As investors we face a number of very real and very scary challenges. Making sense of this market is no mean feat and one has to be very careful with his or her investment. However, we usually think about danger as financial. Unfortunately, on rare occasion it can be even worse than that. The majority of the homes investors are buying these days are vacant and once in a while people break in and live in these properties illegally.  The last thing you want to do is walk in on someone camped out in a house, perhaps conducting illegal an activity.      This is no joke, you want to be HEARD when you walk into a property that is supposed to vacant. So make a lot of noise when you're at the front door. I always knock loudly before entering.  Stomp your feet a little. Yell "Hello!" a couple of... 12/06/2008

There are some signs of strengthening in our Denver market.  The metro area's inventory of available resale housing decreased 20% to 23,120 units in October from October 2007.  Some of this reduced inventory is attributed to homeowners taking their properties off the market in frustration because their property is not selling, but lower inventory implies a strengthening market.  Remember, the Denver area had housing inventory of 31,989 units in July 2006. Home sales rose 14% to 4,265 in September compared to the same month last year.  This is due almost entirely to the lower-end of the market (under $180K) selling like hotcakes. October's median selling price for single-family homes decreased 12% to $206,000 from the same month of '07, and was down 4.7% from September's median of $216,1... 12/06/2008

If you want to know what's going on in Denver's first-tier suburbs, Westword, the Denver metro area's alternative newspaper, has an in-depth article by Jared Jacang Maher about Northglenn's past and future. Northglenn can easily be seen as a stand-in for Lakewood, Arvada, Wheat Ridge, the northern part of Aurora, the older part of Highlands Ranch, Applewood, parts of Thornton and Commerce City.   These once booming suburbs are beginning a period of decline, where the original owners, now older, are experiencing a rise in foreclosure and rental housing, and a general deterioration in the appearance of the neighborhood.    Bill Sullivan, Director of the Northglenn Neighborhood Development Corporation established by the Northglenn City Council in 2004, has been making heroic efforts to tur... 12/13/2006