Yesterday I was showing homes in the burgeoning Erie area.  My clients and I were killing time before our next appointment when we noticed some model homes for sale.  So we decided to take a look.

We were blown away!  Wish I'd taken photos.  These were the most fab homes I've seen in awhile.  Most had mountain views, but all were geared toward luxury family living.

A lot of my clients have been looking for ranch homes, and have been disappointed to learn that many builders don't build them.  This custom and semi-custom builder recognizes that not everybody wants to live on two or three floors!  But I'm guessing everybody would like the 10 foot ceilings.

Here's an artist's version of one of two we saw.  It's a 3 bedroom, 3 bath ranch home with a formal dining room, a lovely study/office and a garden-level basement.  This drawing does NOT do this home justice!  The master bedroom reminds me of a posh resort spa!

Anyway, my clients were bowled over and the young man had a "provider" crisis, thinking he'd never be able to provide his about-to-be new wife with a home like that.

Here's the floor plan.

Erie is north of the Denver metro area, but centrally located to Boulder, Broomfield, Longmont, Lafayette, Northglenn and Thornton.  It has a "small town" feel

If you're in the market for a moderately priced beauty like this $400K-500K), give me a call and I'll be happy to show it to you.

Yes, you'll need your own Exclusive Buyer's Agent, even with a builder -- ESPECIALLY with a builder!

I've written about the fake information provided unwary homeowners and homebuyers when trying to figure out how much any given  home is worth.  Now here it is, a week later.

http://realtytimes.com/rtapages/20060220_zillow.htm

A lot of recent articles have pointed out the dangers in having a "risky" mortgage, led by concerns about no-interest loans, followed closely by "teaser rate" ARMs.

Read what regular Realty Times writer, Broderick Perkins, has to say on the subject.

http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20060217_higherrates.htm

This morning I've read several industry articles ostensibly advising consumers on taking a hand at informing themselves before buying (or selling -- though I use a listing partner for that, so am not directly involved in selling) a home. 

One tells you how to generate your own comparative market analysis (CMA), simply by entering your address, and voila! an estimate pops up on the map, along with several recent sold transactions nearby.  They reason that if they take all the data in the world possible to aggregate, they'll be able to provide you with a "starting point" and you can go from there to put a value on your home.  Or any other home you're interested in buying.

Of course, what they don't tell you is that a real estate agent doesn't just aggregate anonymous data to come up with a market estimate of your home.  It's a lot more complicated than that.  First of all, they will know intimately the neighborhood you're asking them to estimate, and will, quite possibly, have seen your home, if not the inside, then at least the outside.  And they rely on their own knowledge of real estate trends in your particular neighborhood to make a somewhat subjective, but reasonably objective, estimate of what your home -- or the home you're interested in buying -- will sell for.

But, hey, let's give them a try.  You can do it yourself!  And then you'll be ready to set the price on your home and sell it yourself.  There are enough tools on the web to help you do that!

Okay, but I hope you've got the time and tools to do it properly so that your house doesn't just sit on the market gathering dust because it's priced too high.  Or that somebody doesn't snap it up in a heartbeat because you've "guesstimated" too low!

And I hope you have a plan in place to help you deal with the people you don't know entering your house and possibly eyeing your art, or the drugs in your medicine chest, or even you, you tasty morsel!  Yes, security is a HUGE risk for do-it-yourself-ers.

Anyway, that's only part of the story I want to tell this morning.

The other part is the article I read about getting a mortgage.  I want to be perfectly clear that I don't get a DIME from recommending or not recommending a lender for my buyer clients.  Now that the mouse print is out of the way, I can tell you how you can determine whether or not you're getting a good estimate on which mortgage company to use.  It's easy!  All you do is go to the website (or sites) in question, read the articles informing you about what to look for and what to avoid when choosing a lender, find the mortgage professionals who've agreed to put a "cap" on their fee, and there you go!  Ready to buy your house (that you've already identified and priced using these special web sites) with the very best mortgage out there!  Or are you??

Do you want somebody taking care of the biggest transaction of your life who will agree to limit their income (would YOU do that?? -- be honest now! -- would you go into your boss's office this morning and say, "Hey boss, if you'll agree to give me the next greatest job available, I'll reduce my salary requirements to the bare minimum possible to live! -- think about it!) in order to get your business?

If you're anything like me, you just want the very best rate, the very lowest fees (hopefully, NO fees), the very best loan, AND the very best service out there.  I don't know about you, but I get nervous when I talk to my financial advisor.  I want HIM (it IS a him, but it could be a "her"!) to be the best informed, most competent advisor out there!  And as I told him the other day when I was doing a roll-over and my brain was a little fuzzy, "Norris, all I want to do right now is sign, and I trust you that you're carrying out your fiduciary obligations toward me.  That's why I chose you."  He shrugged -- although this was on the phone and I could only imagine -- and said, "Okay, you're the boss." 

I WANT that kind of fiduciary behavior from the professionals I trust my big financial transactions with.  And that includes my mortgage professional, AND my real estate professional.

Now understand, I'm in business to make money, not to provide a public service at my own cost to the public.  But I do have an interest in being competent, trustworthy, and reliable when I work with my clients, and I'm constantly at work trying to upgrade my knowledge and serve my clients the best way I know how.  And I don't know a web site yet who can be trusted with my clients' (or my) financial lives. 

And, I don't know about you, but I don't have the time to become knowledgable about everything I have to do.  Yesterday I took my car into Xpress Lube to have it serviced.  (A realtor needs a dependable car!)  I didn't want to have to go in there and say, "I want you to change the xoiufa, and be sure the wo$dnic is working properly; oh, and be sure that the apj#kx goes into the uytw^ with a tolerance of +/- .0003."  I want the Xpress Lube people to know all that.  That's what I pay them for!  They're the experts on my car, even though I know in a general way what I want them to do.  I TRUST them to get the specifics right.  That way I can take the car in, and relax and rely on the car being in good shape because my experts have taken care of it for me.  With my help, of course.  But I know my own limitations when it comes to auto maintenance.

Anyway, I guess my point is we all need professionals, and when it comes to the largest purchase of your life, you want to become as knowledgable as you can be, but within reason.  Hey, you have a job and a life to live!  BUT, you also want professionals you can trust to fill in your knowledge gap, and to help you sell or buy a house WITHOUT having to do it all yourself!

I do have clients come to me who have a tremendous amount of knowledge before they even contact me, and for that I'm very grateful.  I'd rather we start out as an informed team (I'm an Exclusive Buyer's Agent, that's all I do.  I don't help people sell houses.  I do refer them to a competent professional if they DO want their house sold), and I can fill in their knowledge gaps.  And there are plenty!  The mis-information people have when they come to me is AMAZING!  But hey, they know their limitations, and that's why they call me. 

When people call me I KNOW the websites to point them to (if they haven't already discovered them), and I know the professionals they'll need, and though I don't GUARANTEE that everything will be perfect, I DO guarantee that people will get the house they need or want, at a price that's REAL (and the lowest possible), with the least amount of hassle, the least amount of time involved to them, and that we'll have some fun along the way.

You CAN'T know (and do) it all yourself!