In this week’s market update for Denver, Colorado Realtor Dan Polimino talks about making a major change to start the New Year.

When our automobile needs a tune-up, it provides us with plenty of clues: hard to start, rough running, poor gas mileage, etc. But when a mortgage needs a tune-up it gives no warning.

Ok, it’s that time of year again to rub my crystal ball and foretell the coming year in real estate. I should disclose that I am not a professional crystal ball reader so take this interpretation for what it’s worth (totally free, unscientific guess).

Last week my neighborhood got about a foot of snow. While running around doing last minute Christmas shopping, I noticed the wiser, more experienced drivers took a slow steady pace and went forward with a minimum of frustration.

Here we are at the end of the year. It’s always a good time to sit back and reflect on the past year. I also like to make a quick list of the lessons I have learned over the last year in Real Estate.

Christmas is tomorrow and as many of you know from reading my columns over the years, this is the one week of the entire calendar that I do not talk about business. Instead, I like to write about stories that truly matter.

Unfortunately, some of the terms in the mortgage industry are not applied uniformly. My favorite example concerns a mortgage that supposedly has no closing costs.

These days, when I put a buyer under contract with a home, I can almost write up verbatim what the inspection report will say. It seems that there are just a few items that always show up on an inspection report.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has left loan limits unchanged for both forward (purchase and refinance mortgages), as well as Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM).

A friend of mine was on a business panel and he was asked the question, “As an employer, what is the number one characteristic you look for when hiring someone?”