Twenty-three straight answers

A pre-qualification is a lender’s opinion based on figures you told them and nothing they verified. A pre-approval means they pulled credit and reviewed income, asset and employment documents. On a competitive Denver listing a pre-qualification letter carries close to no weight and a full underwritten pre-approval carries a great deal.

One to three per cent of the purchase price is normal across the Denver metro, held by the title company and credited to you at closing. It is only at risk if you default outside your contract deadlines, which is the practical reason we treat contingency dates so seriously.

Three. Inspection gives you the right to object to the property’s condition and to terminate if you cannot agree a resolution. Appraisal protects you if the property values below contract. Financing (loan objection) protects you if your loan does not come together. Each has its own deadline; miss one and the protection is gone.

Almost never, and much less often in 2026 than in 2021. Inventory has returned enough that a clean, tightly-dated inspection contingency is competitive on most listings. If a specific property genuinely requires it, we will quantify what you are risking before you decide — and we have talked clients out of houses over exactly this.

Roughly 1 to 2 per cent of the purchase price: lender origination and underwriting, appraisal, credit report, title insurance, closing and settlement fees, recording, prepaid interest, and the first year of hazard insurance and tax escrow. We give you an itemised estimate at offer stage, not at the closing table.

Custom in most of the Denver metro is that the seller pays for the owner’s policy protecting the buyer; the buyer pays for the lender’s policy. It is customary rather than statutory and it is negotiable in the contract.

Thirty to forty-five days is typical with financing, and it is driven by the loan rather than by anyone’s enthusiasm. Cash can close in a fortnight. New construction runs to the builder’s completion schedule, which is a different conversation entirely.

Closed comparable sales from the last six months, adjusted for size, condition, lot and location, then checked against current competing inventory and the days-on-market trend. For architect-designed stock we widen the comparable net, because the relevant sale may be a mile away and eight months old. You get every comparable we used, including the ones that argue for a lower number.

An automated valuation model is a regression over public records. It cannot see condition, finish level, orientation, view, or that a house is an intact 1955 Wolff. On ordinary tract stock it is roughly right. On the houses we sell it is routinely fifteen per cent out in either direction, and it is wrong in the direction that costs you money about half the time.

Negotiable, agreed in writing before we start, and disclosed as a total and as any portion offered to a buyer’s brokerage. There is no standard rate — anyone who tells you otherwise is either mistaken or hoping you do not ask.

Usually paint, landscaping, and whatever a pre-listing inspection turns up that would otherwise become a negotiation. Almost never a kitchen: at this price point a new kitchen rarely returns its cost and it removes the buyer’s ability to imagine their own. Sometimes the honest answer is "nothing", and we will say it.

Frequently not. We present every offer with its financing strength, contingency profile, appraisal exposure and closing timeline side by side. A cash offer twenty thousand lower with no appraisal contingency is often worth more than the top number attached to a fragile loan.

In a balanced market, usually yes. A contingent offer is materially weaker and bridge financing on a $1.5M purchase is expensive. There are real exceptions. We will run the numbers on both sequences rather than hand you a rule.

On a production brokerage site, from the local MLS — REcolorado for the Denver metro, IRES for Boulder — through an IDX feed governed by a data-display agreement that dictates refresh frequency, attribution and what may be cached. This site is a design demonstration, so it carries a static authored dataset instead. Every property, price and transaction on it is invented.

Internet Data Exchange: the arrangement under which participating brokerages permit each other to display one another’s listings on their own websites. It is why a single brokerage site can show most of the market rather than only its own inventory, and it is why listing attribution appears on every card on a real site.

As of autumn 2026 the Front Range sits close to balanced, which is unusual. Months of supply is near four across most of the neighborhoods we work. Practically: prepared, correctly-priced homes still move fast, everything else negotiates, and inspection contingencies are back on the table.

Less than people think, on its own. A high number can mean the price was wrong at launch, or that the property is unusual and waiting for its buyer. What it reliably tells you is your negotiating position: after about forty-five days, most sellers have adjusted their expectations whether or not they have adjusted their price.

Actual value from the county assessor, multiplied by the residential assessment rate to give assessed value, multiplied by the local mill levy. Reassessment happens every two years. Homes inside a metro district carry an additional mill levy that can add materially to the bill — it is disclosed, and it is very easy to skim past.

No. Sixteen neighborhoods, twelve in Denver and four in Boulder. A valuation is only as good as the analyst’s feel for the comparables, and ours does not extend everywhere. If you are outside them we will refer you to someone who works that market properly.

Yes, and every listing on this site names the broker who holds it with a direct line. If you have no preference we will match on the work rather than on who is free.

Thirty minutes, no cost, no obligation. It ends with a written view of what your budget actually buys in each neighborhood you are considering — which is usually the thing nobody has told you yet.

No. Plinth Residential is a fictional brokerage built to demonstrate a website design. Every property, price, agent, transaction and testimonial here is invented, and no rating or review aggregate is published anywhere on the site because a fabricated average would be a lie whether a person read it or a search engine did.

Every filter on the listings page writes itself into the address bar, so the view you build is a URL you can send, bookmark or step back through with the browser’s back button. Opening someone else’s link reproduces their exact view. The colour and branding controls behind the right-hand tab work the same way.