Tuesday Business Roundup

‘Flipping’ a Home? Forget About It

By Richard Martin, 5-01-07

As foreclosure rates rise, speculators in the West who’ve made big money buying up homes for investment and then re-selling or “flipping" them for a profit are pretty much out of luck for this year though at least 2008. The housing bust is hitting home especially hard in places like Weld County, north of Denver, and in the suburbs of Las Vegas, until recently the fastest-growing city in the country. “A combustible mix of risky loans and risky real estate deals” has sunk the new home market and made flipping for fun and profit a thing of the past, Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing for Realty Trac, tells the Associated Press.
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Meanwhile apartment rental rates – a leading indicator of the overall real estate market – for the Denver metro area have dropped slightly, while the average vacancy rate has fallen to a six-year-low, according to a report by Gordon E. Von Stroh, a professor at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. Boulder vacancy rates fluctuate with the seasons – students leave for the summer and return in the fall – so it’s unclear that they’ll follow the same trends as Denver itself.

In other business news:

-- The Fraser Valley, which has been relatively sleepy the last few years while rampant development has spread across other resort areas like Steamboat Springs, Vail and Snowmass, is about to see a new surge of home-and-condo construction. Denver developer Buz Koelbel, who already owns the Rendezvous development in the Valley, has now purchased the defunct Ski Idlewild area and plans to add it to his sprawling projects between Winter Park and Fraser.

-- Colorado has a large beekeeping industry – the state ranks 20th in the nation in honey-producing colonies, with around 28,000, and according to the Colorado Department of Agriculture honeybees pollinate $29 million in crops annually. Unfortunately, like beekeepers all over, Colorado’s honey producers are facing massive die-offs this year because of a mysterious disorder called “colony collapse disorder.” No one knows what’s causing beehives to suddenly self-destruct. One theory: “radio-frequency noise” from cellular networks.

-- Per capita incomes are growing faster in rural Colorado than in the cities, according to the latest numbers the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (which, being a federal agency, grinds slowly: the “latest” figures cover 2005). Personal income statewide grew 4.7 percent from 2004-05, and rural areas led the way with a 5.6 percent rise. City dwellers saw a 4.6 percent rise, but enjoy a higher average personal income of $38,713.

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