Metro-Denver home sales climbed in April as the spring home-selling season kicked off.

4855 Clay is for sale…Northwest Denver home with a large fenced backyard, great layout, and finished basement…$169,000.  Contact Stacie Staub at stacie@staub.com for a private showing before it’s gone

I just came across this cool little video on Facebook by WalkDenver…and I agree, Denver is a very easily walkable city, and with the new pedestrian bridges linking Downtown Denver to the Highlands, it’s even better!  Get out there and walk somewhere!

The Gold Line generally follows the path of the freight railroads north out of Denver Union Station to Utah Junction, east of 60th Avenue and Pecos Street, where it turns west and follows the BNSF Railway line into Olde Town Arvada and on to Wheat Ridge. There are seven stations on the Gold Line in addition to the terminal at Denver Union Station. They are at 41st Avenue and Fox Street, Pecos, Federal, Sheridan, Olde Town, Arvada Ridge and Ward Road.

The opening of the Gold Line is scheduled for 2016, and the current schedule has trains operating every 15 minutes in each direction throughout the day between 6:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., and every 30 minutes between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m. and from 6:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m..

The initial construction consists of utility relocations. Two such pieces of work have been completed on Denver Water lines in the section of the project that is shared with the Northwest Rail in Denver. These were near 38th Avenue and Fox Street, and 48th Avenue and Fox Street. Water line relocation is getting underway at other locations on 48th Avenue and on the site of the former Denver Post printing plant. Demolition of several buildings have also taken place, including two in the 4300 block of Jason Street in Denver that are the site of one of the project’s two major power substations.

Upcoming work includes relocation of wastewater and gas utilities in the path of the track alignment, Nearby businesses and residents will receive specific notices before the start of these activities.

For more information, please contact Tariana Navas-Nieves, Gold Line Public Information Manager at 720-775-9582 or via email tariana.navas@dtpjv.com You can also click on the Gold Line banner on the main page ofwww.arvada.org

Homes like this one, 4968 Newton, are typical of the west side of North Denver.

Check out the article:

In northwest Denver, yogurt shops and trendy restaurants have replaced the Mexican bakeries and boutiques of a decade ago. Over on the northeast side in Green Valley Ranch, cul-de-sacs and two-story homes sprout where tumbleweeds and prairie dogs once thrived.

A massive transformation has occurred along Denver’s northern side — from the changing demographics in the northwest to a population boom near Denver International Airport to the east.

“It has been amazing,” said Bob Stretch, walking with his wife, Wanda, through his Green Valley Ranch neighborhood. “When we moved here, there was nothing much, just open fields. Now, there are homes everywhere.”

In the past decade, Denver has added more than 45,000 people, mostly in far northeast Denver — a change that is forcing a contentious debate among City Council members on how to redraw the city’s legislative districts.

Every 10 years, the council must use figures from the census to evenly carve up the city into 11 districts that members represent. The goal is to keep neighborhoods together and adequately represent “communities of interest.”

The normally collegial council has found itself squabbling on the council floor, alleging racial politicking and drawing lines over proposed changes.

Today, a committee meeting with a public-comment session is expected to be passionate.

“You are looking at all the classic gerrymandering strategies,” said Brian Timoney, who has been following the redistricting process. “The real story of Denver is what is happening in the north, especially the dramatic growth in the Green Valley Ranch and DIA area. When that area grows so dramatically as (compared) to the rest of the city, that is going to have a ripple effect.”

No two communities better exemplify Denver’s change than the Highland neighborhood in northwest Denver and Green Valley Ranch just south of DIA.

Booming near DIA

In 1973, the city and county of Denver annexed the 3,078 acres from Adams County that would become Green Valley Ranch.

By the early 1980s, in an effort to draw more homebuyers, the developer bargained with Denver’s school board, offering a desegregation plan to the district, which was under a federal court order to integrate its schools.

If the district built Green Valley Ranch schools, the developer promised to “sell enough homes to minority groups to keep the court-appointed balance.”

But the true growth happened only this past decade.

Between 2000 and 2010, Green Valley Ranch added 21,000 people for a total of 29,000 residents — far surpassing the combined totals of Stapleton and Lowry and roughly the size of Wheat Ridge.

With about 8,000 homes, Green Valley Ranch is still only about 40 percent built out. The demographics are almost evenly distributed among Latinos (37 percent), whites (24 percent) and blacks (28 percent).

“That is one thing that is great about Green Valley Ranch: It’s not just all one type of people,” said Pat Hamill, chief executive of Oakwood Homes, Green Valley Ranch’s developer since 1989.

“When you can look in the whole metro area for growth, you can’t go west, south is pretty much done and north is difficult because of water issues,” Hamill said. “It is really the only place Denver can grow.”

The land that was once the domain of jackrabbits and cattle now is Denver’s most suburban-looking neighborhood, with model homes starting in the $100,000s, a highly rated golf course, new schools and one of the most popular libraries in Denver.

“It is the best-kept secret in Denver,” Hamill said.

But Green Valley Ranch appeared to be on a disastrous path a few years ago.

In 2008, USA Today featured the neighborhood as one of the communities hit hardest by the country’s foreclosure crisis. At the time, lenders had taken action on nearly 1,000 of the 8,000 Green Valley Ranch homes. Owners had defaulted on more than $171 million in mortgages, the newspaper reported.

Years before that, an ABC News segment on troubled schools called Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Green Valley Ranch the country’s worst school, showing hidden video of out-of-control students.

Hamill said that segment forced him to get involved with improving the schools. Things have turned around, he said. New charter schools have opened, Martin Luther King Jr. Early College has been reformed, and an intense turnaround plan has been started for other schools.

Last month, Hamill said, Oakwood Homes sold 25 new houses in the neighborhood.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who has lived in Green Valley Ranch since 2004, isn’t surprised by the recent growth.

“It’s the affordability, the opportunity to have more house, and it’s a growing community,” Hancock said. “People want the newness. We like it because we can shop, eat and recreate without having to travel far from home.”

Highland transforms

On the other side of the city, a different kind of change is occurring.

Northwest Denver has lost population over the past 10 years, mostly because of an exodus of Latinos. The starkest example is occurring in the Highland neighborhood, an enclave that borders Federal Boulevard to the west, West 38th Avenue to the north, Speer Boulevard to the south and Interstate 25 to the east.

Nearly 4,000 Latinos left the neighborhood between 2000 and 2010, census figures say.

Now, 57 percent of the 8,429 residents are white — twice as many as were there in 2000.

Francisco Almanza III knew change was coming to the neighborhood when he noticed dog walkers carrying plastic poop bags passing by his family’s Mexican restaurant.

“This area was always considered dangerous at night, and one night I saw a woman walking her poodle,” he said. “And I thought, ‘Are you crazy?’ ”

Patzcuaro’s Mexican Restaurant has been an institution on 32nd Avenue since 1978.

Almanza’s 68-year-old father, Francisco Jr., recalls the street closing down every year for massive Mexican Independence Day celebrations. On weekends, Mexican bands would pack the next-door Holiday Theatre, and numerous Latino businesses lined the block near his restaurant.

Now, 75 percent of the restaurant’s clientele is white. The authentic Mexican cuisine is still being served under photos of Pancho Villa on the walls and Mexican soccer on the flat-screen.

The block that used to be called “Little Mexico” has changed as Latino-oriented businesses were driven away by tripled rents.

A yogurt shop has opened where a Mexican bridal shop once stood, an Italian ice-cream shop sits in place of a Mexican jewelry store, and the Holiday Theatre has been remodeled and is courting new tenants.

“There is both good and bad about the change,” said Tom Bauer, who for three decades has lived across from Patzcuaro’s in a house once owned by Adolph Coors. “It has lost a lot of the diversity that it once had. But it was a pretty sketchy neighborhood.”

Years ago, Rebecca Hunt remembers seeing a body on the street in the Highland neighborhood. She feared drive-by shootings but watched everything slowly change after Coors Field was constructed a few miles away in the mid-1990s.

“Everything close to the field became a hot property,” she said.

As property values climbed, families that had been in their homes for generations sold for top dollar. Younger, wealthier residents with smaller families moved in. They remodeled older homes or tore them down to rebuild. They demanded better schools and celebrated when a pedestrian bridge was built connecting the neighborhood to downtown.

Developers put in condominiums, and trendy restaurants opened to cater to the new crowd.

Hunt, president of Highland United Neighbors Inc., believes the neighborhood’s population, which had dropped by 2,100 in 2010 to 8,429, will bounce back.

“We are in a weird period because we are going to boom,” she said.

Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367,jpmeyer@denverpost.comortwitter.com/jpmeyerdpost

Search for homes in North Denver

Low mortgage rates and falling home values have brought housing within reach to more families than ever before, according to the latest National Association of REALTORS® housing affordability index.

Housing affordability in January reached its highest level since NAR began tracking it in 1970. The index — which tracks median home price, median family income, and the average mortgage rate — reached 206.1 in January.

“This is the first time the housing affordability index has broken the 200 mark, meaning the typical family has roughly double the income needed to purchase a median-priced home,” says Moe Veissi, 2012 NAR president. “For buyers who can qualify for a mortgage, now is a very good time to become a home owner.”

An index of 100 means that median-income household has exactly enough income to qualify for the purchase of a median-priced existing single-family home, also accounting for a 20 percent down payment and 25 percent of gross income devoted to the mortgage principle and interest payments.

NAR projects that affordability will remain high for the remainder of the year.

“Housing inventory levels have declined to a point where conditions are becoming much more balanced in much of the country,” Veissi said. ”If access to credit improves, we could see a much more meaningful increase in home sales and broader stabilization in home prices with modest gains in areas with stronger job growth.”

Source: National Association of REALTORS®

Photo: Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate via Facebook

Here is part of the article:

DENVER—When Pat Wooster-Jackson needed an outfit for her daughter’s wedding, she drove 25 miles to this city’s high-end Cherry Creek mall, bypassing dozens of clothing stores at three other shopping centers.

The trek by the 62-year-old retired nurse shows why the carnage in retailing—caused by finicky consumers, store closings and the growth of online shopping—has hurt some of the nation’s malls less than others.

Most markets are dominated by a few malls. The winners enjoy full parking lots, strong sales and high rents from retailers who are willing to pay up for prime locations. But as Kris Hudson explains on The News Hub, the remainder are getting slammed.

Most U.S. cities are dominated by a few malls. The winners—like the Cherry Creek Shopping Center—enjoy full parking lots, strong sales and high rents. It helps to be a luxury mall, because affluent shoppers were quicker than most consumers to bounce back from the recession.

The rest—average and subpar malls with lackluster stores—are getting slammed especially hard by online shopping, the spread of discount retailers and store closures by such mall stalwarts as Sears Holdings Corp.,Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and Gap Inc. These malls are suffering from high vacancy rates, declining numbers of shoppers or have had to shut down completely.

“The other shopping centers, I don’t shop at them often, if at all,” Ms. Wooster-Jackson said last month as she walked through Cherry Creek’s busy corridors toward Colorado’s only Neiman Marcus store.

Cherry Creek is owned by Taubman Centers Inc., which owns, manages or leases 26 malls that are near the top of their respective markets. Average annual sales at Taubman’s properties have risen nearly 28% since 2009 to $641 per square foot.

By contrast, sales at CBL & Associates Properties Inc., which owns 87 midrange malls, have risen by less than 8% since 2009 to $336 per square foot.

The divide between the mall world’s haves and have-nots is expected to grow, with major repercussions for shoppers, retailers and tax-hungry local governments. National retailers, along with many shoppers, are retreating to the stronger malls. Among them is Abercrombie & Fitch, which is in the midst of closing 300 stores by 2015. On a call with investors last month, Abercrombie Chairman and Chief Executive Mike Jeffries said the apparel retailer’s “vision” was for Abercrombie stores in “better malls” to uphold the chain’s quality of stores and results.

Struggling malls, meanwhile, face pressure to admit nonretail tenants such as community colleges or fitness clubs or to adapt to new uses, especially if Sears closes more stores.

Of the about 1,000 traditional malls in the U.S.—defined as enclosed shopping centers of several hundred thousand square feet or more—a third generate annual sales per square foot of less than $300, and so may be more vulnerable the factors hurting malls these days, according to real-estate analysis firm Green Street Advisors Inc. By comparison, there are just 142 strong malls—those with average sales of $400 per square foot or more. The industry average: $350.

“Our perspective is that 10% of the malls in the U.S. won’t be full-fledged malls a decade from now,” said Green Street analyst Cedrik Lachance.

 Kris Hudson/The Wall Street JournalThe Town Center at Aurora is one of several malls in the Denver area that is struggling to maintain business.

The Cherry Creek mall is near the peak, generating estimated annual sales per square foot of $760, according to Green Street. Located in one of Denver’s wealthiest neighborhoods, it has almost no vacancies and is home to about 40 retailers not found elsewhere in Colorado, including Tiffany & Co. and Burberry.

In Denver, as in many cities, mall developers overbuilt during the housing boom, adding some 9 million square feet of retail space between 2006 and 2009.

That left the seven-county Denver metro area and its 2.8 million people with nearly 161 million square feet of mall space, or 57 square feet per capita, according to real-estate researcher CoStar Group Inc. Open-air shopping centers, anchored by stores like Target Corp., Ross Stores Inc. and Bass Pro Shops, accounted for much of the increase.

Of its 1980s-era malls, five have died since the late 1990s, including four in the past decade. The latest victim is Westminster Mall, a 1.2-million-square-foot suburban complex that used to boast stores like Dillard’s Inc. and Montgomery Ward. The final blow fell in January, when Sears said it would close its store there.

Westminster city officials are having most of the mall bulldozed as part of a plan to redevelop the 105-acre site as shops, residences and offices. “We saw over a decade ago the coming demise of the Westminster Mall,” said City Manager Brent McFall.

Other Denver malls are vulnerable to the factors that helped fell the Westminster Mall. Four of them are showing signs of distress: high vacancies, tepid sales and the replacement of national chains with lower-rent local merchants.

They include Twin Peaks Mall, a half-empty, 550,000-square-foot complex in the northern suburb of Longmont, whose sales are just $175 a square foot, and which is set to lose its Sears this year.

In January, Newmark Merrill Cos. bought Twin Peaks for $8.5 million and plans to spend $25 million to $50 million to redevelop it, probably as a mixed-use project.

“The biggest problem we’re having now is people are going out of town for everything,” said Ken Dahl, owner of the K&D Helmets sports memorabilia store in Twin Peaks, referring to the newer, open-air shopping centers several miles north and east of Denver. “There’s nothing to keep them here.”

Most of the Denver-area malls razed in recent years were redeveloped into combinations of stores, offices and apartments, which have rarely generated the sales tax. the primary revenue source for Colorado cities, that their predecessors did.

The Villa Italia Mall yielded $3.5 million in sales tax for the suburb of Lakewood in 2000. The mall was demolished in 2001 and 2002, and rebuilt into a complex of offices, rental apartments and condos.

That complex, called Belmar, generated sales tax of just $1.4 million for Lakewood last year. Belmar’s owners, however, say it provided other benefits to Lakewood, such as nearly full apartments, condos and offices.

Westminster city officials working on the Westminster Mall site say they aren’t aiming to replicate the mall’s sales-tax haul, which was $9 million at its height in 1999. Rather, they say, they are hoping to develop a mix of stores, offices and residences.

“Our goal is to build a community,” said Sue Grafton, Westminster’s economic development chief. “We could have replaced that $9 million with two or three [big-box] tenants, but that would not have given us the beginning of the legacy project that we want.”

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B1

Keep on Reading:

Westminster Mall Gone, Slated for Redevelopment

It’s About Time, Westminster Mall Redevelop

Annual percentage rate (APR): this is the actual interest rate you pay to borrow money. The APR includes the base interest rate, points, and any other add-on loan fees and costs. All lenders must follow the same rules to ensure the accuracy of the APR, so it provides consumers with a good basis for comparing the cost of loans from different lenders.

Automated Underwriting: we run your loan application through a computer system that evaluates certain numbers and information to determine if the loan appears to meet program guidelines.

Cash-out Refinance: a refinance where you borrow more than you need to pay off the original loan to get cash in hand. It’s an alternative to a home equity loan.

Closing costs: these fees are typically not part of the actual mortgage, and include such costs as title search, origination fees, discount points, prepayment of taxes and insurance, and real estate transfer taxes.

Disclosures: within three days of my receiving your fully completed loan application, you will receive these legal documents that explain your rights as a borrower on a mortgage loan. Disclosures will also show you the details of your loan amount, costs, monthly payments and payback terms.

Discount points: you can pay points at closing as a type of buydown in order to lower your overall interest rate and mortgage payment. One point equals 1% of the home loan value.

Good Faith Estimate: this is a federally regulated estimate of all the fees associated with your closing coats, including pre-paids, escrow items and lender charges.

Home price index: this is an industry tool that provides historical data on residential home prices in various regions.

HUD-1 statement: this document itemizes all of your closing costs and shows the fees you paid, such as real estate commissions, loan fees, points and escrow amounts. Also known as the settlement sheet or closing statement.

Loan modification: your lender may be able to modify the terms of your loan to make it easier for you to continue making payments and avoid foreclosure, without refinancing the loan. Generally it involves reducing the interest rate and thus the amount of your monthly payment for a fixed period of time.

Loan origination fee: the fee you pay for the lender’s services in administering your loan. A loan origination fee of 1 to 2 percent of the mortgage amount is common.

Loan-to-value (LTV) ratio: your lender will divide the amount of the loan by the asking price of the home and come up with a percentage. A high LTV, such as 90%, means you only have to come up with 10% cash as a down payment, while a lower LTV, such as 70%, means you need to come up with more cash to put down, but you may avoid the need for private mortgage insurance.

Mortgage insurance: when buyers take out a mortgage with less than 20% in cash to put down, lenders require them to pay mortgage insurance, a monthly premium that is added to the mortgage. This protects the lender should a buyer default on the home loan.

Mortgage Qualifying Ratios: these are the front-end and back-end ratios, which we use to calculate how much of your income is spent on your bills and how much will go toward your mortgage.

PITI: principal, interest, taxes and insurance: the four elements of a monthly mortgage payment. Payments of principal and interest go toward repaying the loan, while the payment for taxes and insurance goes into an escrow account to cover those fees when they are due.

Processing fees: lender fees associated with creating the loan or mortgage, usually part of closing costs.

Rate lock: this guarantees your interest rate for a set period of time while you complete the purchase of your home. Rates locks do expire but they can be extended, generally for an additional fee.

Secondary mortgage market: when we originate loans, we often sell them on the secondary market in order to raise more capital for more loans. Investors purchase our residential mortgages as a financial tool.

Truth-in-lending disclosure (TIL): this document discloses your interest rate, loan amount, the amount you will have paid upon the loan’s maturity and other relative financial information.

Underwriting: this is where your loan application is analyzed to ensure you will be able to repay the loan.

This lovely home in Central Arvada has been completely remodeled…fresh paint, updated floor plan, finished basement…ready to move in and enjoy, or purchase as a cash-flow rental in a popular neighborhood with great schools, recreational facilities, shopping, restaurants, open space…you are going to LOVE living here!