Buying
Answer Brief
Why a Home's Square Footage Doesn't Match the County's
Three different square-footage numbers on one house isn't a mistake. It's usually the basement, and knowing which number the appraiser uses is the difference between a fair price and paying above-grade money for below-grade space.
Buyer Guide
Physician Loans in Boulder County: What Actually Helps
Physician loans are sold on three features. In Boulder County's $800K-$1.5M band, two do less than advertised: one lender's cheapest tiers stop before $880,000, and the 90-day contract rule is a general Fannie Mae rule. What decides your file is how your student loans are documented.
Answer Brief
Is This Front Range Home in a Flood Zone? How to Check
Checking whether a home is in a flood zone takes two minutes on the right map, and it tells you whether a lender will make you carry flood insurance. But after 2013, the Front Range learned the map isn't the whole risk. Here's how to look, and what the zone does and doesn't tell you.
Answer Brief
Colorado Due Diligence Documents Deadline: Blank Deletes It
The seller's duty to hand you the leases, the solar plan, the septic permit and the encumbrance paperwork lives in one section of Colorado's standard contract, and it exists only if someone fills in its deadlines. Left blank, the contract deletes it. Here's what's in it, and what a blank costs.
Answer Brief
When Is Your Earnest Money Actually at Risk in Colorado?
Your earnest money is protected by an unexpired right to terminate, or by the seller being in default. Colorado's contract names the moment it turns, once, in capitals, at the loan deadline. One checkbox decides whether the deposit is the ceiling, with narrow exceptions, or only the first item.
Boulder
Living in Whittier, Boulder: The Unmapped Preservation Rule
Whittier is not one of Boulder's ten local historic districts, and buyers read that absence as freedom. What applies instead is the citywide demolition review, where enlarging a street-facing window counts as demolition. Unmapped is not a lighter rule. It is a less predictable one.
Answer Brief
Is an ILC a Survey in Colorado? What It Can't Tell You
Your file has an Improvement Location Certificate in it, and it looks like a survey. Colorado statute requires it to say, in print, that it is not one and may not be relied on for a fence line. Here is what it does certify, what it can't, and when the difference costs you.
POV Note
Can You Even Insure This House? In Colorado, Ask First
Buyers treat homeowners insurance as a box to check near closing. On the Front Range in 2026, it's the constraint that can kill the deal before financing does, and it should shape which town and which house you shop, not just how your inspection week goes.
Answer Brief
Your Metro District's Mill Levy Cap Is Not a Number
Everyone tells you to check the metro district's authorized maximum in the service plan. Nobody tells you that maximum moves. In Colorado it is written as a formula that rises whenever the state cuts the residential assessment rate — which is how a 50-mill cap ends up charging 63.6.