It has been really dry in Colorado Springs this spring. The little bit of moisture we got on Wednesday was the first in a while, it wasn't much, and by late afternoon it was sunny and nice. The saying is that we have 300 days of sun. The other 65 are when your friends, family or other important visitors or outdoor plans are scheduled. The forecast is warming up, we should see mid 80's over the next several days. You can see from today's photo (taken yesterday at the Shops at Briargate), the snowpack on Pikes Peak is starting to fade. With some really warm weather on tap, it could be gone within the week, which is pretty normal. It comes back in September, when we usually get the first dusting again. This morning's Gazette rainfall statistics reported month to date rain as only .4", compared to a normal May of 2.23". Year to date, we are at less than 50% of normal. It only takes one "frog choking rain" to catch that up sometimes, but these are some low numbers. Good thing most of our water actually comes from the mountains further west. We had a good winter for snow, so we won't be short on water, at least this year.

Today is graduation day at the Air Force Academy. Hopefully the skies will clear (it was raining finally this morning!), or the Thunderbirds may not be able to do their thing. I included the link so you can enjoy some of what they offer, even though I probably won't be getting any photos today. With President Bush delivering the commencement address, it would be a shame if they could not fly.
This week also is approximately the 1 year anniversary of this blog, and I was surprised to see how many postings there were (170 or so?) To celebrate, I added a new link on this site to a Google Docs spreadsheet that I think many will find useful. It is a spread sheet and collection of charts that show trends in Colorado Springs home sales data. The data is derived from the Pikes Peak Association of Realtors web site, but includes some additional calculations and statistics. There is a little bug in the software, so the charts are reading right to left instead of left to right, but this should be pretty current all the time, and the data portion works well. With luck Google may get the left to right thing going too! This a permanent link on the menu on the right side of the blog. I'll continue to discuss monthly statistics on the blog, but I think this will be a nice addition to help put things in perspective.
One thing that I noticed on the Months Supply trend, is that while we are doing better than the nation as a whole (8 months supply vs 10.5 months for the rest of the country), we are a long way from the good old days of the summer of 2005, when it was only 3 months! Thankfully, prices have not moved too much, and once we get out of these doldrums, I think will recover fine.

When you live in Colorado Springs, you don't have to use up a LOT of gas to get out and have some fun in the outdoors. Yesterday we took part of our holiday weekend to do a hike up at the Florissant Fossil beds National Monument, and then stopped in Cripple Creek for a little while before heading back. Both are around a 1 hour drive from here.

The weather was great. While it was in the low 80's in the Springs, it was in the low 60's in Cripple Creek. We got plenty of sun and exercice, and even managed to catch a shot of some deer on one one the trails.

How much cheaper is it to live in Colorado Springs than other towns? This mornings Gazette covered a story from the Council for Community and Economic Research showing Colorado Springs as 7.9% below the national average for cost of living. While we have always been a little below the national average, it is usually less than 5% below, so I was a little curious what they attributed it to. Turns out our gas prices did not jump quite as fast as some other areas of the country during the 1st quarter, and that was a big item. I went to Bankrate.com to see their cost of living calculator, and did a quick compare with San Bernardino California (we get a lot of Californians who come here to get away from the crowds. It was fascinating to see that, at least in this analysis, they indicate a family making $80,000 a year there, can live just as well for less than $60,000 here. The cost of housing seems to make a big difference. While I am not convinced the differences are quite THAT much, I know that many who come here find they can live better, for less.

Today's photo is from the green belt above the Old Farm area, where I just listed a 1900 sf 4bed 3 bath home for $219,900 .

Colorado gets its share of extreme weather, but the tornado episode yesterday in Windsor Colorado was pretty bad. My deepest sympathy to those affected, including the family of the person who was killed. My own daughter was at work in Ft Collins, less than 10 miles from where it happened, and she said the whole building shook, the lights were swinging, and it was very scary. She is filling in for someone who is on pregnancy leave for the summer, and the girl she filled in for had the windows blown out of her house. Thankfully she and the baby were ok.
Colorado Springs does not typically get tornadoes (neither does Ft Collins for that matter), because we are pretty close to the mountains, and they tend to form further onto the eastern plains. Hail, lightening, thunder, big winds yes, but not tornadoes. In 17 years of living here, we have not had one in the city yet that I can recall, although there have been some out east. It has been a cool and breezy last couple of days, but Memorial Day weekend is expected to be very nice.
I made a couple of changes to the blog that I hope you find useful. You can now subscribe by email, so that if you prefer email as an access method it is there (you have always been able to use the RSS feed). The other change is that we eliminated the Snapshots preview. This was a harder decision, but my own testing of the site seemed to indicate it could be annoying almost as often as it was helpful. If you have an opinion you'd like to share on that one, I'd love to hear from you!

Homes for sale in Colorado Springs have some interesting differences from other areas of the country, and I thought I would describe some of them here.
#1. Colorado Springs homes usually have some kind of usable basement, and as a result, square footage published on most real estate web sites, and by the Realtors, includes the basement. This can make a big difference if you are coming from, say California, where earthquakes preclude such things. A 2,000 square foot ranch style home here will like have an additional 2000 square foot basement, often finished, making it a 4,000 square foot home. Also, our dry climate makes the space much more usable than say, the Midwest, where summer humidity can make for mold problems in basements. Our MLS is set up so we can search based on total square footage, finished square footage or "above grade" square footage, but most of the public access sites do not have this ability, so it can be confusing sometimes.
#2. Colorado Springs homes run on the newer side. Almost half (47.7%) of the 6,342 homes for sale here (as of May 22, 2008) were built since 1998. Only 25.9% were built prior to 1978. So our homes tend to be fairly current with energy code and building technologies, such as roofing materials, windows, etc.
#3 Colorado Springs homes use different materials than some other areas. Brick is a little pricier here, so stucco and stone, and Masonite type siding products tend to be more popular. Painted siding is not a favorite from a maintenance standpoint, as our strong sun and wind tends to require repainting every 5 years or so, but it is still used a lot because of the lower cost. We do not see as much vinyl siding as you’d expect. I have never heard a real good discussion on this, but it may have to do with hail and wind vulnerability.
#4 Our yards tend to have fewer and smaller trees than some other areas of the country. This is generally because of climate issues (it takes a lot more time and effort to get them to grow in our dry climate), but also because of soil conditions. Many areas have poor soil, and without soil augmentation and lots of TLC, the trees just don’t want to grow. We plant them with every new house, but after 5 years, they are often barely beyond saplings still. Sometimes trees are deliberately left out to preserve a Pikes Peak view. My home is 15 years old, and we have some sizable trees now.
#5 Most (53.8% currently) of our homes offer (or claim to offer!) a view of the mountains. The rest often still have a great view from the neighborhood for an evening walk, but not from the house itself.

Summer has arrived in Colorado Springs. Not on the calendar, but on the thermometer. We are in a balmy 80 plus degree pattern at the moment, which would be a little nicer if we were getting our normal afternoon thunderstorms, which we are not. It is getting dry out there, we could really use some rain.

Memorial Day weekend is this week! School is about to get out (my teacher wife is counting the days), and everyone is gearing up for graduations, weddings, and lots of outdoor grilling. Air Force Academy graduation is the Wednesday after Memorial Day, and along with the Thunderbirds air show, President Bush will be speaking. I am hoping to get some decent photos of the Thunderbirds, I'll share them here if I do. Graduation week is usually a tough one for people who need hotel rooms, as the whole town kind of fills up for the graduation and the ensuing spate of weddings that take place in the days that follow.

This is usually when the high mountain passes of Trail Ridge Road at Rocky Mountain National Park, and Independence Pass open, although rumor is that Independence is a week or more behind schedule due to the huge amount of snow they had this winter and spring. The photo is of my son Daniel from 3 summers ago, 4th of July week at Independence Pass.

We really don't visit downtown Colorado Springs often enough. Other than an occasional closing at a downtown title company, or a performance at the Pikes Peak Center, we just don't go that much. Yesterday we were in the mood for a little walk, and decided to go downtown to Monument Vally Park for our exercise. It was so pleasant! Things are greening up nicely, and Monument Creek was flowing, albeit a little low for May. We finished the outing with a light supper at the Phantom Canyon Brewing Company, our favorite brewpub in the area. If you go, you have to try the smoked Gouda cheese soup. It's awesome!

This crane was looking for some fish I think. Rumor is he hangs out daily. The buildings are at Colorado College, a great little liberal arts school of about 3,000 students that borders the park. they are most famous for their national ranked hockey team, and were all set up for graduation, and the architecture is very interesting. Our daughters used to skate at their ice rink, and it brough back some great memories of walking in the park in the early morning while they practiced.

After 16 years of selling real estate in Colorado Springs, I am amazed regularly at how much I still am learning. This morning we had a RE/MAX Properties North office “marketing forum” meeting, and one of the regular topics is “lessons learned”. There were a couple of pretty good ones that I thought I would share here:
1. If a VA appraisal comes in low, the underwriter at the lender actually has a 3% discretionary buffer.
2. If a house is zoned for horses, has horses on the property, and is surrounded by horse properties, it does not mean that you can actually run horses. This is because the well permit may still not allow it, and the state water board can come in after the fact and enforce the well permit restrictions. Standard “household” well permits do NOT allow horses. The state Division of Water Resources has a look up facility for permits.
3. Habitat for Humanity has a new project in school district 20 near Woodmen and Tutt Blvd that is going to be a small area of homes that will actually be built by contractors, not by the homeowners. The first homes are in process. See http://www.pikespeakhabitat.org
for more information about this great work, how to qualify for a Habitat home, and the new homes they are going to build.
4. Habitat runs a facility called the ReStore that sounds like sort of a Goodwill store for building materials. This could be a great source for people who are remodeling on a budget. One our agents mentioned buying $1800 worth of brand new windows for $350. Proceeds go to Habitat for Humanity operations. They also take donations of leftover building materials and used materials.

What does the average house in Colorado Springs look like? According to last months sales statistics, it was priced at $239,578, had 2,468 square feet (including the basement), 2,173 were finished. Oh yeah, and it had been for sale for 115 days before getting a contract. I happened to have listed a house this past week that is really close to the averages (although as a brand new listing, it has not been on the market for the average time for sure!). This house, located at 8261 Dolly Madison in the Fairfax area of Briargate, is priced a little below the average at $232,500. It also has a lot of upgrades and updates that are not as common at this price, such as brand new windows, new carpeting, new kitchen floor, new countertops etc, and even has a nice Peak view from the master bedroom. You can view a Virtual Tour here.

The Spring weather has really been nice. It was just a week ago it snowed, but it has been more seasonal all week since, with a little rain mixed with the beautiful sunny mornings we are used to in the summers here. It has been really dry for this time of year, we could use more rain.

Mother's Day weekend is shaping up to be a nice one, with cool and rain on Saturday, but sun all day on Sunday. Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers out there! We are planning a breakfast out on Sunday morning for ours, and our daughter at CSU in Fort Collins even plans to be here!

Buying a house with little down is still pretty easy in Colorado Springs. It is true that there are some programs that are no longer offered, like the old “80-20” 100% financing, along with “stated” income loans and other “sketchy” financing tools. Conventional financing for 80, 90 and even 95% loan to value has not changed a lot, although conventional programs now cost a little more if your credit score is below 720. But low down payment financing is still pretty readily available and here are some of the ways we currently do it.
1. VA. The Veterans Administration has been guaranteeing loans for active duty and honorably discharged members of the military since after WWII, and with zero down payment. This is particularly attractive for the 1st time homebuyer, since fees are a bit lower with 1st time use.
2. FHA. These are government guaranteed loans, for civilians. This program now goes up to $325,000 loan amount in El Paso County (which covers almost 4000 homes for sale as of 5-6-08, or 2/3 of our market!), requires only 3% down, and can be combined with down payment assistance programs such as CHAFA, gifts from relatives, or even Nehemiah gift down payment assistance programs to make this type of loan possible with as little as $0 (ZERO!) of the borrowers own funds (depending on the program). Moreover, it allows the borrower to make payments as high as 43% of their GROSS income, and does not strictly rely on FICO scores (though a 620 FICO seems to help). This type of loan will likely increase in popularity for a while.
3. My Community loans. These loans can go up to 97% of the purchase, and depending on circumstance can go as low as a 580 credit score. You have to make less than $66,000 as a family to get in on this in El Paso County, and it is designed for lower to mid income levels with OK credit.
4. Flex 97. This is essentially 3% down conventional financing, and with higher FHA loan limits, is not really as popular as it used to be. Still, when you consider that to rent a house for $1500 a month costs almost $4500 to move in to begin with (1st months rent, last months rent, plus deposit), for the little bit extra cash, you may as well own a place, right? And your first payment can be due almost 2 months away depending on when you close.

Need some help to figure out what makes sense for you? Call Dana Hines at Colorado Online Mortgage 719-955-3670 to figure out what program makes the most sense for you!

Preliminary sales figures for April '08 Colorado Springs homes show sales of 773 units, down 13.7% from April of last year. Prices also remain soft, with the average price at $240,497, down 4.8% from last April. Inventory was up, with almost 6200 single family units for sale, still not quite a 6% increase from last April, so not bad overall. Foreclosures are still hurting us - there were 480 last month again. The high end is still taking a beating as well, only 5.6% of our sales (43) were over $500k.
I am working on a bank owned property right now, and it is amazing to me to see how slow they work. We have been waiting over a week just to get a final signed contract so that the buyers can lock in their loan. With service this bad, it is no wonder people have difficulty working out options with their lender, or why it takes so long for the inventory of bank owned homes to clear.

Colorado Springs has a love-hate relationship with school test scores. They love them when the news is good, or when they assist in making a good school decision, and hate them when they are bad. The Gazette released the unofficial 3rd grade reading CSAP test scores in this morning's paper, and as usual, it was a somewhat mixed bag. The top 3 main districts were once again 38 (Lewis Palmer) at 90%, 12 (Cheyenne Mountain) at 89% and 20 (Academy) at 87%. Manitou (14) at 84% and Woodland Park at 84% also did very well, but aren't really very big districts.

I will admit that I am into the numbers a bit. The state average is 70% of 3rd graders are proficient readers. All of the area's main districts were at or above the state average, except Harrison, D2, which was only 59% reading proficient. That means in a class of 25 3rd graders, roughly 10 kids were not proficient readers. That compares with D20, 12 or 38 where the proficiency levels are all around 87- 90% where only 2 or 3 kids would not be proficient readers.
In the larger districts, what is striking, is how much disparity can exist between schools. District 11 (Colorado Springs) has schools ranging from 95% proficient (way to go Madison, huge jump!) to a low of Rogers Elementary school at only 51%. D11 had 12 schools with proficiency above 80%! Harrison D2 saw a high of 85% at Wildflower Elementary, and low of 25% at Monterey Elementary (a huge drop from last year). Interestingly enough, there were only 3 schools above the state average in D2, and 5 that were at or below 50%.
A good friend of ours, Jim Kretchman (who is considered with his wife Mary the co- founder of the Classical Academy in D20 and founders of Preschool Partners) is fond of saying something along the lines of "there is really no such thing as 'the best' school, only 'the best' school for your child". I guess the same can be said about school districts.

Springtime in the Rockies is when summer and winter collide, and that was most apparent in Colorado Springs in the last 24 hours. After a balmy 75 or so yesterday, it is snowing at present. The sun started to come out for a brief interlude this morning, and I caught this shot from our RE/Max Properties offices. Pikes Peak was trying to appear for a moment, but was soon hidden once again by snow. This won't stick, and it has been quite dry, so the moisture is very welcome.

They think yesterday's rate decrease by the Fed might be the last one (maybe this is the last snow for the year?) It might take more than interest rate cuts to get housing back on it's feet.

Just when you think the worst is over, another new wrinkle gets thrown in. Yesterday we had a deal almost crash because the lender announced the property was in a "declining value neighborhood" and they wanted an extra 5% down to do the deal. From what I understand, most of the country has had trouble with soft prices, and such actions just further exacerbate an already difficult climate to do business. Fortunately the buyer could meet the requirement if they choose, and we found another lender that could do the deal (albeit at a higher rate), but it sure makes things more interesting than they really need to be! Government loans are not affected by this (yet!), and this sort of thing may put some pressure on the owners of foreclosure properties to recondition prior to putting them back on the market, instead of the typical "as is, where is" stuff they like to do, so they can qualify them for FHA or VA financing.