Category: Real Estate
Over 1 Million Colorado Residents Live in High Fire Risk Locations
This year’s explosive wildfire activity in Colorado is a reminder that during the housing boom many people built homes in risk-prone areas of the state. Today over 1 Million Colorado residents live in a “red zone”, i.e., an area that will eventually, inevitably see wildfire activity. Millions more live in locations with moderate risk. Here’s [...]
Banks are Destroying America’s Neighborhoods Part 2 – Response to Comments
Wow – I never expected that my post about Banks Killing America’s Neighborhoods would attract so many readers. I want to thank Daniel Roth for highlighting my thoughts on LinkedIn. I also really appreciate all the comments that were left here on my blog and on the LinkedIn Residential Real Estate discussion board. I’ll try [...]
Map of the Best Bargains in Sunshine
In recent blog posts I generated a list of the Top 25 Sunniest US Cities Ranked by Housing Cost and I explained my methodology in another post. I was waiting on some new features in the MarketSeer web mapping system that we’ve been developing at TerraSeer but now I’m able to prepare a static map to [...]
Three Ideas that Might Help Resolve the Housing Crisis
Dear President Obama (and Governor Romney), I know that you would like to be re-elected (elected) this year and you’ve probably been thinking about how you might improve the economy over the course of the next 8 months to better your chances (or what you would propose to do to stimulate the economy once in [...]
Banks are Destroying America’s Neighborhoods
I read an excellent piece this morning in the New York Times written by Greg Smith about why he was leaving Goldman Sachs. In short, he says it’s become too sleazy as short-term profit motives are now trumping all other considerations. In the past 2.5 years I’ve been investing in real estate in my home town [...]
Map of Housing Price Index Change Illustrates Four Clusters of Misery
A couple days ago I posted a list of metropolitan areas and their associated 5-year change in housing prices. I find it interesting to see the data at a more granular level because when you aggregate by state a lot of information gets hidden away. Today I made a map of the same data. I [...]
Housing Price Index changes by MSA
I get a little annoyed when I see articles ranking which states have the worst foreclosure problem or the biggest drop in housing prices over time. Why would anyone want to look at this at the state level? Maybe state governors and political talking heads? Not really my kind of audience. The economic drivers that [...]
Top 25 Sunniest US Cities Ranked by Housing Cost
I recently put together a way to calculate the price of a day of annual sunshine. I thought some people might be interested in finding just the sunniest places in America ranked by the cost of owning a home in those locations. Abilene is #1 and Texas dominates with 5 of the top 7 locations. [...]
The Price of a Sunny Day: Top 5 Bargain Cities for Sunshine
I recently learned that my hometown, Pueblo, Colorado, receives more sunshine than San Diego, California. I was really surprised and began to wonder who pays the most and who pays the least for sunshine in America? So I decided to take a look and see what I could find out. This simple analysis assumes that [...]
Why Relocate to Pueblo Colorado – a Geographer’s Approach to Residential Location
I’m one of the growing numbers of fortunate people who are able to work from a home office and can live just about anywhere in the US. My only key work requirements are a good phone line, a solid internet connection and a major airport within driving distance (well, a quiet room and a pot [...]
