blog about Colorado at the first ever Blog Fiesta.

Here are the details:

Blog Fiesta will be held at Garcia’s Mexican Resturant, on July 18th, from 11-3. Garcia’s is in the Denver Tech Center (South Metro Denver), near I-25 and Belleveiw. We have a room reserved to seat 60, and can spill into another room to support as many 100 attendee’s.

Appetizers, soft drinks, lunch & expert blogging will be provided!

11:00-12:00 – Meet & greet with appetizers

12:00-1:00 – Our expert panel on starting your own blog with Q&A

1:00-3:00 – Have lunch and socialize!

The event is free, but registration is required if you want to guaranty a seat. Register Here