Joetta’s Neighborhood Newsletter
February, 2012
To All My Friends & Neighbors –
Greetings!
What My Readers Said:
I posed a question, ‘Why aren’t more people buying houses now?” and got a couple of well-thought answers. This is the second of those two:
“They could be dying to move and take advantage of the market right now, but are stuck! For example if they had a job change in the past year with lower pay. Or they would need to sell their house for a down payment, but at this time would be losing money on the sale. Or maybe they could rent that house, but would have no way of coming up with a hefty down payment required to buy a new place. Possibly all those situations???”
My responses: First of all, thank you for responding, I love it!
It’s hard to know exactly how many people are stuck, but we do know that there are still a lot of homes that are underwater (more is owed on them than what they could sell for). Some of those people would sell if they could, but they’re not willing to ruin their credit by attempting a short sale.
However, many people who could sell their house won’t do it for less than they paid for it. As you mentioned, they think of it as ‘losing money on the sale’. I would encourage these folks to remember that if they plan to move into a more expensive home, waiting for prices to go up will almost certainly cost them more than what they will gain by waiting.
Here’s an example. Say your house is worth $200,000, you wait five years for it to go up 5%. Your house is then worth $210,000. You ‘made’ $10,000 by staying in a house that doesn’t meet your needs for five years. In the meantime, the house you want is currently $300,000, it also goes up 5% in the next five years. So that home will cost $315,000.
So, by staying in the house you’re not happy with for five years, it actually cost you $5,000 more. And I’m not even going to talk about how much more it will cost if interest rates go up.
As far as down payment goes, FHA requires 3.5%, conventional requires 5%, and I know of at least one bank now offering 100% loans. So renting out your current house may be a real option. The rental market is HOT!
But for those of you who really are stuck, I just want to encourage you with a cliché: ‘Don’t worry, be happy!’ Your house is still your home. You can settle into the idea of really living in it, enjoying the good things about it, and know the day will come when it’s your time to move on.
When Will the Housing Crisis be Over?
I’ve been shocked lately to see some predictions that the housing crisis will be over this year! Then, I realized that ‘housing crisis’ is another one of those terms that doesn’t have a specific definition.
What the housing crisis means to you personally may be very different from what the folks at the National Association of Realtors mean, and also different for every news reporter and politician out there.
So – what does the term ‘housing crisis’ mean to you? I would love ANY answer – even ‘I don’t know’ or ‘It means this is an election year’.
What would the real estate market look like, in order for you to say, “Yes – the housing crisis is over”?
For March’s Newsletter:
I would love to answer YOUR questions. Please call or email with any questions you’d like addressed in the newsletter. And don’t forget to send in anything you’d like me to include, like contractor recommendations, favorite restaurants, events you want to advertise, etc.
Some of my blog posts for the past month
Whaddaya Mean, You Don’t Want to Buy a Money Pit?
January 2012 Report on Arvada Home Sales
Colorado Lingo – Front Range, Eastern Plains, Western Slope
See all my listings – in fact, every home listed – at www.DreamHouseHunting.com
If you’d like daily updates of homes on the market, or monthly updates of sales in your neighborhood, let me know.
And if you love gardening, please visit BeautyofGardening.com
If you have input for, or a response to, this newsletter, I’d love to hear from you.
Joetta Fort~ Equity Colorado ~ 720-353-8031 ~ Joetta.fort@me.com


How do you like this ominous-looking icicle, with its sharp fingers reaching towards the house instead of hanging straight down? I have some theories how that happened, but of course I had to get a picture of it to share with ya’ll!

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Where exactly is Colorado’s ‘front range’? Is it the same as the ‘foothills’? ’Western slope’ seems pretty obvious, but where do the ‘eastern plains’ actually start?

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