End of the Year 2008

Today was too nice a day not to get some outdoor stuff done, so I got my hot tub drained and cleaned this morning. Mid 50's, sunny, you can't beat it! I'd take down my Christmas lights too, but I have a thing about taking them down too early, it just does not seem right. I hate for Christmas to be over, when you get right down to it!
This was not a great year by some measures. Colorado Springs real estate sales, which is how I make my living, were down significantly. The line between making a living and not making a living can get a little blurry in these times! My mother in law's health problems have been an interesting new season for us. And I lost my own dad at New Years last year, so the year started with a pretty major funeral in our family history. And the Broncos and the Rockies both missed the playoffs (ok, not that big a deal).
But even a tough year had some nice silver linings. My 2 oldest sons completed some important educational milestones this year. Our newest granddaughter, Ashley was born. We have all been pretty healthy. We have survived the toughest year economically that I can remember. Heck, I even got a Wii for Christmas! Life is good in Colorado Springs :-)

Christmastime in Colorado Springs

We had a wonderful Christmas at the Van Wieren home this year, we hope yours was as well. We spent Christmas Eve at a candlelight service at New Life Church, and then a low key meal and a sampler of gifts with part of the family.

Christmas Day itself started with coffee and cinnamon rolls at home, and then a visit to my mother in law at the Life Care rehabilitation facility, where she is getting stronger and healthier by the day. We took today's photo there. She opened some gifts, and then we headed home to put on a beef roast and open gifts with everyone.

My kids were amazing, in that they decided, despite the tough economy and their own thin resources, to all chip in on a Nintendo Wii for me! I am a little famous for not giving very reasonable ideas for Christmas gifts, and I'm afraid they took me literally on this one. It is SOO much fun though, we are all enjoying it immensely, and it was such a complete surprise!

The weather here was dry, sunny and mild for Christmas day, and continues to be sunny, though not even 30 here today. We'll see 50 again for the next several days, so despite the mountains getting hammered with snow, we probably will lose what little had hung around from the last storm. The days are already getting longer, and the sun stronger.

Like in most places in the country, the malls were packed the day before and after Christmas. One of my sons works at Chick Fil A at Chapel Hills, and he has been very busy over the holidays.

Happy New Year!

WOW!

I have never seen an interest rate drop flow into the mortgage market as fast as this one has. The 3/4% rate cut by the Fed almost immediately flowed in to the mortgage market. My daily quote on 12-17 that I get from Dana Hines at Adams Bank was 4.75% with .25 discount point, and no origination fee.

I talked to someone who had been on an ARM for quite a while, and he told me that he had refinanced earlier in the year into a fixed, but the lender had stuck him with a 3 year prepayment penalty. These should be outlawed if you ask me, (which the congress never does). I have seen some pretty ugly scenes where unscrupulous loan officers have stuck unsuspecting clients with these things, locking them into situations that are just not right. A 2 or 3% penalty for moving or refinancing is just not neighborly!

Today's photo is of my grandson, Tyler, at his preschool's Christmas program last week. Some of our favorite memories of Christmas when the kids were growing up, were these kinds of programs. While his sheep outfit isn't going to win any Academy Awards for Costume Design, it was really fun to see the next generation repeating a great tradition!

Free Money?

The Fed's surprise decision to lower rates by 3/4 instead of 1/2 a point yesterday makes the cost of money for banks darn near free. So how do I get me some of that action? :-) It shows how serious they think the economic problems are, and that is good, because they are serious. Unemployment here in Colorado Springs is close to the national average at the moment, but may be rising with the newly announced layoffs at Atmel.
The ski season technically started over a month ago, but the mountains are finally getting a good series of storms, just in time for the holidays. The weather in the mountains is very different than it is here on the plains, despite the fact that Pikes Peak (at 14,110 ft) is so close. We often have sunny, breezy weather here when it it is dumping at the resorts 2 hours drive away (they expect 1-2 feet in the next 48 hours). It makes for a nice thing, in that we don't drive around in a lot of snow, but we can get to it fairly quickly when the mood strikes. Christmas Day looks like it will not be white, currently forecast for a high of 48 degrees and partly sunny. These things change quite a bit, so I'm not banking on THAT one yet, but since we hardly EVER have snow on Christmas, it isn't too far fetched.

The Big Chill

It was really cold here in Colorado Springs this weekend. Well, at least on Sunday and Monday. The weather was a fairly balmy and clear 50 degrees or so on Saturday (that was good, since I was out showing property most of the day :-), and then a cold front came through that dropped us into negative temps (it was -10 on our way to Denver airport on Sunday night!). Sometimes when it gets so cold, even with little snow, they will cancel or delay school, but not this time. The very cold temps with 3 inches of fresh snow had reasonable good traction to it. Although it was clear and sunny yesterday, it was still single digits most of the day. Thankfully it was already 25 degrees this morning, and warmer is expected, so like most weather here, whether you like it or not, it does not last long!
The Denver Broncos playoff prospects took a little hit on Sunday, with their loss to Carolina and San Diego's amazing comeback against Kansas City. If the Broncos don't win the division, it will be the most spectacular late season swoon in my memory anyway. They went into the game on Sunday with a 3 game lead with 3 games left, we'll see how it plays out.

Colorado School Report Cards Are Out

This week the state released the annual School Accountability Report. The Colorado Department of Education keeps some pretty good information on their web site (www.cde.state.co.us). They have tons of stats on every school (not just district) in the state, and this report kind of sums things up. One of the first criteria (after price range!) we recommend to buyers when looking for a home, is the school district. Everyone has to decide for themselves what is the most important aspect of that, and raw test scores are certainly not the whole picture. But the summary report in the Gazette on Tuesday (when this report was released) had some interesting tidbits.
1. On scale from Low to Excellent, some school districts came in with every school either High or Excellent, while others did not have a single school at that level. Academy D20 had all High and Excellent except for their alternative high school, Aspen Valley. Cheyenne Mountain D12 had all Excellent, except for Pinon Valley and Skyway were "only" rated High. The same for Lewis Palmer D38, only Grace Best and Palmer Lake Elementary were rated High, all their other schools were rated Excellent. Falcon district 49 had quite a few schools rate High, but no schools achieved Excellent. Harrison D2 had only one school that even rated High (James Irwin Charter School), and no schools that were rated Excellent. D11 has a huge number of schools, and only 6 were rated excellent. Of their 5 high schools, 3 were rated High (Palmer, Coronado and Doherty), and 2 were rated Average (Mitchel and Wasson)
2. Charter Schools (which we have been involved with for 13 years, my wife teaches at the Classical Academy) continued overall to do quite well, but it depended on the theme. The "academically rigorous" schools that include (for example) Cheyenne Mountain Charter, The Classical Academy, Monument Academy, Rocky Mountain Classical Academy, Colorado Springs Academy, Colorado Springs Early Colleges, etc all were rated High or Excellent. The more experimental and / or alternative schools did not do quite as well.
3. While there is not a really great set of statistics to back this up, the average home prices in these areas correlates pretty well with the school achievement levels. Cheyenne Mountain Schools District D12 has the highest home prices (avg $518k this year), Lewis Palmer D38 the 2nd highest ($411k), and Academy School District 20 the 3rd highest ($339). D49 was $233k, while D11 was only $203k. Which came first, home prices or school performance? Conventional wisdom and some national statistical analysis shows socioeconomic levels play a huge part in educational achievement. Where the parents are wealthier and better educated, the kids usually follow suit with better test scores.

Snow Day

Today was a snow day for Academy D20 schools in Colorado Springs. Because a portion of the district is in Black Forest, where the snow is typically deeper, more windblown, and in general not school bus friendly on snowy days, they tend to close or have late starts a little more often than for example, Colorado Springs School District 11, where it snows less, melts quicker, and is almost entirely city maintained streets. My wife loves these kinds of days, because as a school teacher at the Classical Academy in D20, she gets a day to catch up on other things, like wrapping Christmas presents, etc. Best of all, because we live more in town, the roads are usually not bad enough to really stay home, so she can even do some shopping! In the case of today, we probably had 3 or 4 inches in Briargate, and the sun is shining now, though it is only 23 degrees by noon! I usually work from home on these kinds of days anyway. Unless someone needs to sign something that requires an original signature, email phone and fax work just fine.
We have all wheel drive on both of our cars. For years I drove only front wheel drive, and occasionally got studded tires, but often a dry winter would just wear out the studs, and the extra traction was seldom an issue. The bigger problem with cars and winter driving in Colorado Springs is more stopping than going, and while the AWD tends to make the car handle better on snow and ice, my son managed to hit a curb last week with my wife's because he had not slowed enough for turn. Realignment is often required with these sort of mishaps, and in this case a new wheel as well, because the old one was bent. Yet another good reason to stay home until the roads melt a bit, often just an hour or 2 is all it takes!
Interest rates are holding in the mid 5's at the moment, exciting since usually these kinds of dips only last a day or 2 in this volatile market.

Yesterday's service at New Life Church in Colorado Springs was pretty somber, and yet hopeful and healing, as we commemorated the anniversary of the shooting death of 2 of our young members 1 year ago. It was an amazing service really, and Pastor Brady Boyd did a great job covering the subject of Good Grief (available for online listening at the New Life link above). David Works, who lost 2 of his daughters and was himself wounded, spoke for a few minutes, and then Pastor Brady delivered his sermon. The church is dedicating a memorial to Rachael and Stephanie Works tomorrow afternoon. Because the church is so large, this tragedy affected many people, and listening to a father share about the loss of his daughters a year ago, just before Christmas, drew tears from many of us, myself included.
You can see from today's photo (taken yesterday) that the meltoff from our last storm is pretty complete in all but the north facing yards. It is pretty common for the sunny areas to get melted and dried up fast, one of the better arguments for a south facing driveway. Today we are under a winter storm watch, we'll see what this one does.

Colorado Springs is having an "up and down" winter so far. We've had a couple snow events since Thanksgiving, but we are in our 2nd day above 50 this weekend, before another snow event tomorrow night. It makes some interesting observations as your drive around town as well. I was driving by Patty Jewett golf course yesterday with my windows down, and noticed a number of people playing. When I got back to the house in Briargate, 15 minutes north, there is still snow hanging around on the ground almost everywhere except the streets and south facing driveways. I think I better get my lights up while the getting is good, I'm guessing the opportunities are diminishing as time goes along :-)

The Christmas gift of dropping gas prices every week seems to have run its course. After hitting a low of $1.429, we are up to $1.499 at our favorite station.

Today's photo is another from several years ago of the foxes that hand out at Patty Jewett. While I took this quite a while ago, my recollection was that there is a golf ball in his mouth.

Colorado Springs foreclosure and distressed properties are not as prevalent as in some areas of the country, but we have our share. Last month the bank owned and distressed properties made up 34.5% of our sales, which is why prices appear to be down so far. When digging behind the numbers, I discovered something interesting (at least to me!). Homes with more than 2500 finished square feet were only 14.5% of the "distressed" sales, and when looking for more than 3000 finished square feet, it was only 9.3% of the mix. What that means to me is that our averages are being drawn down a lot by homes that are both distressed and on the smaller side. Larger homes are not as big a part of either the distressed "pool", or of the kinds of homes being sought by investors or bargain hunters. Homes that have larger areas for living space are much more likely to be a normal sale, and likely to be owner occupied after sale.

The El Paso County Trustee's office does a nice graph of foreclosure trends for Colorado Springs, here is the link to the current report: El Paso County Foreclosure Report

We got a dusting of snow overnight, but it is expected to pick up a bit during the day, with another couple of inches supposedly coming. Given how cold it is (it was 18 degrees this morning), it is very light and more "broom" type than shovel type snow.

Today's photo was taken from Highway 9 south of Hoosier Pass in June. I thought of it as ski season is finally getting underway, with over 30 inches of base at many resorts. I like it closer to 40 myself, as the rocks are still showing some at 30, but with it being all nice and fresh, I am getting the itch to go! Vail reportedly got 24 inches this week, there should be some nice stashes of powder for while now. I love the web cams they have at many resorts, here is Copper Mountain's.

Preliminary data on Colorado Springs real estate sales in November indicate unit sales for single family homes are down 25.2% from last year, and the average price of $215,470 was 14.5% below last November. These are not good numbers, but keep in mind that the election was pretty much on every one's mind during the October period when most of these sales were put together (or should have been putting together:-). Also, interest rates have improved quite a bit, to 5.5% in the last week, so there is at least some reason to be optimistic about the future! For more details about Colorado Springs Homes Sales Data Trends, click in the link on menu on the right side of this screen.
The weather has turned cold and gray, with snow in the forecast. Quite a bit melted off yesterday in the 60 degree sunny breezy weather, but not all of it. Once again, they are not predicting a lot of snow, but we'll see....
Yesterday we did the inspection on a bank owned property that is only 2 years old, scheduled to close this month. With the house being so new, we were kind of surprised to find a problem with a tankless water heater the prior homeowner had installed. In El Paso County, you are supposed to get a building permit and inspections for this sort of thing, and they did not do either. The new buyer is extra handy and knowledgeable of such things, so it was not a show stopper, but it goes to show how even newer construction can have quirks. This could have been a major safety issue for a buyer, as the venting for both water heaters was partially disconnected, allowing exhaust gases into the living areas.
I could not decide on a photo for today, so I left it off. I'd love to hear suggestions of things you may want to see photos of!

Over a foot of snow in Black Forest! The Colorado Springs weather forecasters even admit they really missed this one, they were predicting 1 inch originally. Living in Colorado Springs means living with snow and uncertain weather forecasts sometimes. There are a few easy coping mechanisms.

1. Don't sweat it. If you have to postpone something because of weather, try to enjoy it and don't fret, it's part of the "spice of life".

2. Be prepared for it. Even when the weather man gets it wrong, they usually have a clue something is going on. During the winter season, bring an extra layer of clothes, never leave without coat, hat and gloves, throw boots and a shovel in when going out in questionable weather. It all improves your odds of not being as impacted even if you do get stuck. Stock up the cupboards. There is no point in getting stuck in the snow during a storm just because you need an extra cup of sugar or gallon of milk.

3. Remember that "this too shall pass". After a foot of snow on Sunday, it is a beautiful blue sky day today, and we are expecting 60 degrees by tomorrow. Although it won't all melt off this late in the year, it will definitely be less of an issue, and the roads will be cleaned off pretty well.

Today's photos are of some trees in our back yard this morning that caught some nice snow. What a great way to begin December and the Christmas season!