Real estate companies merge to create 215-member team

The merger between Keller Williams of Northern Colorado and Fort Collins Real Estate creates a 215-broker team that includes a new commercial division, KW Commercial, which was launched last week.

Fort Collins Real Estate owner Mike Jensen, who specializes in commercial, investment and residential real estate in Old Town and the North College Avenue corridor, will lead KW Commercial.

"I'm most excited for the KW Commercial brand and the enhancement that it will afford our agents," Jensen said. "We will maintain a strong downtown niche and together we will be a force to be reckoned with."

The combined company will have more than 215 agents in Northern Colorado, with more than $300 million in annual sales.

The Group Inc., the largest residential brokerage in Northern Colorado, has about 210 agents and $1.3 billion in sales. It spun off its commercial group into Sperry Van Ness/The Group Commercial LLC in November when the commercial brokerage firm expanded to Fort Collins.

Sharianne Daily, president of The Group, said the merger between Fort Collins Real Estate and Keller Williams "brings the strength of the two companies together and national recognition with Keller Williams and the local recognition with Fort Collins Real Estate especially with the downtown market."

In Colorado, Keller Williams has 28 locations and more than 2,800 agents.

Rethinking life in Denver's far suburbs

Across the nation, the realization is taking hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a change with lasting consequences. The shift to costlier fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs.

In Denver, housing prices in the urban core rose steadily from 2003 until late last year compared with previous years, before dipping nearly 5 percent in the last three months of last year, according to Economy.com. But house prices in the suburbs began falling earlier, in the middle of 2006, and then accelerated, dropping by 7 percent during the last three months of the year from a year earlier.

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody's Economy.com.

Tips to Sell Denver Real Estate Fast!

The first aspect that you need to look at is condition of the property you wish to sell. You need to step back and detach yourself from the property to get an impartial picture of what should be done to get your home in prime selling condition. Make no mistake that right now more than ever, condition sells homes.

If you find it difficult to impartially evaluate your home you should give considerable weight to what your Realtor advises. Realtors know the market and they understand what it takes for a home to sell. To catch a prospective buyer your home needs to stand out from the crowd.

Denver home values fall less than nation's

Despite all of the doom and gloom surround the Denver-area residential real estate market, the local housing market fares quite well relative to the rest of the country.
The latest report that shows this trend comes from Zillow, the company that made its name in the real estate industry by estimating the values of individual homes across the nation.

A Zillow report released today shows that homes prices in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan statistical area, the 21st largest MSA in the U.S., dropped by 5.1 percent in the first quarter from a year ago.

That is consistent with the S&P/Case-Shiller index of 20 markets released last week.