With the new emphasis on going “green” and the added impact of the current economic situation, saving money by saving energy is a good thing!

The Governor’s office and Xcel Energy are offering information on how you can do just that. I also recently attended a class put on by the Summit County Builder’s Association on building green, and came away with some information on rebates and money saving ideas. Here are a few of them.

Change your lightbulbs to Compact Flourescent (CFL) bulbs. They are available with warmer light and you don’t have to have the ugly…..

Summit County, and especially the towns of Breckenridge and Frisco, have traditionally been very expensive places to live. First time home buyers usually bought in Dillon or Silverthorne, where it was more affordable. In recent years prices climbed so high that even town planners started referring to their housing programs for locals as “attainable” rather than “affordable”.

The County and the towns recognized some time ago that we needed local’s housing here rather than having all our workers drive home to Leadville, Fairplay or Kremmling. Many local workers do that anyway, as generally the lower priced homes here in the county are fairly small condos and townhomes. Most are without garages and good storage. In order to keep the prices down, the planners required ……

Do the number of days on the market show motivation? Not in Summit County, Colorado. Whether you are looking at a condo in Keystone or Breckenridge, or a home in Frisco or Dillon, the listing history is a better way to know how badly the Seller wants to sell. If the price started at $779,000, dropped to $759,000 in a month or six weeks, then to $749,000 in another month, and you can assume a level of motivation. If it has been on the market a year with no price reductions, I would suggest that the Seller is not motivated, no matter what is written in the listing information.

Listing Brokers are not able to tell anyone that the Seller will accept anything less than the asking price without the Seller’s permission. So how is one to know that a Seller will accept less? The only sure way to tell is to…..

The foreclosure problem has affected Summit County real estate, but not near as badly as it has impacted many other real estate markets. It used to be that when people asked me about foreclosures I told them that only timeshares went into foreclosure, and it was true; we seldom had any properties that were bank owned, in foreclosure, or in bankruptcy.

In 2008 a total of 193 properties in Summit County went into foreclosure. Of those, only 75, or 39%, were timeshares. the remaining 61% were all types and prices of property. Of the 118, 46, or almost 40% were cured when the owner caught up the late payments and kept the property. 18, or 15% were sold and 52 (44%) are still waiting for sale. Additionally, two were in bankruptcy, which means that they cannot be sold until the bankruptcy is taken care of by the courts. The sale of a property in foreclosure can be delayed for various reasons if the lender agrees to do so.

Since January 2009, another 41 properties have entered the foreclosure process, and a smaller percentage yet are timeshares.

I have always wondered why people let Summit County real estate go into foreclosure when it has……

Condos and homes in Summit County sold at an all time slow pace in February. Of course, it wasn’t really a surprise, but I was hoping that we would have about 40 sales instead of the 23 we had. Sales were down by 73%! We thought January was slow at 37, but 23 was unbelievable!

Here is how they broke down: half the sales (12) were condominiums, four were townhomes and seven were single family homes.

The town with the most sales, and all the high end sales, was Breckenridge, with nine. Wildernest/Silverthorne, Keystone, Frisco and Dillon all had three each and there were two sales at Copper Mountain.

The average sale price to list price ratio was 93% while……