People concerned about their carbon footprints probably assume that vacation homes are not in their futures.
But anyone deciding to buy a second home can balance out its impact on the environment. Driving to the mountains once, for a four day stay, versus four times for four separate days will save gas and time, especially if you don’t go home when everyone else does on Sunday afternoon. Stay until after dinner, or perhaps even Monday morning. It may sound like a cop out, but keep reading!

A wonderful new store has opened in Breckenridge. It is called Ecoasis, and it is just that, an oasis of environmentally sound ideas and products. I spent about an hour there the other day and met Beth, who is very knowlegable and anxious to help anyone with questions. Ecoasis carries everything from flooring

How does the national economy affect our Summit County real estate market?
Today I attended a session with the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, Dr Lawrence Yun. I found it very interesting to hear his take on the economy and how it translates to homes in Summit County, Colorado.

What I took away from his presentation was that real estate is local, and what has affected home sales so negatively is the sub prime mortage mess. Areas that had high incidences of sub prime mortgages (more than 100% financing, stated income, adjustable rate mortgages, and other similar programs) are now the areas with a lot of foreclosures. Where foreclosures are not as common, the markets are still stable or appreciating. The worst areas are Miami, Phoenix and Las Vegas, where a combination of subprime loans and speculation caused rapid appreciation, and just as rapid depreciation. However, Dr Yun seems to think that the prices still could increase 10-50%, even there, over the next 5 years.

Denver was one of three cities (Seattle and Dallas being the other two) that he thinks have the best

I deal with many second home buyers in Frisco, Silverthorne, Dillon and Breckenridge. 
One of their commonly asked questions is what to do with their trash.  Many end up disposing of it in someone else’s dumpster, and more than a few businesses have had to resort to putting locks on their dumpsters.  When the businesses have no room […]

Just a month ago, I wrote a post called The Scoop on the Copper Mountain market. In that post I was pretty upbeat about the market, despite terrible reports from other parts of the country for more than a year now. I did express some concerns for the middle part of the price ranges, and I talked about how many Sellers have been way too optimistic, and although I didn’t use the it, greedy might have been a good word to use.

A couple of days ago, I looked at the number of sales for this year so far, and compared them to the same time last year. What I found was that sales for the first 3 1/2 months at Copper Mountain were down by 45% from the same period a year ago! That is a huge decrease, and it is double the decrease of 22% in the rest of Summit County as a whole. Projecting that decrease……

We are over it…
We have had enough snow.  When you ski or snowboard, you can’t wait for the first snowflakes to fall, but we are done!  Copper Mountain, Breckenridge and Keystone have all been closed for a month.  Arapahoe Basin is the only one still open, and they have fabulous coverage and conditions.  But the […]