Here are some fun rankings that our city has received recently. I thought They would be fun to share. 1. Colorado Springs was named “DogTown USA 2008” by Dog Fancy Magazine. The criteria used to select the winning city included plenty of dog-friendly open spaces and dog parks, events celebrating dogs and their owners, high vet-to-dog ratios, abundant pet supply and other services, and municipal laws that support and protect all pets. (07/08) 2. Colorado ranked as the slimmest state for the 18th year in a row. MedMD Health News reports that Colorado cuts the leanest figure, with 18.7% of its adults in the obese range. (07/08) 3. Colorado Springs ranked 7th in the nation in the percentage of its work force employed in high-technology industries during 2006, according to a report by the American Electronics Association. (07/08) 4. Colorado Springs ranked 9th “Best Place to Raise a Family” by BestLife Magazine. Criteria for the study included a safe location, good schools with favorable student-teacher ratios, above-average test scores, plenty of museums, parks and pediatricians also contributed. (06/08) 5. Colorado ranked 3rd in the Milken Institute’s survey of how well states are nurturing a high-tech economy. (06/08)

Interest rates have now gone up to 6.68 percent on 30 year fixed loans and up to 6.18on 15 year fixed loans. The Fed is obviously getting very cautious about flirting with a rise in inflation. Hopefully some of this mess will start to balance itself out because the last thing we want is less and less people being able to qualify for a loan because of a over correction in the terms one must pass to qualify with underwriting.

I came across this story today and I just had to comment on it (http://www.gazette.com/articles/denver_37790___article.html/bus_monument.html) Here we have a gentlemen who openly admits making 25/hr by..........pan handling. The sign he holds says " OLD-TIRED-SICK-HUNGRY CREATIVE BROKE. "
Now I'm no financial genius but making 25/hr hardly characterizes somebody as "broke." Nor is he sick or hungry. This guy makes his money by deceiving us. Now I will give him credit for being brutally honest but this proves the problems with our welfare system. This guy isn't paying taxes, is receiving free health care and is able to eat for free via churches, shelters and food stamps. I would even wager that if this guy wanted to get a university education he would probably qualify to have a full ride grant. All of this while making 25 dollars and hour. WOW! I bring all of this up because (in my humble opinion) the government obviously can't control our welfare system so why would they be able to control our housing crisis. I'm curious to hear opinions on this.

Data is starting to show that home buyers are starting to jump off of the fence and beginning to put in loan applications to buy property. While I think it's fair to say that this doesn't mean that the market is going to be experiencing an immediate rebound it is great to hear of some positive activity. With interest rates rising slightly, many buyers are wanting to get in on the current low rate while there still is time! More and more economists are saying that the market bottomed out (8) weeks ago and now the bar is starting to rise. GOOD NEWS!!!

Here is a clarification from the mayor followed by my thoughts. Lionel Rivera says: As a point of clarification, when I used the term “shift” I mean just that. As an example; We could ask our citizens at a City election to replace the 0.4% Public Safety Sales Tax with a 5.32 mill levy. It would be the same dollar amount, but a more stable funding source. Lionel Rivera-Mayor Hmmmmm. I must admit that the property tax in Colorado Springs is low for the national average. One could also argue that it's a well known fact that we pay the second lowest amount in Taxes (just ahead of Fort Collins) even though we are the second largest city in the state. The problem with tax hikes here is that most businesses are considered "small" (82%.) These employers can rarely afford to give consistent raises and the employees who work for them have limited means. Are they going to be able to afford the hike? Maybe we could find a way to pay city council members a competitive salary. This would not only make the positions more competitive but we could vote people in who have experience in dealing with such huge community issues and they would work full time to boot! Right now we have the rich and/or retired folks on the council because they can actually afford to get paid the peanuts that we give them for the position. Don't get me wrong, there are some excellent leaders on the council (Jan Martin) but unfortunately, I don't see how we can grow and evolve without a full time and deservingly paid council. Let’s bring in efficiency experts that will go through our city and find any slack that is tying up (or wasting) funds. Tabor passed because the citizens were concerned that the city wasn't managing our money and taxes properly. Now the city is countering with the fact that they are now in the hole. Where is the middle ground and as citizens do we feel that our money has been managed properly? <script language="javascript" src="http://reddit.com/button.js?t=1"></script>

With new rules and regulations on FHA loans it always is a challenge staying on top of all of the new information. I recently had a closing that almost didn't go through because FHA said that the seller had not had the property in her hands long enough for the borrowers loan to go through. She had the property under an LLC (that she owned) and then transferred the property to herself when she disbanded the LLC. Even though she was the same owner FHA still insisted that she had to have the property (in her name only) for a minimum of three months. Ultimately, the closing went through however, there were some hefty hurdles that we all had to jump. Now FHA says that it will make an exception to their rule when property becomes foreclosed on. Up until this point, property that was being foreclosed on was having to sit vacant because new buyers couldn't qualify for the loan unless the sellers had it in their name for a minimum of three months. This in turn has been causing the property to attract homeless people, graffiti and has been hurting surrounding property values too! Hopefully the rule alteration will help iron some of these problems out. <script language="javascript" src="http://reddit.com/button.js?t=1"></script>

I had the pleasure of speaking with Fred Crowley (Southern Colorado Economist) about his data on Colorado Springs and its real estate market. Fred gave a lecture on how we are actually seeing a 1.8% annual increase in property values (remember, that number is an average for all neighborhoods combined.) Granted, if one were to track the data back 10 years you would find that in general, Colorado Springs properties generally appreciated about 5%/year. Though the numbers are down I think that it's important to realize that things could be much worse. We have an office in Las Vegas and the things that some of the owners are having to go through are very disturbing. So though this data that Fred presented on the Pikes Peak region looked positive, I still had the question that I am sure you all want to know as well; "When is the market going to get better and when will sellers begin to see a little more bargaining leverage?" The short answer was Spring 2010. The longer more complicated answer was somewhere between Fall 2009 and Summer 2010. Not only are we experiencing a influx of military, but Colorado Springs got ranked on Kiplinger's top 10 list of best places to Live, Work and Play. This is all great news. I will talk more in my next post about how the presidential election can help jolt our economy (regardless of who wins.) <script language="javascript" src="http://reddit.com/button.js?t=1"></script>