Indeed, three of the five most expensive ZIP Codes are those that serve Boulder.

Overall, the median home prices in Boulder County – which also includes Broomfield, Erie, Lafayett, Longmont, Louisville, Lyons and Nederland – were down only 1.4 percent from a [...]]]> The most expensive homes that sold in closed in the third quarter were in Boulder.

Indeed, three of the five most expensive ZIP Codes are those that serve Boulder.

Overall, the median home prices in Boulder County – which also includes Broomfield, Erie, Lafayett, Longmont, Louisville, Lyons and Nederland – were down only 1.4 percent from a year earlier, according to data compiled by California-based DataQuick.com.

As to be expected, the median prices in Boulder proper were much more expensive than in nearby communities.

The lofty prices in Boulder, even during this economic and housing downturn, is no surprise to Chris Mygatt, president of Coldwell Banker in Colorado.

Although he now lives in Washington Park, Mygatt grew up in Boulder and lived there for much of his career in real estate.

“Having lived in Boulder for 25-plus years, I can say that Boulder is truly a unique place,” Mygatt said.  “There is some truth to that old adage that Boulder is 16 square miles surrounded by reality.”

He said he is generalizing, but there are  two main type of  luxury homeowners in Boulder and neither are buffeted by economic downturns as most people.

“There are a significant number of buyers who purchased their upper-end properties in Boulder, who derive their wealth from their families,” Mygatt said. “These people have landed in Boulder and just love Boulder. These people are not terribly connected to the U.S. economy. Period. “

Another significant owners of expensive homes in Boulder are those who a “true entrepreneurs,” who have made so much money they can weather any downturn.

What the data shows is that the most expensive ZIP Code, 80302, where the median price of a home sold was $481,325, showed a 34.8 percent drop in sales in the third quarter.

And that is to be expected, among both the categories of owners described by Mygatt.

“Sales slow down significantly, but prices keep their legs,” Mygatt said. “In Cherry Hills, if someone needs to sell their home and they first list it at $4.3 million, they keep lowering the price until it sells. In Cherry Hills, there are a lot of captains of industry. They are directly effected by what happens in the U.S. economy. If they get over-extended, they absolutely must sell.”

But many owners in Boulder, although they have a lot of their net worth tied in in their homes, would just wait it out.

“They might have a net worth of $7 million and $2 or $3 million of that in their homes,” Mygatt said. “They might like to sell their home, but they don’t have to, so they don’t. They”ll say, “Boulder is a really cool place so I’ll just live here another two or three years and sell my home when the market is better.”

,

City	ZIP Code	Median Price
Boulder	80302	$481,325
Boulder	80304	$470,000
Denver	80209	$403,000
Littleton	80124	$400,000
Boulder	8005	$381,000

.

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Here are some other interesting points of data.

Overall, the median price of a home in Denver was $186,000 in Denver in the second quarter, [...]]]> In the previous blog, I wrote that the 80246 ZIP Code, which includes Hilltop, showed a 47.2 percent appreciation during the second quarter, according to a recent report by San Diego-based DataQuick.

Here are some other interesting points of data.

Overall, the median price of a home in Denver was $186,000 in Denver in the second quarter, down 3.1 percent from a year earlier. There were 3,119 sales, down 16.9 percent.  DataQuick tracks new and resale home sales, and unlike the Metrolist report, which was released today for July, it tracks all real estate transactions, not just those sold by Realtors.

In Denver, 80205 showed the biggest increase in sales. A total of 200 homes sold, a 6.4 percent increase. It also tracked Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson counties. It did not include Broomfield or Boulder counties.

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The 80246 ZIP Code in Denver saw a whopping 47.2 percent increase in the median sold price, according to a recent report by San Diego-based DataQuick. DataQuick is a real estate information service company that tracks and analyzes home sales, based on public records, [...]]]> Hilltop was the place to sell a home in the second quarter.

The 80246 ZIP Code in Denver saw a whopping 47.2 percent increase in the median sold price, according to a recent report by San Diego-based DataQuick. DataQuick is a real estate information service company that tracks and analyzes home sales, based on public records, in California and several other states.  It breaks down metro areas by ZIP Codes.

The trouble with ZIP Codes, of course, is that they often contain both high-end and low-end homes. For example, Cherry Hills Village and Englewood share a ZIP Code.

And 80246 includes Hilltop, one of Denver’s most prominent neighborhoods, as well as parts bordering Glendale that are not high-end at all.

Still,  Steve Blank, a broker with Fuller  Sotheby’s Real Estate,  told me that it was the Hilltop portion of the ZIP that drove up the prices in the second quarter.

“There were a couple of very large, custom specs that finally sold – in the $2.5 million to $3 million range,” said Blank, who can often be found at the real estate display in the Cherry Creek shopping center that he created.

But Blank would not say those sales skewed the numbers.

“We’re not saying that the number of low-end homes on the market are skewing the numbers lower, so we should not say some expensive sales are skewing it upwards,” Blank said. “That said, that is the market, so we should clarify the reason why for people.”

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To get a perspective on this, I turned to Peter Lansing, president of Universal Lending, and a sponsor of InsideRealEstateNews.com.

Universal Lending probably does more FHA-insured loans than any other lender in [...]]]> Government-insured FHA loans accounted for 47.5 percent the financing for all of the homes closed in the Denver area in June, reports  San Diego-based DataQuick.

To get a perspective on this, I turned to Peter Lansing, president of Universal Lending, and a sponsor of InsideRealEstateNews.com.

Universal Lending probably does more FHA-insured loans than any other lender in the Denver area. Even during the go-go days of  so-called liar loans, subprime loans, and alt-A loans – remember those? – Lansing stuck to his knitting and stayed away from toxic loan products, which is one reason I jumped at the chance when he offered to sponsor my blog.

While I was on the phone with Peter, he looked up his loan volume for July. He did not have June figures broken out.

He found that 79 percent of his loans last month were for buyers, not refinances, which I’m thinking will be the subject of a future blog.

And he found that 75.4 percent of his loans were FHA-insured, and 4.8 percent were VA loans. So 80.2 percent of his loans were government-backed. Year-to-date, 65.6 percent were FHA loans and 9.9 percent were VA loans.

A couple of years ago, of course, everyone was getting a conventional loan. They were easy to qualify for, and they were less expensive than FHA-insured loans.

Lansing noted that Brian Chappelle, principal of Potomac Partners in Washington, D.C. said that Alt-A loans constituted 10 percent of Fannie Mae’s portfolio, but more than 40 percent of its losses. And while the average FICO score of the Alt-A borrower was 722, the default rate was so high because lenders did not have to verify their income and other metrics to make sure they are good borrowing prospects.

Part of the reason that FHA-insured loans are so popular, of course, is that it is lower-priced homes that are selling.

"That sounds like good data," said Lou Barnes, principal of Boulder West Financial Services, when I told him about the DataQuick report. Nationally, a couple of years ago, when conventional loans were so easy to get, FHA-insured loans accounted for only 10 percent of all loan. "That is what everybody tells me, not just in Colorado, but everywhere, the lower-priced ranges are doing well."

Barnes said a friend in Bakersfield, Calif., told him that foreclosures are priced so below-market that “it is triggering bidding frenzies.”

But Barnes said it isn’t so much that buyers are hankering for FHA-insured loans, is rather it is almost the only lending game in town.

“To put FHA in context, other loans have disappeared,” Barnes said.

And, as best as he can tell, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are using the most stringent qualifications for lenders than ever in their history.  They have the most stringent underwriting since he started in the business in 1978, and from what he has been able to ascertain from family members and others with a long history in the lending business, they have never been so tight with lending before.

I asked Lansing if he thought it was a good thing that people are turning toward FHA-insured loans.

“My answer to that is as long as you are using good credit analyis and lending with good lending practices, which means looking at four basic areas every time – down payments, good credit and good job history,  money left over for emergencies, and good cash flow, meaning what percentage of gross earnings you’re spending on housing -  whether is is an FHA loan or a conventional loan,  is not important.”

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Independent broker Gary Bauer doesn’t necessarily disagree with those statistics, but he isn’t troubled by them, either.

Because this has been such an extraordinary year as [...]]]> Earlier today, I posted a blog that DataQuick of San Diego reports that June home sales in the Denver area hit at an 11-year low and 10.5 percent below June 2008.

Independent broker Gary Bauer doesn’t necessarily disagree with those statistics, but he isn’t troubled by them, either.

Because this has been such an extraordinary year as far as the economy and the real estate market – not just in Denver but across the nation – that 2009 is basically the dawn of a new real estate era.

“The philosophy I have taken, while I still do comparison to the prior years, is that basically, I am counting 2009 as the beginning of time, as far as real estate,” Bauer told me.

I suppose whether this is year Zero or One in the real estate calender is something for mathematicians and philosophers to discuss.

Bauer, who on Friday will release his own report on the state of Denver’s real estate for the month of July, said that 2009 needs to be the baseline year that all future data is compared to, because we’ve never seen anything else like it.

“This has been such a dramatic and unusual recessionary period,” Bauer said. “We have lived through other recessions and lived through some quasi-booms. But this one is so unique, so unusual, that is far as I am concerned, 2009 is the first year of real estate.”

Or, to borrow a phrase from the Book of Genesis in the Bible: “Let there be light.” At least the light at the end of the real estate tunnel.

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But San Diego-based DataQuick, which uses public records, and not Metrolist data, found that while home sales were down 10.5 percent from June 2008, they jumped 31.5 percent from May.

A total of 4,562 new and [...]]]> Home sales in the Denver-area in June fell to an 11-year low,  a California-based real estate information service firm reported today.

But San Diego-based DataQuick, which uses public records, and not Metrolist data, found that while home sales were down 10.5 percent from June 2008, they jumped 31.5 percent from May.

A total of 4,562 new and resale homes and condos closed in the Denver-Aurora area in June, according to Dataquick. That marks the slowest month since at least January 1998, when DataQuick began tracking all home types in the Denver area.

Sales of both newly constructed homes, both single-family and condos, and existing single-family detached homes were at record lows for a June.

Gary Bauer, an independent broker, who on Friday will release his analysis of Metrolist numbers for July, said the DataQuick data is “pretty close” to what Metrolist shows.

“As we have been saying for the last month or two, we are starting to see the turnaround,” Bauer told InsideRealEstateNews.com.  “The positives are that some of these government programs are working and helping people; the demand is coming back; and we are seeing fewer and fewer distressed properties in the mix.”

He hasn’t yet found the perfect phrase to a return to more typical times, but he did put it this way:

“The “normal” home buyer is starting to come back to the market.”

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