All Forum Posts by: Travis Sperr

@Rob Grove I do a bit of business in the Twin Cities so have spent sometime there over the last few years. Denver is a great place to live/work/play a little more expensive to live in compared to your area now, you can jump a round trip flight for $200 and come see enough of the city in a weekend to get a good feel for it. The real  estate investing is currently better in the Twin Cities for ease of finding profitable deals.

Welcome @Chris Provolt best of luck in expanding your knowledge and business.

@Todd Schmitz welcome and congrats on your success so far. Happy to hear of people doing deals in our market where most of the sediment is the lack of deals. It is a good time to be a landlord!

@Michael Imperiale it really depends on what you are hoping to accomplish. If you want to be rid of the house, price it accordingly and move on. You have a better chance of limiting your loss or profiting if you hold it longer and allow the market to continue to recover. If being new doesn't give you the confidence to rent the property on your own, find a great property manager to handle the day to day. There is a cost involved to have management but it would certainly take off the pressure of making the payment without rental income.

@Matthew Lindquist - Zoning is the first place to start, if it can be done it will be about cost. My best guess is that to finish the space to current code with egress, electrical, plumbing, separate entrance, etc. will not prove to be the best use of your money with only $400 a month in additional income.

Not required to disclose in CO. Don't worry though the neighbors will tell the buyers. 

@Tyler Stephens look up Your Castle Real Estate, they provide a lot of free classes and market updates that provide this information in great detail, but in a way anyone can understand it. 

@Tom Horan - it sounds like you intend to be a long term buy and hold investor - if that is the case the real estate cycle means nothing to you in the long term. In the Denver market the average annual appreciation over the last 60 years is 6%, yes it has been 10-12% in the last 3 years but the values today are actually right in line with where they should be if we didn't experience the down turn. Further, when analyzing the data over the last 40 years, even when property values dropped rents leveled off or saw a minimal decrease. Remember that rents have increased as fast as property values in our market. 

You could sit on the sidelines until values come down, but there is a huge (in Donald Trump voice) opportunity cost associated with that. I like to compare it to this - the stock market is at the highest levels ever this morning, did you stop investing in your 401k? 

Best of luck getting in to the market - let me know if I can be a resource.

@Patricia Miller correct, in the areas Ralph mentioned previously in the thread. Although the numbers were more of an example of why houses are not being built in lower priced areas. 

There is a fantastic website/app from First American Title - myfirstam.  you just need a First American Title sales rep, which is just a call to the office. You can look up any property in the States and see all of what you asked for and more, for free. Some county sites are better than others with their reporting.