The Grey Rock Realty Podcast

How to choose the right mortgage provider for you and avoid common mistakes!

The Fort Collins real estate market has been on a ride in 2023. Scott and Ryan sit down and share stories from the trenches. This pod accompanies the release of our most recent market report, you can read it below

The real estate market continues to adjust to the new normal of painfully high rates. The 30 year rate is now just under 8%. I remember a year ago I was dumbfounded to learn that rates had eclipsed the 7% mark.  That number felt impossible at the time. I remember thinking it must be a fluke.

But here we are a year later and 7% seems like a bargain.

The only thing more surprising than the sharp increase in rates is how stubborn the market has been to give up the massive price gains that occurred during the pandemic.  

Some people say the lack of price correction is due to low inventory caused by the golden handcuffs, the phenomenon where people won’t list their homes because they don’t want to lose their low interest rate. But that is misleading. 

While the golden handcuffs are keeping the number of sales that occur about 20% below normal, the number of homes that buyers have to choose from is back up to pre-pandemic levels. These levels have been relatively consistent over the last decade. And coupled with low interest rates, they have been producing an average annual price growth rate of 9.2% per year through 2022. 

Obviously that kind of appreciation won’t be sustained with current borrowing costs. And now that we’ve seen a full year of rates in the 6.5% to 8% range, we have a better feel for how the market will perform in this environment. Overall it appears that we will end the year with prices about 2% higher in Larimer County and 1% higher in Weld County.

The simple fact is that there are many people who can still afford this market. 

The buying power of the dual income household  should not be underestimated. Particularly when they are sitting on $250,000 in equity should they sell their current home.

The average homeowner in the US has $275k in equity and 25% of homes are owned free and clear. 

When people need or want to move and the new house payment will not dramatically impact their day to day life, they will usually make the move. 

Buyers are also enjoying the lack of bidding wars, they are able to shop more leisurely, take their time making decisions, negotiate concessions and buy below list price. This is making their high payment a little easier to swallow.

The economy continues to show remarkable resilience in the face of the rate hikes. Low unemployment and robust consumer spending are keeping the fed from feeling good about the softening inflation. Expect rates to stay higher for longer than people expect. But also be wary of anyone, including me, projecting where interest rates will be in the next few years.

If and when rates do come down into the 6% range again, expect a lot of pent up buyer demand to be unleashed into the market. This should bring more inventory online but will also increase the number of buyers, so the market is unlikely to soften with this new inventory. When this happens, expect any price corrections that occurred during the rate surge to be quickly erased. 

Someone asked me the other day, “Who are the people buying and selling right now?”

In the last month we have sold homes for people leaving town due to job transfers, people coming to town to be close to their kids, people selling investment property, people buying investment property with cash, people buying vacation property with loans, people buying a larger home and turning their current home into a rental, and even some first time home buyers. It’s a similar mix of people as we have seen in years past, but there’s fewer of them. 

We have been sharing these market reports for over a decade now and each time we do it is with some sadness as we see affordability in Northern Colorado continue to erode away. I am ever mindful of our sister city Boulder, its similarities to Fort Collins, and its median price of $1.2M.

Audrey Lavender is a veteran Realtor who specializes in helping people free themselves, or their parents, from that oversized, maintenance-heavy home and into the next phase of their lives.  In this episode Audrey gives great tips for how to start the process of donating, throwing away, or keeping all the stuff that's accumulated over the years. She also discusses the danger of waiting too long to help your parents move to assisted or independent living. Also, what to look for in these types of facilities, the mistakes people make when they're projecting the cost of the move, and more! 

Audrey is a pro at helping people plan these moves. If you're planning to downsize or are considering helping your parents move to a care facility, feel free to call or text her at 970-222-8895.

Grey Rockers Scott Lowe and Ryan Jenkins sit down to debrief on the real estate market in Fort Collins and Northern Colorado. 

Ryan and Jordan have a wide ranging conversation about Northern Colorado real estate and Jordan's boutique design build firm, Forge and Bow. 

In this episode Ryan and Scott discuss the process of selling your home. Pricing, staging, projects to do or not do, etc. Join us!

Check out our discussion on navigating home Inspections, HOA's and appraisals!  We would love your feedback!

Grey Rock Realty - "Creating Razor Sharp Real Estate Consumers" 

In this episode, as we are entering 2021, Ryan & Scott discuss how home prices change between the seasons.  We also take a moment to tell about the Grey Rock experience! What is Grey Rock Realty all about  We love to hear from you, please leave us your questions or comments.  Enjoy!

Ryan & Scott discuss the The Flaws behind $ per square foot & how to use square feet in the price.  

Grey Rock Realty is about Creating Razor Sharp Real Estate Consumers.  This week Ryan Jenkins (owner/managing broker) and Scott Lowe (broker associate) discuss the topic of real estate commissions.  Commissions are expensive.  Why? What goes into them?  Are real estate commissions justified? Join us! #greyrockrealty #razorsharpconsumers #realestate #fortcollinsrealestate #coloradorealestate

Ryan chats with longtime friend and new Grey Rock agent, Scott Lowe, about how the NOCO real estate market is holding up in the pandemic over "take-out" beers from Lucky Joe's. 

"As we look back on May and June's actual prices, we actually gained like a couple of points in Fort Collins. Some markets were flat. Some markets had really small price drops, but considering the fact that we had 40% volume decrease and we maintained prices, I guarantee you that dynamic has probably never happened in a real estate market in the history of the world, like anywhere. Cause you can't have volume drop like that and have prices hang on."

Welcome to the Home Buyer Crash Course Podcast Episode!

This show walks you step by step through the home purchase process and has tons of great info like how to get the cheapest mortgage, what your loan closing costs will be, what you need to know about Zillow, how to pick a realtor, how to navigate inspections, how to find property off the market and tons more. I think you'll get a lot of value from it. Our hope is that it will help you become the razor sharp real estate consumer that you were meant to be! Thanks for listening and enjoy!

Please text or call us at 970-689-0824 or email info@greyrockrealty.com with any questions or to see any property on the market. 

Thanks again!

Ryan Jenkins and the team at Grey Rock Realty

Check us out on the web at

www.Greyrockrealty.com

Hey friends. We discuss the current state of the market in Fort Collins and what we think the market will do in the next few years. We also talk about planning your upcoming home purchase or sale and what you should do to prepare.

New podcast discussing the current state of the market. As we move into fall we continue to see the market form an upward plateau with our higher priced markets such as Fort Collins, Windsor and Longmont posting small gains or losses, depending on what data set you use. While our more moderately priced areas such as Loveland and Greeley are still making significant price gains. Inventory has increased  but remains low with the absorption rate sitting at 2 months. That means the market can absorb or sell its current supply of homes in about 2 months. A market balanced between buyers and sellers is said to have an absorption rate of 6 months. This tells us that demand is still high and the market is still gobbling up its available inventory at rapid clip. Average days on market is 46 which means a typical home sells in about 2 weeks considering a 30 day escrow period. Multiple offers and over list price sales still occur but we are seeing fewer of those situations especially as we move into fall which is notoriously slow and a great time for buyers to pick up deals. In November and December we see the market pick back up slightly and then it typically softens again in the first quarter of the new year.

In this episode I sit down with a local attorney and friend, Jed Scott. Jed is a partner at Bell, Gould, Linder and Scott, P.C. and is our "go to" guy when our clients need legal help. Over the years, the majority of the time when Jed is helping us with a real estate deal it is a mineral rights issue and we’re trying to understand what to expect when buying an acreage property that no longer has its mineral rights intact.  So that’s the basis for this discussion along with a some tangents on the growth of Fort Collins, oil and gas development, air quality issues, glade reservoir/ NISP, instituting minimum flows on the Poudre through town, why our traffic isn’t as bad as people think, and why we don’t always drink beer made in Fort Collins.

I got to sit down with Zach Mercurio and talk about people discovering their purpose, in other words why do people do what they do? Humans are wired for purpose, but we seem to be able to go through life not knowing or realizing or defining our purpose. Zach points out that if you take the time to realize why you do the work you do, you’ll be happier and more effective. Zach is a speaker, researcher and adjunct professor at Colorado State University. He's the author of the book, "The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose."  His focus is helping people craft their purpose in work and life.  Just to give you a taste of what we cover today, we talk about how human beings are not sustainably motivated by money. We talk about how you can find purpose working in a carwash. We discuss whether purpose is paralyzing millennial job seekers, and whether people should craft their purpose right where they are, or if they should use their search for purpose to push them to explore a new career. Hope you enjoy!