Jim Smith, Broker

Some Favorite Home Improvements When Purchasing a New-to-Me Home

Who doesn’t want to make some improvements on a home they have just purchased? Here are some of my personal favorites.

Energy efficiency is very important to Rita and me, so the first thing we do is pay for an energy audit by someone like Andrew Sams of Alpine Building Performance to identify opportunities for making the home more air-tight. This would likely include blowing more insulation into walls or ceilings and caulking around windows. It might also include installing an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) to bring fresh air into the home. This device warms cold outside air in the winter and cools hot outside air in the summer by means of a heat exchanger.

I love bringing sunlight into a home, not with traditional skylights but with sun tunnels. Most people are familiar with the Solatube brand, but I prefer the Velux brand. I had Mark Lundquist of Design Skylights install a 22-inch Velux sun tunnel in my windowless garage and a 14-inch sun tunnel in my windowless laundry room — and four large Velux sun tunnels in the Golden Real Estate office. Ah, sunlight!

Speaking of sunlight, we replaced every light bulb is our house with LEDs which are “daylight” color (like sunlight), not cool white or warm white. CFLs and incandescent bulbs are so 2010!

Installing solar photovoltaic panels is a no-brainer for us, especially now that the cost has dropped so much. Your roof doesn’t have to face due south. Southeast and southwest are good enough. (That’s our situation.) Since you might be driving an electric car someday, install as much PV as Xcel Energy allows to cover that future load. If you have just purchased an EV, Xcel will allow you to install more panels based on anticipated future use.

Don’t you hate climbing a curb to enter your driveway? Developers install those mountable curbs the entire length of the streets in new subdivisions, not knowing exactly where each driveway will be. One of the first things I would do (and have done) is to hire a concrete company to replace the mountable curb with a smooth entrance. It cost over $2,000 for our 3-car-wide driveway, but I love it every time I enter from the street! Caution: the sidewalk will now be sloped slightly and pedestrians could more easily slip on ice, so be prepared to salt your sidewalk to eliminate icing!

When your gas forced air furnace needs replacing, consider replacing it with a heat-pump furnace or mini-splits. And when your gas water heater needs replacing, I suggest buying a heat-pump water heater. The cost is about the same, and, by converting to electricity for both, you will have eliminated the most common sources of carbon monoxide poisoning in your home.

Other improvements I’d consider include: Replacing carpeting with tile in bathrooms; and replacing regular glass with Low-E glass on south-facing windows to reduce the harmful effects of sunlight on furniture, hardwood floors and artwork.

With His Veto of HB-1212, Gov. Polis Ended the Licensing of HOA Managers

Governor Polis surprised everyone with his May 31st veto of House Bill 1212, which would have extended the licensing of Community Association Managers (CAMs).

CAM licensing began in 2015 but was subject to renewal in 2018, under its “sunset” provision. Accordingly, the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) conducted a sunset review recommending renewal of CAM licensing. The Democratically controlled House of Representatives passed a 2018 bill renewing CAM licensing, but the Republican controlled Senate killed it, thereby requiring DORA to enter into a year-long wind-down of the program, with July 1, 2019, as the total ending of CAM licensing.

With the Democrats taking control of both houses of the General Assembly and the governorship this year, observers expected that a bill continuing CAM licensing would be passed by both houses (which it was) and signed by the Governor in time to save the program — but it wasn’t. As a result, when July 1 arrived this month, all CAM licensing ended more abruptly than was anticipated at the end of the legislative session. Gov. Polis’ signature on HB 1212 would have prevented that from happening.

HB 1212 had been weakened somewhat due to aggressive lobbying by the Community Association Institute (CAI) whose membership consists primarily of HOA management companies. Efforts by Stan Hrincevich, an outspoken homeowner advocate and president of the Colorado HOA Forum, to include more protections for homeowners were unsuccessful, and that may have been a factor in the Governor’s veto, but Stan (and I) were stunned that the Governor allowed CAM licensing to end, albeit while ordering DORA to gather stakeholder input on the subject in coming months. Sessions for that purpose have been scheduled for Aug. 14 and 29, Sept. 12, and Oct. 8 at DORA’s Denver offices. You can register to attend in person or by webinar. I have registered to attend by webinar.

The now-ended licensing of HOA managers provided a channel for homeowners to file complaints when they felt cheated or mistreated by their HOA or their HOA’s management company — and there were plenty of complaints, which the CAM office at DORA tracked. Without such an office, homeowners have no path other than taking legal action to get redress of their grievances.

Following the passage of the original CAM licensing law in 2015, managers had to pass background checks, get certified, pay a fee, and pass a state exam in order to be licensed. There were also continuing education requirements.

Starting this month, anyone, including a felon straight out of prison, can be hired as a community manager. HOA management will once again be the only profession in Colorado where unlicensed personnel can function in a fiduciary capacity, managing millions of dollars of other people’s money without oversight.

Video Is Finding Its Way Into Buyer Inspection Reports to Illustrate Issues

Video has been a great listing tool at Golden Real Estate for a decade, but it is finding its way into other aspects of real estate, too. For example, we will often shoot a rough-cut video tour of a listing for an out-of-town buyer who has asked us to preview a property for them.

At a closing last Wednesday, the wife of the out-of-state buyer told me that she saw the listing for the first time in person during the final walk-through. The husband had seen it in person, but she said our narrated video tour was enough for her to agree with her husband to submit an offer..

So, yes, narrated videos like ours are a great listing and selling tool.

But last week, a home inspector came to our office seeking our patronage and said he includes videos in his inspection reports. What a great idea!

I had been so used to getting printed inspection reports (PDFs) that it hadn’t occurred to me that reports could include video. But an increasingly common delivery method for inspection reports is to have the report “in the cloud” and provide a link to it. That approach opens up the possibility of having video clips and not just still photos. I will recommend that inspector to a future buyer, but you can be sure that I also got on the phone and shared that idea with the inspectors I’ve been referring heretofore, some of them for over a decade.

I’ve received inspection reports that were in the cloud before, but none of them contained links to video clips, which could really help to illustrate some of the defects which inspectors uncover.

I hope this idea takes off and becomes a standard in the inspection industry. Now that every cell phone and every digital camera has video capability, it would require no additional hardware for an inspector to shoot video instead of still photos when a video would do a better job of illustrating the issue or defect being described.

One of the advantages of videos is that they include sound. It’s a great way, for example, to illustrate an overly noisy fan motor or garage door opener or the sound as well as the motion of water under a plastic vapor barrier.

With narration by the inspector, a video can also provide more context to a problem, such as its location.

Have You Used an iBuyer Firm? Tell Us About Your Experience

Perhaps you have heard about this new trend in real estate. Best known for this are Zillow Offers and OpenDoor.

I’ll be writing about this topic in the near future, and I’d like to hear from readers who have any experience with this new real estate business model.

I already have an example. One of my current sellers (now under contract) entered into a listing agreement with OpenDoor but had second thoughts about it, got out of the agreement and called me to list their home.

I’d like to have more input before I write about this topic.

We Were Voted ‘Best Real Estate Company’

Every June, Colorado Community Media, publisher of many weekly newspapers, asks readers to vote for their favorite businesses in a multitude of categories.

We were pleased that the readers of the Golden Transcript voted Golden Real Estate “Best Real Estate Company.” Thanks!

Digital Editions & Email Newsletters Are the Future of Newspapers

Are you taking advantage of the “Digital Replica Edition” of the Denver Post? You will not only be able to page through today’s paper, including every YourHub section, but also 30 days of past issues.

As you page through the digital replica of each section, you can single click on any article or ad to make it larger, or double-click on it for more features including printing. On articles, you can enlarge type size for readability.

As subscription prices rise and the circulation of newspapers keeps declining, digital editions are becoming more and more popular. The Denver Post, like other daily newspapers and magazines (and the Denver Business Journal), charges for access to its digital edition, but it is free with any print subscription, even if you pay for less than 7-day home delivery.

Email newsletters and alerts are another digital frontier for newspapers. They contain links that take you to the full articles on their websites. Digital is increasingly how news will be delivered and how newspapers will survive.

If you’re dropping your print subscriptions to newspapers, remember that you can receive my “Real Estate Today” column by email, too. Send your request to me at Jim@GoldenRealEstate.com!

Renovate Your Home for Your Own Enjoyment, Not to Help It Sell Better

Sellers often ask whether they should renovate prior to putting their home on the market. The short answer is “no.” Unless you’re fixing an eyesore, you will be wasting your money.

So, what’s an “eyesore”? I use the term to define something that draws a buyer’s immediate attention in a negative way — a torn carpet, a damaged countertop, a broken window, a weathered and peeling front door, etc.

The closer an eyesore is to the home’s entrance, the more important it will be to fix. If the eyesore is in a far-flung bedroom or the basement, I’m less concerned, so long as the main part of the house is really attractive. By the time a buyer gets to that eyesore, they will either have fallen in love with the house or not. If they have fallen in love by then, the buyer’s response will be more forgiving — “Oh, that’s easy to fix.”

Eliminating eyesores is worth every penny. Other improvements, such as updating a bathroom or kitchen that’s not an eyesore, may return some or much of what you spend, but probably not all. On such improvements, consider the condition of the real estate market. If there’s a shortage of homes like yours — say, a ranch-style home in a desirable neighborhood — then you could probably minimize even the eyesore fixes. If your home will have lots of competition, fixing those eyesores becomes far more important. This is a topic on which you benefit from speaking with a Realtor, given our ready access to such data.

Committed as we at Golden Real Estate are to sustainability, I hate to say it, but installing solar panels produces about the lowest return on investment when it comes to selling your home. You should only invest in solar if you intend to stay in your home for at least five years. You will get your return on investment from the reduced energy bills, not in a higher sale price for your home. In our case, we installed 10 kilowatts of solar at our home, but that was seven years ago, and we don’t plan to sell anytime soon. If you make the same decision, please buy solar instead of leasing. Selling a home with a leased solar system is not as attractive to buyers.

As stated in the headline, make improvements that you want to live with and enjoy, and make them now, not when you’re about to sell. It matters little to Rita and me whether our wonderful new kitchen will return the $40,000 we spent on renovating it, since we will have enjoyed it ourselves for many years. And if you know you’re going to sell eventually, but not soon, spend the money now and enjoy the improvement!

Some of the other improvements Rita and I made soon after buying our home and continue to appreciate over 7 years later include installing Solatubes (to bring sunlight into our windowless garage and laundry room) and an energy audit followed by weatherization improvements. We had acacia hardwood flooring installed, and retrofitted the south-facing windows with Low-E glass. A hybrid gas furnace/heat pump system heats and cools our home. We also installed a hot water recirculation line to provide instant hot water at all faucets.

How to Research Potential Listing Agents

A shortcut that I created, www.Find DenverRealtors.com, takes you to the page on Denver’s MLS for searching agents by name. Note: If you don’t find the agent you’re looking for right away, try entering only their last name, since they may use a nickname or have an initial you didn’t enter. When the agent’s name appears, click on his/her name to go to another web page where you can read his or her profile (assuming they created one) and see current and sold listings, unless they have none.

Click on their listings to see how the agent described each home on the MLS. Did they list all the rooms, not just bedrooms and bathrooms, providing dimensions, or just enter the mandatory fields? Keep in mind that the best indicator of how listing agents will serve you is how they have served previous sellers.

Looking at those listings will answer the most important questions which you’d ask in person, but you won’t have to take their word — the truth is right there in front of you. You’ll learn, for example, whether they did point-and-shoot pictures or had a professional photographer shoot magazine quality photos, and whether they created a real narrated video tour, as we do, or merely a slide show with music.

Some Reflections on Our 4,800-Mile Tesla Road Trip

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my 50th reunion at MIT. What I didn’t say in that column was that Rita and I drove there in our Tesla Model X. After the reunion, we drove north to visit my sister Susan in Maine, then into Canada to explore Quebec City. Returning from there, we drove past Toronto the morning after their NBA victory, noticing many “We the North” banners. Over a 16-day period, we drove 4,800 miles strictly on battery power, stopping at gas stations only to clean bugs off the windshield.

This was our second cross-country trip in the Model X. The first one was to Seattle a year ago. Four years ago we drove to Connecticut and back in a Tesla Model S.

People always ask whether it was hard finding charging stations. No, that’s never an issue in a Tesla, because when you put a destination in the navigation system, it identifies the Supercharger locations along the route and directs you to them like any other destination and tells you how long to charge to reach the next one. These locations are usually adjacent to the highways you’d travel anyway, so it adds little distance to the trip, and the charging sessions are rarely over 50 minutes. Best of all, since we enjoy lifetime free supercharging, the electricity was free. The only cost of the trip was the wear on the tires, various tolls, food and lodging.

I used the Tesla’s self-driving feature constantly to maintain my desired speed and to stay in my chosen lane. Cruise control is automatic, slowing down based on the vehicle ahead of me and maintaining a safe separation. These features make driving far less tiring and far safer. The car would alert me if it didn’t sense my hand on the steering wheel for 30 seconds, which is a good safety feature. I wish you the same opportunity.

Conserving Water Is Likely to Become More Important in Coming Years

My understanding as a layman is that al-though one of the impacts of warmer oceans due to climate change is increased precipitation over land, it won’t be as predictable and consistent, so we need to include water conservation in any discussion of sustainability. Or think of it as water management, since we’ll need to be concerned about flooding just as much as about prolonged droughts.

At the local level, we need to be smart about conserving water. It’s a practice we need to implement in times of abundance, because we can’t be sure when the pendulum will swing the other way and we’ll endure periods of water shortage.

For homeowners, the biggest consumption of water is typically the irrigation of our lawns and landscaping. Even though Rita and I replaced our Kentucky Bluegrass lawn with Bella Bluegrass, which requires less mowing and watering, we still need to use our sprinklers, although not as much. We would have done better to install buffalo grass, which is not as verdant, but requires zero irrigation and mowing. (I can provide the address of a home I know in Golden that installed buffalo grass a couple decades ago.)

There are sprinkler systems which adjust the amount of watering that is done based on rainfall and ground moisture, but I haven’t investigated those devices, since I usually am home and adjust our watering according to the weather. For example, this spring I didn’t turn on our sprinkler system until June 1st because of our unusually wet May.

There are other residential strategies for saving water. I have learned to take showers in which I only run the water to get wet and to rinse off, without running the water while washing.

We also installed 1.2-gallon-per-flush toilets, which perform as well as the 1.6-gpf models. We have a sensor faucet on our kitchen sink which operates like those sensors you’re probably used to seeing in public restrooms. The faucet (by Moen) also allows us to turn the water on and off manually when needed.

We also installed a recirculation line on our water heater, which saves a lot of water by producing hot water more quickly in the kitchen and bathrooms. Think of all the water you run waiting for it to get hot. Not only are you wasting that water, but you paid to heat that water, only to have it cool off sitting in the pipes between your water heater and your sink. You’ll also save energy (i.e., money) by installing such a recirc line. Ask your plumber for an estimate.

High efficiency washing machines are efficient in their use of water, not just energy. Front loaders use less water than the older top loaders, but the new top-loading high efficiency machines, such as our LG unit (the kind with a glass top and no agitator), automatically sense how much water is needed and do an amazing job. We’re glad our front-loading high efficiency washing machine died and had to be replaced!

At the governmental level, I’m surprised that CDOT and other jurisdictions don’t install buffalo grass in the medians and on the shoulders of our highways. Doing so would not only conserve water but save a lot of money on mowing, which can also endanger workers on high-speed highways.

Recently I saw a report on the blue jean industry, which uses an immense amount of water not just to grow the cotton (1,800 gallons per pair of jeans) but even more water to dye them blue!

I expect to learn even more about water conservation and management at this Thursday’s (tonight’s) session on this topic at Golden Real Estate’s office., 17695 S. Golden Road, Golden. It starts at 5 p.m. and is scheduled to last only 1 hour. We still have seats available. Email me (see below) or just show up. The presenter is Ben Wade from the Colorado Water Conservation Board.

If you can’t attend this Thursday’s session, a video of it will be archived by Saturday at www.SustainabilitySeries.info, where you can already find archived videos of the previous five sessions on other sustainability topics.

Please consider coming if you, too, have water conservation or management ideas to share, such as I have done in this column. I’m certainly looking forward to learning things I don’t already know.