It was a very summery weekend here in the Springs, a great time to enjoy the outdoors. We attended an outdoor wedding up in Parker on Saturday night, which was a gutsy move, but it came off without a hitch. Evenings start to get cooler, along with arriving earlier this time of year, so evening outdoor events start getting a little less common.

I have another closing tomorrow, and need to do a walk though for the client. Standard practice here (and a stipulation in the standard real estate contract) allows the buyer to do a last minute walk through inspection of the property to make sure that inspection issues are complete, the house is appropriately clean and empty, no damage has been done to the property, and utilities are still on. Neither the buyer or the seller will be at closing, the seller moved out several months ago, and the buyer arrives at the end of the week. "Mail Out" closings are pretty common these days, and usually go quite smoothly.

The above video clip is a bit shaky, but it was taken Friday up in Rocky Mountain National Park, where the elk rut is in full swing. The eerie high pitched squeal of elk bugling is repeated often in the fall, and adds to the fun of seeing these magnificent animals "up close and personal".

Rocky Mountain National Park is about 2 1/2 hours away from Colorado Springs. I had not been up there for some time, and yesterday decided to go elk hunting there - with my camera of course. It is surprising to me that we don't go more often. I can't say enough good things about the spectacular scenery, incredibly abundant wildlife, and the serenity of the place. Fall is the absolute perfect time to go. I got so many good photos, I'll spread these out over some time.
I have to say it was nice to get some time away with my cell phone off. With all the wrangling going on in Washington over the "bailout package", it was probably going to be a quiet day anyway!

Normally when I think of fall colors, I think aspen trees. But lately, fields of purple wild flowers have been blooming all over the Colorado Springs area, so I thought I had better get a picture or 2 before they fade. The above shots were taken yesterday at the corner of Union and Briargate Parkway, kitty corner from the new Memorial Hospital north campus. There is a large (100+ acres) open space that eventually is supposed to be a park. For now, it is used primarily by joggers, and in the winter the kids love to sled down the hill if there is enough snow. The building in the center is Academy International Elementary, the designated elementary school for school district 20 's International Baccalaureate (IB) program. It is very popular, one of the more difficult ones to "choice" into, as it is also the neighborhood school for the Summerfield area, an established neighborhood where prices range from the low 300's to the low 400's.

There has been a lot of talk about energy going around these days, locally as well nationally. Colorado Springs rates very high on many national surveys, but we are not the "greenest". There is so much land east of here to dump our waste, that recycling has never really taken off here. In addition, our proximity to the Wyoming coal fields and great rail access has made coal the fuel of choice for producing electricity. And the city is so spread out, with employment centers not being clustered very well, that mass transit is really used mostly by people who don't have cars (with a few exceptions), leaving everyone else in a "one person, one car" commute. Ironically, our historical utility costs are some of the lowest in the country, and our air among the cleanest, so we must be doing something right. There is good opportunity to develop wind energy east of here, and I suspect that wind will be the way the city comes into compliance with the state guidelines of having 10% of our power coming from renewable energy sources by 2020. Also, many of our homes are newer, and the new ones being built are mostly Energy Star rated, so we don't have a lot of homes leaking mass amounts of heat. In addition, our climate makes it easy not to run the furnace or the AC for much of the year, so in that regard, we are naturally blessed with a fairly energy efficient setting. Now if we could just fix all those huge pickup trucks and SUV's we tend to drive to get better mileage..... :-)
Sometimes having a few photos to share is reason enough to write. This was taken last Saturday near Cripple Creek, and you can there is still plenty of green, indicating it was really just the beginning of the color season. There are large stands of aspen with no trace of yellow yet.

We closed on a bank owned home on Friday. Distressed / foreclosures were 23% of the market in Colorado Springs in August. It was actually one of the smoothest foreclosure home deals I've done, but it was still not without it's moments. These deals all use Denver title companies, so if there are any changes to the figures, checks to be written, etc, it is tough getting help during the closing. For some reason the seller never has signed off their paperwork ahead of time either, so we ended up sitting around for 2 hours waiting for the seller to sign so the keys could be given to the buyer (who had help coming to unload her POD). It is hard when you can't count on everyone to execute on time with these, but we got through it, and the buyer got a very good value.
Today is the first day of fall, and what better symbol of fall in Colorado than a herd of elk? We spotted these right off Highway 24 on Saturday, just west of Woodland Park, before Divide. I've only spotted elk along this stretch of road a few times in the 17 years we've lived here, so it was a treat to have them out in the late afternoon sun posing for us. It is supposed to hit 83 today, which is unseasonably warm for this time of year.
What another crazy Bronco win yesterday. This is an interesting team, with the highest scoring offense, and most scored against defense in the league. I like the offense side of that, but the defense is making me crazy. How big a lead can they fritter away? Still, it is good to start the season 3-0.

The fall color season in the mountains above Colorado Springs has begun. I say begun, because while there are stands like the ones shown above, much of the aspen forest is still very green. Unless we get some nasty windy weather, this promises to be a longer color season, which is great! This shot was taken on 9-20-08, right on Highway 67 near Cripple Creek.
We got some other good shots yesterday while we up there, but I am going to share them over the next few days, so stay tuned.
Fall marks a change in the real estate market here as well. There is a kind of seriousness that grows, less "looking for fun", and more focused buying. The inventory shrinks, as less serious sellers leave the market place. Not that activity stops. In fact, the fall months tend to run at about 2/3 the sales rate that the peak summer months run, so it is still a busy season, it just has a different tone to it.
I'm anxious to see how much of a difference this big bailout program will make in business conditions. Ideally, interest rates will stabilize at a lower level, say the mid 5's, and buying activity will pick up as people realize that this is the time to make their move.

"This too shall pass" has become one of my favorite sayings of late. With the housing market being in the tank for going on 2 years, financial markets being in turmoil, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continuing, gas prices being high, etc, "This too shall pass" seems like a great way to deal with some of the adversity that can't be solved directly.

Personally, I believe the prospects for Colorado Springs are excellent. Very few places have a the combination of being this beautiful, having such a pleasant climate, and yet also having a pretty "going concern" economy. It's a great place to raise kids, or retire, or get started in life. For the physically active, there is about every kind of outdoor recreation opportunity imaginable. For the couch potato, lots of spectator events (not to mention just looking out the window!) And it is pretty affordable, below the national average for cost of living.

Unemployment is a little higher than we'd all like right now, running around 6%, but like I said before, "This too shall pass."

Today's photo is from 2 years ago, taken in our front yard after the first fall snowstorm, just before Halloween. 2006 was an extra tough winter as it turned out, but this was a good illustration of how it can go from fall to winter kind of quick here. It all melted pretty fast, but you can see it was a good pile of snow that fell. Today will be upper 70's and sunny again :-)

On the way back from Falcon this week I got this shot of the pronghorns out on the prairie, just at the turnoff for the soccer fields. They kind of took off all at once, but I liked how they were kind of bunched up nice, and all standing up. Some day they won't be there anymore, as the houses from the Banning Lewis will gradually fill it all in, so I figure I shoot these when I can!
What a wild week already in the money markets. While all this craziness of Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch and AIG is helping interest rates go down for the moment, I hate to see the whole credit and investment system melting down. The irony is that a year or 2 from now, the banks who are buying up these deals will be even richer than ever.
We are having a great week of early fall, with cool nights and warm sunny days. The leaves should start turning in the high country soon, always a treat for me!

I hate to see a football game that is really decided by bad officiating, but the Bronco win over San Diego yesterday was an exception. After all, it was the Chargers, and the Broncos won! Football season is off to a good start for Colorado Springs fans. Air Force is 3-0 and the Broncos are now 2-0 (although it was a pretty dicey win yesterday). Both teams did put on a good show, 39-38 is a lot of scoring. This blog is not really about football, but that was a game to remember.

The sun is back out after a pretty rainy day on Friday. I have to go check out a house under contract that sprung a leak in the basement. These kinds of things are more common than they should be, in part because often the drainage system for the foundation of a house gets "messed with", either by feeding water to the foundation (such as downspouts that are not tipped back out after mowing), or other such things. I always hate it when there are problems like this, especially since a bank owns this house and they are not very good about getting around to taking care of things.

Today's photo is a symbol of the fall, but was taken over Memorial Day up in Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (about an hour away?) My son in law is a bow hunter, and he actually filled his tag his first day out this year. We have LOTS of deer and elk in the region, though the elk are considerably more shy.

PULLING TOGETHER - Once in a while something really good happens, and I thought I'd share a story from just a couple of weeks ago. We had a contract come in on a listing that was preapproved by GMAC Mortgage. As a reputable lender with a reputable loan officer, this was all good. The first clue we had a problem was when the appraiser called 2 days before closing, wanting access to the house. Not a problem, we got him in, and the loan officer was pretty sure we would close on time. The morning of closing, we were told we would have to delay til the next morning. Then afternoon. Finally, at 4pm on a Friday afternoon, we discovered they had never even finished processing the loan. This is where the good part comes in.

I do all of my closings for my listings at Peoples Title. Sally Shelton, my closer, has been doing my closings for years, and I have always joked about her "saving my bacon" more than once. This ended up being one of those cases. Realizing the lender had completely dropped the ball, Sally suggested we get Peoples Bank involved. They have their own mortgage department, and everyone was still there (GMAC said their staff was no longer available to finish the job). We got the loan transferred, and completely underwritten by Peoples Bank of Colorado Springs, within 3 hours. Although we were so far past banking hours we could no longer close and fund that night, the successful closing was the next business day. The buyer was being deployed to Iraq the following day, so needless to say, there were a lot of happy people as a result of the great job done by Sally Shelton on the closing end, and Sharon Walker (719-548-5148!) on the loan origination end of that one, not to mention to the underwriter who stayed until almost 8pm on a Friday night. It was really good to see a group of people work so hard to make something good happen for both the buyer and the seller. OBTW, GMAC announced it was closing all of it's retail branches the day after we closed.

Todays photo was some columbine up in Breckenridge. I thought flowers were a fitting symbol of the day, 9/11. Everyone remembers where they were when the news came in that day. I was on the way to our monthly sales meeting at a local hotel. The images on the TV screens in the lobby were horrifying, and I still cannot bear to watch the replays of those planes crashing into the World Trade Center.

In the middle of this rancorous election process, I can't help but remember back fondly of those days immediately following 9/11 when we all seemed to pull together for a while.

This weekend's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has had the immediate effect of lowering mortgage interest rates (now closer to 6%), at least here in Colorado Springs. Apparently there has been a risk factor built into rates that has held them higher than they otherwise would have been. Interest rates and gas prices are both very hard for me to get my head around. With the discount rate at 2%, 6.5% mortgage rates did not make so much sense to me. And just like with gas, bad news seems to make them jump, but good news never has the equivalent effect on them going down. If gas prices dropped as much as crude oil has, we'd be at $2.75 - $3 per gallon, or perhaps even less! As it stands, locally we are closer to $3.50 per gallon, which is much better than $4, but not great.

Yesterday was our monthly sales rally, and there were a couple of interesting statistics discussed. The "high end" of our market is really still hurting, with only .6% of sales over $800k. 88% of sales are under $400k so far this year. The "sale to list price" ratio continues at over 97%, indicating that despite rumors of "great deals", the deal is on the asking price, not the result of people coming down huge chunks at the negotiating table.

We wrote a contract for another new build this week, in the Falcon area, northeast of Colorado Springs. The ability to get a nice new home on a 1/2 acre lot in the mid 300's is still very attractive. I think the builder wrote 3 contracts this week on that site.

Fall weather has set in here, it was not even 60 degrees yesterday, though today should be back above 70 at least. Our normal fall pattern is for sunny warm dry days and cool nights, broken up by a series of cold fronts that progressively bring the temperatures lower until our first snow storm, usually by Halloween. Perfect football weather!

With Democratic Party Convention in Denver last week, I guess it was only fitting that John McCain and Sarah Palin would make Colorado Springs one of their first stops after the Republican Convention. They were expecting a big crowd at the airport today as the campaign kicks off in earnest. Enthusiasm for the race seemed to pick up enormously here in Colorado Springs after the Sarah Palin announcement. As I have mentioned previously here, this is a pretty strong Republican stronghold, but Romney and Huckabee seemed to get more enthusiasm than McCain in the primaries. That seems to have changed now.

Statistics for August Colorado Springs home sales are not official yet, but the preliminary figures are not as encouraging as last month. Sales were down 17.7%, and the average price was down a whopping 9.3%. It appears that distressed properties have cast a shadow once again over our market, with 23.3% of the sales being foreclosure and/or short sales.