January is the month when Realtors take stock and write checks for about $1,800 in order to stay in the game. It’s a modest amount, but with the number of transactions, and thus commissions, dwindling to 467 sales closed through the Multiple Listing Service in 2009, there are signs that some of Steamboat’s roughly 395 Realtors are considering their options.

William Bone, president of the National Auction Group in Gadsen, Ala., said the owners’ intent is to sell one of the 15 condominiums with no minimum price but with reserves on the remaining units.

The depth of the 2009 building slump here was underscored this week when the Routt County Regional Building Department issued a report showing that just eight permits were issued all year for new single-family homes in Steamboat Springs city limits.

It was open house night in Steamboat Springs on Wednesday, as Realtors took the temperature of holiday visitors to see whether they could turn the merely curious into solid sales leads.

Thanks to a rare winter storm front brewed up by growing sales of condominium intervals, an unexpected $26.7 million sale of mineral rights, and the steady closings of luxury condos put under contract in 2007, the Routt County real estate market in November saw its best month in a year that has tried the perseverance of the industry here.

Mary Weiss didn’t have to think too long about what to give her tenants for a holiday gift this month. “We have 50-plus tenants, most in one-bedroom units, and we gave them all a $25 gift certificate off their rent,” Weiss said, who is owner of Central Park Management.

The Routt County Board of Commissioners offered a ray of hope last week to 1,155 lot owners in some of the original subdivisions at Stagecoach. The commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to reject a proposal from the Morrison Creek Metropolitan Water and Sanitation District to cap the number of sealed sewage vaults that can be installed on the lots.

New two-room suites  with mini kitchens are expected to appeal to ski vacationers.

The gondola towers rising from Wildhorse Meadows are tangible evidence of the steady progress being made at Wildhorse despite the down economy. But closings on 30-plus condominiums at Trailhead Lodge can be expected to continue at a gradual pace for months to come.

Chances are, locals have driven by the property of longtime Steamboat residents Mike Kortas and his wife, Nina Darlington, many times without fully appreciating what they were looking at. The entire 13 acres is available for $1.8 million or broken into its component parts through Realtor Scott Eggleston.

"Fractional purchases are made on the basis of frequency of use,” Irish said. “With the high cost of whole ownership, people often look at how often they plan to use a condominium. Many people can’t justify the capital outlay. If they only expect to use it two or three times a year, fractionals look very attractive. You get very high quality and great locations for an amount that makes sense.”

Unlike actual sales, which often aren’t recorded until a month or more after the contract was signed, pending sales are more indicative of current activity.

Michelle House and Rene Mattone have taken divergent paths during the past 13 months to realize their dreams of affordable housing in Steamboat Springs. Today, they live in beautiful new condominiums within 600 yards of each other. And although both professional women were prepared a year ago to buy deed-restricted condos that would limit appreciation in their new homes, it hasn’t worked out that way.

When the two-story condominium in the Val Gardena building at The Trails at Storm Meadows sold for $1.225 million this week, it was swimming against a brisk current in the local market.

The developers intended that the price of the lots would allow families to build 1,500 to 1,700-square-foot homes, and obtain 90 percent loans on 30-year fixed mortgages. The hope was that a 1,500-square-foot home could be built there for about $360,000 including land, construction and a budget for appliances and extras.

The elevators will cost about $35,000 apiece, and although Olsen has taken care to design a point of interest at each landing, in the end they’ll have a hard time competing with the visual impact of the completed four-story staircase.

The 10,654-square-foot building will be devoted exclusively to the bank’s use. It is being built on a 1-acre triangular lot immediately west of the movie theater. The site originally was anticipated to house a freestanding restaurant when Wildhorse Marketplace came through the planning process in 2003.

Steamboat luxury home developer Shayne Macher­owski has made a study of the natural light that sculpts the pocket valley where Fish Creek tumbles out of a geologic fault line leading down from the Continental Divide.

Kathleen Titus reluctantly has resigned herself to giving up her Earthship in North Routt, which means Realtor Darrin Fryer has a new listing that stands out among the 3,000-plus offerings on the multiple listing service.

A Houston-based development firm that owns Slate Creek Ranch just northwest of the Steamboat Springs Airport is tentatively pursuing a plan to build as many as 235, 5-acre home sites and a 36-hole golf course. The development would occur on 1,150 acres that share a boundary with city limits.

Stagecoach developer Ji-ang Song left the courthouse with a small victory Tuesday after Routt County commissioners agreed in concept to award him a zone change needed to develop 432 dwelling units just east of Stagecoach Reservoir. Commissioners Nancy Stahoviak and Doug Monger agreed that Song and his development consultants had modified their original plan enough to meet the criteria for a zone change from agriculture and forestry to zoning that allows a master-planned, increased-density community.

Realtors in Steamboat Springs were keeping a lookout for entry-level buyers this month, as the Routt County market showed signs of a late summer upswing. During the two-week period from Aug. 6 to 20, records on file at the Routt County Assessor’s Office reflect 20 real estate closings, not including timeshare sales.

Price reductions and an opening buy-down of mortgage payments have helped the Aspens at Walton Creek townhomes find a little August sweet spot, with three closings and a fourth under contract. “It’s kind of become a buyer’s market. They were able to be a little more flexible on price and they helped buy down the interest rate for the next three years, which will (temporarily) lower my payments,” recent buyer Brad Luth said.

Slopeside Grill is for sale, and Jim Cook expects it to be in new hands before ski season starts. The restaurant is in Torian Plum Plaza along the slopes of Steamboat Ski Area. Chris Corna owned the restaurant. When Corna died in May, Slopeside went to his parents, the beneficiaries of his estate. Cook, of Colorado Group Real­ty, is handling the sale.

The biggest possible advantage to the plan is that homeowners won't need to come up with any up-front money to pay for improvements – which can range from upgrades to insulation, windows, furnaces and water heaters to rooftop solar panels. Instead, homeowners would take out a loan from a county fund, then repay the loan through an increase to their property taxes.

Specifically, the HERA provisions say that if the annual percentage rate, or APR, of a mortgage — or any loan for that matter — increases more than .125 percent, or by one eighth, the lender must reissue an updated truth-in-lending statement and give the customer an additional three days to study it.

Greg Danziger and Eliese Pivarnik of Colorado Group Realty  recently earned the designation of Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) following completion of training in foreclosure avoidance and short sales.  Their development of a new specialty comes at a time when the Steamboat market is seeing distressed homeowners being confronted by the foreclosure process.

The promise of a free meal, a $100 gift card or even a few nights gratis lodging may pull you into the sales presentation at a timeshare resort. The question of whether it makes sense to invest tens of thousands of dollars may send you away puzzled — or worse, second-guessing the decision you made to sign the papers.

Although there is very little variance among the seven studios, seven one-bedroom and 24 two-bedroom units, there is a substantial range of prices within each category.

The variety of prices can be attributed to the quality of the view, Pearson said. Some units look out on the white whale that is the public Tennis Center at Steamboat Springs, while others have views of Thunderhead or across the South Valley to Blacktail Mountain.

The new formula is based on construction costs of $145 per square foot, land costs that are calculated at 20 percent of construction costs and other smaller factors. City staff had previously suggested that construction costs be calculated at $200 a square foot and that land costs be calculated at 25 percent of construction costs.

“Until foreclosures have been significantly reduced and housing inventory reaches a more normal level, there can be no true housing recovery. The FHA–HAMP program will go a long way in achieving these important goals by helping FHA servicers bring mortgages current, buy down loans by up to 30 percent of the unpaid principal balance, and defer these amounts until the first mortgage is paid off.

One of the best angling spots on the Yampa River is back on the market for $28 million — and just 22 months after it sold for $19.4 million. Realtor Brian Smith, of Hall & Hall, has co-listed the Yampa Tailwaters Preserve 514-acre ranch with Randall Hannaway, of Colorado Group Realty. The listing is on behalf of Alpine River Club and investors in a private fishing operation. The property straddles the Yampa River where it pours out of the Catamount Dam, about seven miles south of Steamboat Springs.

On Tuesday, an activist group in Minnesota filed a lawsuit seeking to stop home foreclosures in that state. Mark Ireland, an attorney with the Minnesota-based Foreclosure Law Relief Project, said the government has failed to establish the procedures needed to ensure the fair and uniform administration of the program. Loan servicers are not required to tell a homeowner why they were denied a loan modification.

City Planning Director Tom Leeson said Thursday that the new fee will be the prevailing fee at closing, presumably the amount council approves during a scheduled Aug. 4 vote on revisions to the city’s community housing ordinance.

New U.S. home sales rose by the largest amount in more than eight years last month, in another sign the housing market is finally bouncing back from the worst downturn in decades. The Commerce Department said Monday that sales rose 11 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 384,000, from an upwardly revised May rate of 346,000.

The U.S. housing market has started to recover from the most far-reaching crisis since the Great Depression, data released Thursday shows. Sales of previously occupied homes rose for the third month in a row in June, the National Association of Realtors reported. That hasn't happened since early 2004, during the boom.

Members of the Community Alliance intend to hit the streets this weekend with a petition drive meant to ensure public votes on future major annexations to Steamboat Springs. Steve Aigner, community organizer for the Community Alliance of the Yampa Valley, gave the Steamboat Springs City Council an ultimatum to that effect Tuesday night at Centen­nial Hall.

Construction of new U.S. homes rose in June to the highest level in seven months, a sign builders are starting to regain confidence as they emerge from the housing bust. The Commerce Department said Friday that construction of new homes and apartments jumped 3.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 582,000 units, from an upwardly revised rate of 562,000 in May.

The gondola will cover the 2,000-foot distance to the resort’s base in four minutes and will feature four groups of two, six-passenger cabins for a capacity of 340 people per hour.

The Boulder developers of a set of duplex townhomes in the mixed aspen and conifer forest at 2330 Val d’ Isere Circle moved earth and heaven to realize their latest project.

A decision about whether to annex the proposed Steamboat 700 master-planned community west of city limits could be delayed again, a prospect that is frustrating Principal and Project Manager Danny Mulcahy. A Steamboat Springs City Council vote on annexation originally was scheduled for July in a pre-annexation agreement the city signed with Steamboat 700.

Who knew there was a Western movie set tucked away inside a private riding arena in Steamboat’s south valley. When Candy and Maury Bunn built storage units into the north end of their arena on Routt County Road 14C, Candy persuaded her husband to create scaled-down Western facades on the cabinets. She employed her artistic skills to complete the scene.

There is a clear trend home prices declines are moderating - another sign the beleaguered housing market is stabilizing, according to data released Tuesday. While the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of 20 major cities tumbled by 18.1 percent, it marked the third straight month the decline was not a record. And yearly losses in 13 metros improved compared to March.

Gary and Teri Wall hope to elevate the reputation of Routt County builders. Construction companies some­times get a bad rap, Gary Wall said, and the two think the formation of a home builders group could help. Along with the Home Builders Association of Northwest Colorado, they’ve scheduled the first meeting of the Home Builders Association of Steamboat Springs and Routt County.

The town of Hayden and Oregon-based Robinson Con­struction have agreed on a deal to repair infrastructure at Lake Village subdivision. The neighborhood in southern Hayden has sat unoccupied since Robinson filed liens in September 2007, alleging it had not been paid for work. The developer, Mountain Adventure Property Investments, has since entered bankruptcy proceedings. But months of negotiations have paid off for the town and Robinson Construction. The company expects to get to work in a few days, said Kirk Moisan, a project executive for Robinson Construction.

Nationwide home sales may have finally hit bottom, new data shows, but a host of thorny problems are hindering any recovery. Sales of previously occupied homes rose by 2.4 percent from April to May — the third monthly increase this year — but the results missed analysts' expectations.

John and Jaret Duty, of Bucking Rainbow Outfitters, got the ideal tubing location they’ve long coveted, and Mike and Colleen Miller got the new lease they needed for Sunpies Bistro. The Dutys, through the new business entity Bucking Rainbow LLC, recently closed on the purchase of the building at 735 Yampa St. that houses Sunpies. They purchased the building for $1.2 million from James Reichert.

Local lenders, real estate agents and appraisers are bemoaning recently enacted appraisal regulations that have frustrated an already difficult market and spoiled potential sales, refinancings and efforts to access home-equity lines of credit. The Home Valuation Code of Conduct was implemented May 1 and prohibits communication between appraisers and real estate agents, loan officers or mortgage brokers. Instead, appraisals must be ordered through appraisal-management companies, new middlemen in the process that cycle through a roster of appraisers and take a cut of their fees.

The National Association of Home Builders says its housing market index slipped by one point in June, reflecting many builders' uncertainty about when their business prospects might improve.

Prudential Steamboat Realty agents Cheryl Foote, Cam Boyd, Pam Vanatta and the Olson Team were recognized in the first quarter as top agents in the Prudential network in Colorado for residential sales.

Multimillion dollar commercial property listings are popping up in downtown Steamboat this month like glacier lilies at the edge of the snow line. Riverfront Partners, led by Ellen and Rick Fauss of Fremont, Neb., have listed the restaurant building housing the Steamboat Yacht Club at 811 Yampa St. for $3 million. They purchased the building and two adjacent development parcels for $4.5 million in July 2008.

The annexation process for Steamboat 700 reaches an important juncture tonight as the developers and City Council furrow their brows over $80 million in public capital projects and how to pay for everything from roads to fire trucks to enhanced water rights.

Edgemont topped out to its final height of eight stories ahead of schedule late last month, and already contracted owners who want turn-key furniture packages are being asked to finalize their choices. "These are the times when your head is spinning,” said Garrett Simon, vice president of development for The Atira Group. "We’re ahead of schedule, and we want our owners to be able to spend as much of ski season as possible in their new homes.”

When the tap fees at Stagecoach increased from $8,000 to $30,000 per new home, the Morrison Creek Metropolitan Water and Sanitation District heard plenty of feedback from residents, landowners and real estate agents. After a month of meetings with residents concerned about the hike, the panel voted to repeal the increases and set fees at $10,000 instead.

The Jon and Susan Been home overlooking Strawberry Park from 10 acres on Tatanka Ridge sold to Jack and Mary McClurg, of Lone Tree, on March 31 for $2.5 million, $600,000 less than what the Beens paid for the property in late June 2006. The listing broker was Nick Metzler of Colorado Group Realty. Cheryl Foote of Prudential Steamboat Realty brought the buyers to the transaction.

Steamboat Springs — The Steamboat Springs Planning Com­mission gave its strong blessing Thursday night to a bundle of amendments that will pave the way for taller, denser and more predictable developments at the base of Steamboat Ski Area. Commissioners voted, 6-1, to approve dimensional standards that will increase the highest allowable height at the base area from 67 feet to 105 feet.

The year of the crane has come to a conclusion at One Steamboat Place.
The two yellow construction cranes at the 80-unit luxury condominium project at the base of Steamboat Ski Area were disassembled May 20 to 22. The job required a third specialized crane designed to work in close with very heavy loads. Once that work was done, a fourth crane was called in to take down the third crane.

The number of appeals of property tax valuations received by the office of Routt County Assessor Mike Kerrigan has almost doubled in the seven days since May 20. Kerrigan says he still hasn’t seen the high volume of appeals he originally anticipated, but that doesn’t meant it still won’t happen before the June 1 deadline.

The thousands of acres of dying evergreen trees in Northwest Colorado represent a tremendous timber resource, but let’s face it: lodgepole pine doesn’t always get the respect it deserves. But to understand how beautiful beetle-kill lodgepole can be in a family home, just tour Steve and Currie Meyer’s timber-frame home at 2755 Abbey Road in West End Village.

Paul Franklin, developer of The Olympian at Fifth and Yampa streets, is testing his hypothesis that interested buyers in his downtown luxury condo building can be motivated to get in the game with a 20 percent price discount.
For his most expensive penthouses, that could add up to $395,000.

Routt County’s unemployment rate increased from 6 percent in March to 7.6 percent in April.

A trio of Horizons Spec­ialized Services clients is at home in a new neighborhood this spring. The agency closed last month on the $450,000 purchase of the former Bockelman home, at 40535 North Star Place in Steamboat II.

Steamboat Springs — When Mark and Diane Halvorson, of Snow Country Construction, began three years ago to build one of the most expensive spec homes in city limits, they paid attention to every luxury touch, right down to the ceramic-tiled dog shower in the garage.

Statistics through April from the Routt County Regional Building Department confirm what anybody associated with the building trades already knows: 2009 is shaping up to be one tough year for the construction industry.

Geothermal technology draws heat from the earth using geologic water sources such as a natural hot spring or a high-temperature well to heat a building. Geoexchange, on the other hand doesn’t require a heated water source.

While she waited in vain for financing, Mattone had begun working with a Realtor. On her way to catch a movie one night, she stumbled onto a completed two-bedroom condominium at the Aspens (one of only a handful in an overall townhome project). It was under contract, but the buyer’s financing had evaporated. She jumped on it and bought a unit with hardwood flooring, a gas fireplace with stone facing and granite countertops for $310,000. Mattone also is psyched to have a garage of her own.