Boulder County’s Septic Smart Program is an important piece of information for home-sellers to know. Am I really writing a blog piece about poop? Yup. It’s important for homeowners in Boulder County to familiarize themselves with this County website and the requirements for sale of their property.

Homeowners can enter their property address and search county records, as well as follow the 4-step process towards becoming “Septic Smart”.

These requirements went into effect back in September of 2008, so if you have a home for sale in Boulder County and you have a septic system then you should get your system inspected right away.

You don’t necessarily have to wait until you get an offer on your property, but if you have waited until that time then don’t worry. From my experience you still have plenty of time to get your Septic Smarts taken care of if you have a typical, 30-day contract time frame. The folks at the Boulder County Septic Smart Program are very helpful and accommodating.

Uncle Sam is indicating that he’d like to use a few of our tax dollars to finance billions in loans. Great. Now, I’m all for the current $8,000.00 tax credit as I’ve seen first hand benefits for buyers I’ve been working with in the Denver and Boulder markets.  But this is a much different creature.

The program I’m referring to is the one announced today by the Obama Administration whereby the Federal Government will become the new buyer in the previously evaporated mortgage-backed security market, thus allowing state agencies to fund millions of mortgages.  What?  Basically, when the economy and housing market imploded last year the bond market for mortgage backed securities disappeared.    This caused various HFA’s (housing finance agencies) to cease giving loans or raise rates considerably.  So now Uncle Sam is Subprime Sammy!, your mortgage backed security expert and buyer extraordinaire.

All kidding aside- how is the potential of this program any different than what subprime lenders did over the last decade or so to “encourage” first time buyers to jump into the market?  Aren’t we currently living through the aftermath of the collapse of just such a program?

Part of this program would allow first-time buyers to use the future $8,000 tax credit as part of their down payment.  Another bad idea.  This means that this new round of buyers will have the same amount of skin in the game as the subprime borrowers who got 100% financing in 2003.  None.  So there is no incentive to stay in the game, and we might as well look forward to another massive wave of foreclosures 3-5 years from now when some of these new homeowners realize that this is not their cup of tea.

I’m all for helping first-time buyers…we do it all the time at Real-a-Save.  But if a potential buyer has ZERO dollars, then maybe, just maybe, they’re NOT a potential buyer after all.  FHA loans require 3.5% down right now.  That’s a pretty darn good deal.  Why are we looking for ways to require zero down?  Isn’t that exactly what got us here in the first place?

Email bob@realasave.com if you have any real estate questions, or if you would like to know about our Colorado commission rebate program.  And no, you cannot use a commission rebate towards your down payment;-)

Are you an SEO expert? Sure, me too. And your Mom. Probably your brother too. Everyone seems to be an SEO expert. SEO (in case you don’t know) is Search Engine Optimization. This is the process whereby you, or a high-paid consultant, makes your website “friendly” to Google and other search sites. Anyone with a web-based business knows that they must be found on Google under a certain set of search terms. You want John Q. Public to be able to find you when they enter a certain set of search terms in Google…and there are plenty of people out there who will let you pay them thousands of dollars to figure out how your company can rank higher for certain search terms on Google. Our company, for example, should be visible for certain Boulder real estate and Denver real estate related terms. And we’ve had lots of solicitations from SEO experts claiming that they can help us rank higher on these terms. Because, truth be told, we don’t rank at the top for many of these terms…yet. But we’re continuing the “Good Fight” by cranking out relevant information on the Colorado real estate market, and by creating more and better MLS home search features on our site as well. It’s going to take us a lot longer to reach the top of Google results for many of these search terms, but that’s ok. We’re a small operation and simply don’t have $10,000 per month to spend on some SEO expert who will do whatever it takes to get us onto those top Google pages. But our slow and steady approach to SEO will, I think, give us much better long-term traffic. The logic is simple: you can pay someone to give you traffic by any means necessary; or, you can EARN the traffic by slowly and surely becoming the best resource for your particular area of expertise.

Email bob@realasave.com if you have any Denver/Boulder real estate questions, or simply visit us on the web at www.realasave.com

Once in a while our government actually does something right. The bailouts are a complete joke imho. What do they do for the average citizen? Nothing. But the $8000 tax credit being offered to first time home buyers is putting money directly in the pockets of average Americans. And that is a good thing.

We’re hoping that they extend the tax credit into 2010 as it’s our belief that this will have a profound impact on the real estate market moving forward. Depending on where you’re looking in the Colorado Front Range region, the markets are either holding steady or fairly robust. The Louisville real estate market is red hot, and the Boulder real estate market is quite strong. Moving out into places like Aurora and the South Metro area shows a different story. But it’s safe to say that extending the tax credit would help to bring more buyers into all of these markets, reduce inventory, and get us a long way towards economic recovery.

Feel free to email bob@realasave.com if you have any Denver or Boulder real estate questions.

The Table Mesa neighborhood of Boulder is revisited.

Palo Park neighborhood of Boulder is discussed.