Mary Hashem and Stuart Miner paid $285,000 for Gov. Hickenlooper's former house.

Mary B. Hashem, and her husband, Stuart L. Miner, were fly fishing off a boat floating down the Colorado River near Glenwood Springs when they received a call from their Realtor, telling them they had received a counter-offer for the home they were trying to buy.

“And do you know who signed the counter-offer? John Hickenlooper,” Sherri Curry, a broker with RE/MAX Alliance, told  Hashem and Miner.

That is how they learned that the house they eventually bought for $285,000  -$40,000 below the listing price of $325,000 – belonged to Colorado’s governor.

“We had no clue who it belonged to before that,” said Hashem, “It was quite the surprise. We looked at each other and said, “Wow, this is a small town.”

However, when asked, she said that both she and her husband have been long-time supporters of Hickenlooper. “Both when he was mayor and now as governor,” she said.

Hashem and Miner are both executives of EFG Brownfield Partners LLC, the Denver company that is in the early stages of redeveloping the former St. Anthony Central Hospital campus by Sloan’s Lake. The hospital is 2.7 miles and an eight-minute drive from the home they purchased on Moncrieff Place from the governor. Miner is president and Hashem is an executive vice president at EFG. EFG specializes in the redevelopment of environmentally contaminated land. Its predecessor company handled the remediation of the Dahila Square site in northeast Denver and currently is working on the ASARCO Globe plant in Denver. Other projects being tackled by EFG include  wetlands mitigation in the Meadowlands in New Jersey, a former manufactured gas plant in Honolulu, and a former asbestos roofing manufacturing site in New Jersey.

But they didn’t buy the house  to be close to the St. Anthony development site.

Mary Hashem

“We had been house-hunting in Denver for about a year,” Hashem said on Friday. “We had started looking at a variety of neighborhoods and settle down on the northwest side. We especially liked Sloan’s Lake and West Highland. They were drawn to the west side of the Denver area because they have a lot of family and friends in the area.”

She added that they are “empty nesters whose children are grown. We’re downsizing.”

Mary Hashem and her husband have listed their Evergreen home for $640,000

They currently are listing their 3,688-square-foot home in Evergreen, built in 1983, for $640,000. Hickenlooper’s home has 1,675 square feet and was built in 1911. Hickenlooper paid $69,500 for it in 1983 and has been renting it for years. And while Hickenlooper’s former home may not have the postcard-picture views of Mountain Evans that there Evergreen home commands, it does have a sweeping view of the Front Range from the third floor, and with an elevation of 5,479 feet, it sits on one of the highest points in northwest Denver.

“We did want a place with a view,” Hashem said. “But more than that, we fell in love with Moncrieff. And we fell in love with the neighborhood.”

Stuart Miner

As anyone knows who has seen pictures of Hick’s old house or has walked by it knows, the home needs TLC – a lot of it.

“We are still pretty much trying to figure that out,” Hashem said. “We’ve spoken to a number of contractors and architects. We’re about to start with our third architect. But we’re in no rush. We haven’t even sold our Evergreen home yet. We’re really not going to do anything until we sell our other home.”

In fact, they haven’t been there very much since they closed on the home in the fall.

“We do try to get by to make sure the sidewalk is shoveled and to pick up our mail. We plan to be very good neighbors.”

The was a bit of a kerfuffle involving the previous owner, who had let the weeds run amuck when he was renting it.

“We know about that and we are very sensitive to it. That is not going to be a problem with us. We’re not going to let the weeds run wild.”

She also said they aren’t seeking publicity about buying Hick’s house.

“We kind of stumbled into it. I almost didn’t call you back.”

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com

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Gov.-elect John Hickenlooper said there will be a “full-court press” to keep the Governor’s Energy Office running.

Denver Mayor and Gov. elect John Hickenlooper recently addressed the fate of the GEO at a ULI conference.

Hickenlooper, Denver’s mayor who will be sworn in as Colorado’s governor on Jan. 11, was recently asked if the Governor’s Energy Office, or GEO, will continue to exist.

“The GEO is largely funded by grants,” Hickenlooper said in response to the question from an audience member attending the recent Urban Land Institute conference called Recharging Colorado: Energy, Jobs and Land Use. Unfortunately, Hickenlooper said, many of the grants are in part of the cycle that they are expiring. He said the state budget cannot afford to fund the GEO’s cost, without the grants.

“What we have going is a full-court press to write grants and get back funding for it,” Hickenlooper said. “We would be crazy not to continue and expand what Gov. Ritter has created.”

GEO directs $150 million in funding

The GEO, with 37 full-time employees,  has directed $150 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for a wide-variety of programs including rebates, grants, and programs to sustain and create jobs in the “New Energy Economy.”   This year,  was its peak year with the $80 million in grants from the recovery act. About half the money goes to 12 partners that are weatherizing more than 8,500 homes and apartments housing low-income Coloradans. It did receive $150,000 in state funding in 2010 from interest generated from the state’s severance bank account. It is fully funded through the 2011, but in 2012, the Recovery Act funds start to go away.

Hickenlooper noted that he was recently at a funeral in Los Angeles (for his cousin, film director George Hickenlooper), and that several groups of people came up to him to talk about the great things Colorado is doing as far clean energy, such as wind, solar, bio-fuels and natural gas. “The new energy economy,” Hickenlooper said. “We can own that.”

In order to reach that goal, “we have to make sure we keep the GEO,” Hickenlooper continued. “We will figure out a way to fund it.” But he said it will be “more focused” under his watch.

New laws not the answer

“We have passed the laws we needed to pass,” Hickenlooper said. “Now, we will have to implement them.” He said that he would like to see Colorado known as a state that has the most energy efficient stock of buildings. “How to we measure that? Isolate the various factors? Insulation? Wind? Solar? Geo-thermal?” Hickenlooper made his comments on an empty floor of the new 1800 Larimer building, the headquarters for Xcel Energy. The Platinum-LEED building was developed by Westfield Development and is considered a model how an office tower can be constructed to the highest degree of sustainability with only a nominal increase in cost.

Hickenlooper said also people need to be educated on the dangers of global warming. “I’m not saying the sky is falling,” Hickenlooper said. “But the smartest people I know, the smartest scientists I know, say that global warming is going to have grievous consequences, if we don’t do something about it.” He said many people still refuse to believe that man is playing a role in changing the climate, despite all of the media attention.

Hickenlooper noted that the reason he went to graduate school after college to become a geologist, is because he didn’t think he would make it as a writer. “It was a failure of the student,” said the self-deprecating Hickenlooper. “I had a great teacher in college, Paul Horgan, who said: “Everything has been said. But not everything has been said superbly. And even if it has been said superbly, it has to be said freshly, again and again. We need to say freshly how we can still have a very high quality of life, but do it for a lot less energy consumption.  And we need to say it again and again.”

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I just got off the phone with Francesca Levy, the author of the article titled the  America’s Worst-Selling Housing Markets, in which Denver ranked as the second worst. Only Milwaukee fared worst.

Levy told me that the article didn’t say that Denver had the second-worst housing market in the country, and she did not mean to imply that, although she could see how people were reaching the conclusion. She said it was based on  a “‘very narrow ” metric.  And that is the rub. She used data from Zillow.com, a large, giant aggregator of real estate information across the country.  Using information on Zillow’s Web site, she found more than 42,000 houses in a 10-county are listed for sale. That is more than double the number of homes listed for sale by Metrolist.

Zillow: One-stop shopping

Levy liked to use Zillow for comparing metropolitan statistical areas across the country, because it is so difficult to to find a group that tracks listings in MSAs nationwide. But what she didn’t know until this week, is that Zillow.com is constantly adding partners that supply it with information, making year-over-year comparisons just about worthless. “I didn’t know that,” Levy told me. “If I had known that, I probably wouldn’t have used that metric.”

Katie Curnutte, spokeswoman for Zillow,  issued a statement noting that the Forbes.comarticle used Zillow data through the end of January for the  entire Denver metropolitan statistical area, which includes 10 counties, under its “Homes For Sale on Zillow.”

“Another point, which I was quoted on in InsideRealEstateNews.com, is that changes in the number of homes listed on Zillow can be influenced by new partners, such as brokerages, who feed us listings,” Curnutte continued. “If we get more partners, the number of homes for sale on Zillow may rise because of this, rather than because of market influences. So the 27% increase over a year did, indeed, represent a 27% increase in homes for sale on Zillow; it may or may not have represented an increase in all homes on the market. Also important to note is that our data contains not just MLS listings, but FSBO listings and foreclosure listings…But probably the most important point I’d like to make is that looking at any one statistic in a vacuum will not give you an accurate picture of what’s happening in a market. It’s much better to look at an index that was designed to represent the overall health of an area. We have the Zillow Home Value Index for just that reason — it measures the median value of all homes in an area. In February 2010, the Denver metropolitan statistical area’s Index fell 0.4% compared to the same time period last year. This compares with a national change of -5.4%. Denver’s median home value peaked in May 2006, and since then, home values have fallen 10.8 percent. Compare that with the U.S. as a whole: Home values peaked in June 2006, and have since fallen 23.8 percent.”

Zillow info doesn’t “pass the smell test”

Melissa Olson, of Metrolist, which tracks Denver-area houses sold by Realtors, said it doesn’t make any sense that the the Zillow data would list more than twice the number of homes for sale as Metrolist, as the vast majority of homes sold in the Denver area involve Realtors. Metrolist showed 20,474 unsold homes on the market at the end of March. At the end of January, the same time period tracked by Forbes.com, there were 17,785 unsold homes on the Denver market, down 10 percent January 2009,  according to Metrolist. Also, many foreclosure sales in the Denver-area, as well as some new home sales, are handled by Realtors, so would be reflected in the Metrolist data, and conceivably are being counted more than once by Zillow. As Charlie Carter, a former executive at Perry & Butler, a former realty firm in Denver used to be fond of saying: “It doesn’t pass the smell test.” 

In addition, economist Patty Silverstein, of Development Research Partners, using the same 10 counties and the same methodology as Forbes.com, found an inventory of only 31,740 unsold homes on Zillow, through February, about a third less than reported by the online publication based on January statistics. That is perplexing, because if Zillow is constantly adding partners, one would expect her research to uncover more listings, not fewer.

“That is a good question,” Levy told me, when I bounced that off her. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer.’

Levy said she has been barraged  by Realtors and others from the Denver area, some who have been quite angry. Even Mayor John Hickenlooper, at my request, weighed into the discussion, and wants either a retraction or an explanation from Forbes. (For Hickenlooper’s take on the Forbes.com article, please visit this blog.)

Just the facts, ma’am

One of the reasons that Levy is intrigued to write another article about Denver, is because the over-whelmingly, critics of her April 5 article have been very professional.

“There have been almost no personal attacks against me,”  Levy said. “Largely, the comments have been very constructive and quite meaty. That is helpful to me and makes me want to look at the Denver market more closely.’

In other words, stay tuned.

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865

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“That is just insane,” Hickenlooper told InsideRealEstateNews.com. “I’ll send them a letter. I’ll call them and demand that they justify where their data came through and walk us through it, or write a correction. If they can’t justify it, it is just plain reckless and can have very serious consequences.” Indeed, one broker today said that he has received more than a dozen calls from agents who work for him that have received calls from concerned home buyers. Others say that articles such the one in Forbes.com could have government agencies such as Fannie Mae could again declare the Denver area as “declining market,” causing mortgage rates to rise and making it more difficult to obtain loans.

Reporter explains story

Meanwhile, the author of the Forbes.com article, Francesca Levy, sent InsideRealEstateNews.com an e-mail today to put her article into perspective. She relied on information from Zillow.com, a popular online service that lists millions of homes for sale across the country, as the basis for her article.

“I’ve gotten a lot of response from folks in Denver about this article and completely understand why the metro’s inclusion on the list would come as a surprise,”  Levy wrote. “I understand that these numbers don’t jibe personal observations of many realtors and perhaps the local data that’s available to them. By many measures, as you know, the Denver market is doing quite well, and certainly it’s doing well relative to other metros. But this story was based on a fairly narrow set of metrics in which Denver showed a big change over time. There are many different standpoints from which to look at the market, and inventory/sales rates are only a couple of them.” Levy went on to say that one reason she uses Zillow is because it is “extremely hard to find solid inventory data from anyone besides Zillow that compares large MSAs across the country. I’m always looking for new data sources, and I like to be able to compare the same metrics from different data providers – unfortunately that’s hard to do with inventory, since the information is scarce.” Levy added that her story had stirred so much response, that she is “tempted to do a whole story” on what is going on in the Denver market. She also said that her story said it was only tracking single-family home inventory, but it also included condos, so she will ask Forbes to issue a correction to clarify that point.

Zillow stands by 42,000 figure

Katie Curnette of Zillow.com, said that she believes the 42,000 figure in Levy’s story was accurate for the 10-county are she tracked: Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson, Elbert, Gilpin, Clear Creek and Park. The data includes homes listed by agents, owners, foreclosures and new construction. There may be some double-counting and overlap in the numbers. For example, if a home in foreclosure or a new home that is listed by a Realtor, may be included in both categories. Also, some homes may not be removed immediately from Zillow.com after they have been sold, although Zillow.com encourages Realtors and home sellers to change its status to ”closed” as soon as a home sells. And once public records reflect the sale, Zillow.com will change its status. Local economist Patty Silverstein examined the Zillow.com data and found only 31,740 homes of all kind listed for sale in the 10-county area, about a third lower than what Forbes.com reported. And Silverstein is skeptical that the number of listings are exaggerated, and don’t accurately describe the actual unsold inventory.

“While I know that Zillow.com is frequently used, I question its reliability as a statistically sound time series,”  Silverstein said. ‘Do we have more homes listed today on Zillow.com than a year ago because of increasing popularity of use as opposed to an actual change in inventory? What is their procedure for removing homes from their “for sale” list? Do we truly know that every property listed as for sale is still for sale, or is it possible that it sold but was not removed?” Curnette, of Zillow.com, answers those questions by saying:  “What this really shows is a snapshot of what is listed on Zillow.com at any given moment in time.”

YOY change not apples-to-apples comparison

Perhaps more importantly, however, is the 27 percent increase in listings reported by Forbes.com, at a time when Metrolist is reporting a drop in listings. “The number of homes on the market is important, but what is probably more crucial is that percentage change,” Silverstein said. The latest MLS data shows a total of 20,574 homes for sale in the Denver market, virtually unchanged from March 2009.

“I wouldn’t put much stock in the year-over-year change,”  Curnette said. ”What that represents is that we are getting more partners (usually brokerage firms) that are reporting more homes for sales, than an actual change in the market.”

When InsideRealEstateNews.com told Hickenlopooper that the Zillow.com year-over-year database had expanded, and wasn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, he thought that should have been a red flag to Forbes.com.”That’s absurd,” Hickenlooper said. “The very fact that the source of their data makes the year-over-year comparison useless, suggest that Forbes should not even have considered writing a story based on that. What kind of a reporter wants to make a story out of useless data? It’s one thing if they are reporting factual data. Forbes is generally considered a very reputable organization. But reckless reporting can haver some very serious consequences for the housing market and overall economy. I think what is odd about it, is that it does not seem to fit into any context. All of the other data we are seeing pretty much indicates that we are going in  the right direction, and suddenly this one comes out of left field and says we have one of the two worst housing markets in the country.”

Niederman: MLS better data than Zillow‘s

Peter Niederman, an owner of the Kentwood Cos., agrees. Niederman also thinks that the Metrolist data, which uses the same methodology month-over-month and year-over-year, provides a true picture of the real estate market. Overall, it shows slightly more than a 5-month supply of unsold homes, which is generally considered a stable, healthy market, he said. He described the Forbes.com article as “very poor reporting and sensationalizing a story when it’s not there.”

“The main difference, the accuracy of information,” Niederman said. “I know we have received calls on properties buyers saw on Zillow or Trulia (another service similar to Zillow) , when we check the MLS, they have been long sold, or they are off the market. Realtor and other MLS members subscribe to the accuracy of information as part of the participant agreement. There is no governing body to main the accuracy of the information (on Zillow or Trulia.) Zillow and Trulia are wonderful ways to market homes, but they really aren’t very good as far as databases on what is actually happening in a market.” He also said it’s crazy to lump market-rate homes, foreclosures and new homes together. They’re throwing in the kitchen sink to report all the inventory when it’s never been reported that way before,” Niederman said. “If we went back and aggregated the same information as compared to today, the total inventory may be far less than it is today"Jack O’Connor, a co-owner of RE/MAX Alliance, said today he has fielded more than a dozen concerns from agents who have clients that are concerned about the Forbes article.”I haven’t heard of anyone not buying a home because of the article, but it certainly is troubling,”  O’Connor said. “I have no idea where they came up with the 42,000 number. Their article is not only misleading, it’s flat wrong. All of our inventory figures say it’s lower than it was 12 months ago, when Forbes listed Denver as the 2nd best place to buy a home. How it has gone from the second best to the worst, at a time when the market has clearly gotten better, does not bode well for their credibility.”

Fear that market will suffer

O’Connor also said that he worries that Denver, which a few years ago was considered a “declining market,” by government agencies such as Fannie Mae, could cause mortgage rates to rise, and make loans harder to get in the Denver area. “You worry that an article like this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The perception created by Forbes can become the reality,”   O’Connor said. In 2008, large lenders such as Wells Fargo, decided that Denver no longer was declining, and could offer its best rates to well-qualified home buyers.

Curnette of Zillow.com said that there are signs of “double dip” in Denver, with home values rising a bit in 2009, before falling again this year. ”Of course, that is tempered by Denver’s relatively flat trajectory,” Curnette said. “Denver’s median home value peaked in May 2006, and since then, home values have fallen 10.8 percent. Compare that with the U.S. as a whole: Home values peaked in June 2006, and have since fallen 23.8 percent. The Denver metro area is an interesting one: It seemed to have been less affected by the run-up in values, and the subsequent downturn, than many other areas of the country. But it does seem to be affected by the larger recession…I would not say that Denver is the worst, or one of the worst, housing markets in the country.”

County	Agent	Owner	Foreclosures	New construction	Total
Adams	3564	14	497	297	4372
Arapahoe	5200	21	744	462	6427
Broomfield	554	3	36	90	683
Denver	6965	57	642	163	7827
Douglas	4333	21	326	609	5289
Jefferson	4807	31	433	180	5451
Elbert	394	2	23	28	447
Gilpin	135	0	10	0	145
Clear Creek	228	0	13	0	241
Park	810	3	45	0	858
Total	26990	152	2769	1829	31740
Sources: Zillow.com, Patty Silverstein

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

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Video: Chris Mygatt

Mayor John Hickenlooper addresses 900 people attending the Colorado Real Estate & Economic Summit, Wednesday night, March 10.

“I am an optimist.”

That was the message from John Hickenlooper, Denver mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, when he addressed 900 real estate officials on Wednesday night.

And Hickenlooper was not alone.

For the most part, most of the seven heavy weight speakers at the Colorado Real Estate & Economic Summit on Wednesday night, were bullish on the prospect  that Denver and the state will emerge from the current real estate and economic downturn faster than most places, although the markets are not out of the woods yet.

Hickenlooper said that after being laid off as a geologist in 1986, and after deciding to open Denver’s first brewpub, he almost gave up at one point because he was so distressed. He said, as he has often in the past, that even his mother would not invest in what was to be called Wynkoop Brewing in what is now called LoDo.

That is when he received the sage advice that he had worked so hard, “and that he  had gotten over the worst of it,” and if he did not give up now, he would benefit from the experience in all his future endeavors.

That is where the Denver-area and the state economies now stand, Hickenlooper said.  While unemployment is still too high, he said he believes the worst is over. “This is not a depression,” he said.

Hickenlooper did  did not make his speech overtly political, barely mentioning he was running for governor. However, he did receive a round of applause when he said he was going to do his best to make his gubernatorial campaign as free of personal attacks as when he ran for mayor. Hickenlooper’s Republican opponent is likely to be Congressman Scott McInnis of Grand Junction. Hickenlooper did joke that since putting his hat in the ring, he now calls it the “Best Slope,” instead of the “West Slope,” noting that the entire state, made up of different regions, needs to thrive. And the Western Slope, with everything from world-class trout fishing to skiing, makes Colorado special, he said.

Glow of DNC still felt

Hickenlooper noted that in the past year, the Denver-area has received an unprecedented amount of national press, as one of the best places to live and work. He said that while the Denver-area has improved, it is not so much that it should now be ranked No. 1, 2 or 3, while previously it was ranked much lower. He credited much of the improvement in rankings because the area was placed under an international spotlight during the Democratic Convention in 2008.

Denver also could receive similar media attention this July, when Denver hosts the first “Biennial of the Americas,” when the city host dignitaries, intellectuals, business leaders and politicians from the Western Hemisphere.  He said many people do not realize that the U.S. gets more oil from the Western Hemisphere than from the Middle East and that Brazil is the world’s sixth largest economy.

Obama may attend Denver conference

“There is a one in three chance that President Obama will attend,” he said. Hickenlooper said the biennial has been in the works for the past four years, although it may have to be scaled back in its inaugural year because of the economy. He said no city or state monies are being used to fund it. In the future, he said, he hopes major corporate sponsors, such as the Cokes, Pepsis, Googles and IBMs of the world will fund it.

Meanwhile, to help Denver back on its financial feet, he noted that his administration fast-tracked $550 million in bond construciton work that voters previously had approved. While the projects would normally take five years to complete, almost all of them will be completed in 3 to 3.5 years, he said. Not only does that put people to work, but he said that it makes people feel better  about the economy when they see workers improve things such as parks, roads and libraries.

FasTracks a national model

Speaking of FasTracks  - the multi-billion light rail and rapid-bus transport system, that is –  he also lauded the 32 mayors in the Denver area for supporting it before voters approved it in 2004. No place else in the country has ever showed as much unanimity, he said. Later, another speaker, Brian Phetteplace, manager of Residential and Retail Development for the Downtown Denver Partnership, said that no matter what happens to other lines along FasTracks, Denver Union Station will be transformed into the transportation hub for the entire region, thanks to a recent $300 million commitment to the project by the federal government.

“Work hard, be nice,” Hickenlooper told the audience, as he left the stage at the packed PPA Convention and Event Center, 2105 Decatur St.

Next up was Chris Mygatt, president of Coldwell Banker Residentail Brokerage in Colorado.

Mygatt said that real estate accounts for 21 percent of the GNP, “so if you do not fix real estate, you cannot fi the economy.”

Housing as local as weather

But he said housing is like the weather. He said there is no average temperature for the U.S. No one turns on the TV in the morning, finds out what the weather is going to be for the entire country, and then decides what to wear, he noted. That is why national data on housing isn’t much use to someone trying to buy or sell a home in the Denver area, or any other market for that matter, he said.

Drilling deeper, Denver is really “a split market,” Mygatt said. For homes priced less than $270,000 “there are three buyers for every home. For homes over $470,000, there are three home for every buyer.” In other words, the Denver area is a seller’s market for lower-priced home and a buyer’s market for more expensive homes.

Because of the supply and demand differences at opposite ends of the spectrum, he said some of the biggest bargains can be found at the upper end. The appetite of well-heeled buyers seems to be growing for expensive homes, he noted. The most expensive home in the Denver area last year sold for $6.7 million. Currently,there are 31 homes on the market above that price. Mygatt said that a lot of owners of resort properties in the mountains are willing to deal because of an over-supply of units, giving buyers the best opportunity to buy a second home in recent memory. Another speaker, Allen Hurst, of PHH Mortgage, said that there are now a number of lenders offering jumbo mortgages, for those that are above the $417,000 mortgage limit for conventional loans. Last year, jumbo loans were very difficult to find, and required huge down payments and typically were expensive. Now, they typically can be found for one percentage point above conventional loans, he said.

Shadow market positive

Mygatt said there also may be a “shadow market” of 7,000 to 12,000 on the market, being held by banks, which are not yet for sale. Because most of them are lower-priced homes, which is experiencing strong demand, the shadow inventory actually will be good for the market, he said, as long as they are not dumped on the market at the same time.

Still, the housing market is not yet recovered, and will not be until the unemployment picture improves, said long-time developer Walter A. “Buz” Koelbel, president of Koelbel & Co.

Koelbel said that this is the worst economy that his company has experienced in its 57 years in business.

Jobs,  jobs,  jobs

He said the mantra for real estate is no longer “location, location, location,” but “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Following the meeting, he told InsideRealEstateNews.com that if participants took away nothing else from the conference, it should be the need for more jobs. He said the danger is that employers, who have been forced to scale back, will not hire even as their businesses improve.

“Politicians talk about raising taxes or adding new taxes,” Koelbel said. “What they don’t understand, any money they raise – and it’s debatable whether they end up raising any additional revenues – pales compared to people being employed and feeling secure enough in their jobs to buy homes. Someone buying a home does far more for the economy than raising taxes. Schools, which depend on property taxes, are especially hard hit during a housing slump.

“So what it comes down to is truly jobs, jobs, jobs,” Koelbel said. “End of story.”

Chris Mygatt, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Realty Colorado, addresses 900 people Wednesday night at the Colorado Real Estate & Economic Summit.

John Rebchook can be reached at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

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This home at 3220 Zuni St. in Highland is priced at just over $1 million. It is listed by Dee Chirafisi of Kentwood City Properties.

Almost one out of every four homes sold and closed in the metro area in 2009 took place in Denver. And almost 30 percent of the homes sold above $1 million were in Denver.

An analysis of Metrolist data by independent broker Gary Bauer shows that 10,010 homes closed in the Denver area last year, accounting for 23.8 percent of the 42,027 home sales in the metro area last year. Arapahoe County was No. 2, with 8,230 single-family homes and condo closings last year.

That may not be too surprising.

“Denver usually seems to get the largest percentage of the buyers, except during the time when Douglas County was really growing like gangbusters,” Bauer said. During much of the 1990s, Douglas County was the fastest growing counties in the U.S. and is still one of the fastest. (Indeed, I remember writing a story at the Rocky Mountain News during the ’90s that Highlands Ranch in Douglas County accounted for one of five out of every new and used-homes sold.)

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said that given Denver’s size, Denver’s showing last year isn’t startling.

“Denver accounts for 22.2 percent of the metro area’s population,”  Hickenlooper said. “So we are doing a bit above that for home sales, but not much more. Denver is right about where it should be.”

Hickenlooper did say that a Realtor-friend recently mentioned to him that sales activity seems to have picked up recently.

Corey Wadley, a broker and co-owner of Nostalgic Homes in West Highland in northwest Denver, said that a lot of buyers are drawn to certain Denver neighborhoods because they think homes will retain their values more than suburban counterparts.

“In the Highland neighborhood, for example…our prices held stable during this recession,” Wadley said. “I think the biggest factor is homes  being able to hold values. There’s only a finite amount of new stuff in a place like Highland. I think also there is a uniqueness about Denver neighborhoods. You can walk street-by-street and see how the housing stock changed from different eras and from additions, renovations and even some scrape offs.”

Perhaps what was most surprising about Bauer’s report, is that Denver also dominated the $1 million and over price category. The 131 single-family homes and condos that sold and closed last year in Denver accounted for  28 percent of the 471 homes sold in that lofty price range. Arapahoe County, with 95  homes selling at $1 million or more and Douglas County with 67, accounted for 20 percent and 14 percent of that market, despite a number of high-end enclaves.

“That is a bit surprising,” said Chris Mygatt, president of  Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Colorado. In the past, he said, the vast majority of homes in that price range were in Arapahoe County,  because of the concentration of  huge homes in Cherry Hills and Greenwood Village.

“What I think what this is showing is a societal change,” Mygatt said. “It speaks to the idea that people who have a significant amount of money who are down-sizing or right-sizing, who are deciding  they do not need a half acre or an acre of land.  It’s never been more fashionable to be frugal.  Let’s face it:  Someone who is buying a million-dollar home is not spending their last million dollars on it. But they don’t want the expense of watering a giant lawn or keeping it clean, even if they can afford it. ”

He said the move to Denver from the suburbs is a trend he sees continuing. Mygatt said there are “too many 6,000-square-foot homes,” in the suburbs, and they will be increasingly difficult to sell.

“The smart developers are now building a very well-designed, very efficient 3,500-square-foot home instead of  a 6,000-square-foot home,” Mygatt said. “And the new homes are very, very green. ”

“That’s great,” about Denver, said Christina de Barros, of RE/MAX Masters. “It is a little surprising given that Arapahoe County has Cherry Hills and Greenwood Village and Douglas County has Castle Pines Village. ” Cherry Hills, for example, had 46 home sales of more than $1 million last year, while Cherry Creek in Denver, had seven, she said. And Boulder County (although not most of the city of Boulder), had a total of 126 home sales above $1 million, for 27 percent of that market, making it Denver’s closet competitor.

Some well-heeled buyers were picking up screaming, high-end deals last year, said Susan C. Mathews, a broker with Fuller Sotheby’s International Realty.

“There were a lot of foreclosures, or more likely short sales, in places like Hilltop and Crestmoor,” Mathews said. “I saw homes that were originally priced at $2.25 million and up selling for $1.4 million or $1.5 million. And that was good. It helped us get some of this inventory off the market.”

She said high-end deals can still be found, but there are not as many as there were in 2009.

“I think consumer confidence is returning,” Mathews said. “People are not as afraid that prices are going to continue to drop if they buy now. I do think we are past the bottom.”

Wadley said that in northwest Denver, homes priced below $450,000 are selling, but it is tougher to move ones above that range.

“But Jenny (Apel,his wife and co-owner of Nostalgic Homes) did sell a William Lang mansion off Lowell (Boulevard) last year for $950,000,” Wadley said. “And I think that when homes that do sell in places like Cherry Hills for above the $1 million mark, they have been heavily discounted from their original asking price.” In fact, he said he thinks a lot of those ultra-expensive suburban homes are being sold at a loss.

Bauer said that one reason Denver dominates the luxury home market, is that empty nesters, who are  at the age and income level who can afford seven-figure homes, would rather live in an urban area than in a suburban community.

“I think part of it is the aging of the population,” Bauer said. “Many people are still working, and want to be closer to where they are working, which is often downtown.  They are down-sizing and their children are grown. For a large percentage of the population, Denver offers a chance to be close to the sporting facilities, theater, and everything else in downtown and LoDo.”

He pointed to Janet Elway as an example.

“With these $1 million-plus homes, people really want something special,” Bauer said. “Janet Elway went from a giant home in Cherry Hills to a Denver home in Belcaro.”

Source: Gary Bauer

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.

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Michelle Kaufmann, Susan Powers and John Hickenlooper survey the first phase of Casa Chiara.

Casa Chiara, the new green development at the Marycrest Convent in northwest Denver, is just starting to take shape.

But the California-based architect, Michelle Kaufmann, and the developer, Susan Powers, of Urban Ventures, have been looking for the perfect project to do together for years.

“Sue and I have been friends for years,” Kaufmann said  at the site along 52nd Avenue, just west of Federal Boulevard. ”She had read about me somewhere, and she was visiting a friend in California, whose house I designed ,” she recalled. “Her friend was telling her that, and Sue said:  “Wait a minute. I’ve been trying to get in touch with her. You have to introduce us.”

They met.

BFFs

“We hit it off right away,” Kaufmann said.”We looked at a few other places in Denver, before Sue selected this one and did this deal. The other properties were of a similar scale. I couldn’t be happier. This has been a great first phase.”

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