House Einstein Podcast #126

Speaker labels were rebuilt by comparing the isolated Osman and Hamish audio tracks moment by moment. The standalone sponsor read was removed, and obvious transcription errors were corrected lightly without rewriting the conversation. AI was used in the creation of this transcript. Please excuse errors.

Osman: Are bikes ridden by grown adults allowed to go full speed on sidewalks in Boulder? And this is a question written by user Flawed Dismal 6385 in the Boulder subreddit. This is becoming more common, and I almost got knocked down by one today. For how much money we spend on cycling infrastructure, is it too much to ask for them to use the dedicated bike lanes on the road and not weave around pedestrians? For the record, these are sidewalks with dedicated bike lanes on the same road. Are the rules different for lime scooters and bikes? Thanks in advance. Well, flawed. Dismal 6385. Welcome to Boulder.

Hamish: I've been waiting for an anti bike episode.

Osman: We're definitely not getting bike if anything. We're very pro bike.

Hamish: You're probably the bike that almost ran them off. I might have been me.

Osman: Was it an Indian looking guy with a beard going really fast right at you with an angry police bike? With a police bike?

Hamish: Right.

Osman: Well, for the record, it's not a police bike. It's a police branded bike.

Hamish: The band.

Osman: The band.

Hamish: And I'm a huge fan. Yeah. So, through.

Osman: Well, welcome to the House Einstein podcast. And clearly it's a slow. Clearly it's a slow news week. And that's what we are leading with, is people upset with cyclists on sidewalks. And of course, I'd much rather see that than something more significant with regard to crime. Definitely social issues here in Boulder.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And yes, kids ride on the sidewalk and so do adults. And they can ride anywhere on the sidewalks legally except where it's posted downtown, where you're not supposed to be riding on the sidewalk.

Hamish: Okay. So, you know, I was gonna say it's tough to know, but if there's not tough to know, there's a dismount zone. Okay. Yeah. Then if it's clear, if it's figured out, then it's figured out.

Osman: And at the same time, this is not really an issue in Boulder for most people. And maybe it can be a little annoying if somebody gets too close to you. But we all have to live together somehow.

Hamish: I would like to footnote that Louisville is currently dealing with a child e-bike issue, where they're zooming by people on the sidewalks and stuff.

Osman: It's like a gang.

Hamish: I don't know if it's it's organized. You know, there's probably not like a central command, but it's maybe an epidemic.

Osman: I definitely see these kids running around on e-bikes. They're moving without helmets.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Or maybe one of the two kids will have an helmet on. The other one will not. And they are moving fast. And these these e-bikes, I, we own a bunch and they're fast and they're really efficient. But boy, they are actually I'm sure they boogie. I'm sure the emergency room sees kids in and adults in, in all the time for injuries.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: So I guess the responsible thing to do would be to say you should probably have your kids where helmets.

Hamish: Yeah. And watch for other people on the sidewalks. I mean, pretty day one stuff, but they are kids after all.

Osman: I mean, I was I was 11 or 12 when my parents bought a scooter and let me ride all over upstate New York at 35 miles an hour with a gas powered scooter. It completely disregarding traffic laws.

Hamish: Yeah. Licensing. You're 12. You don't hear.

Osman: And so I rode I wrote probably a couple thousand miles, you know, around a pretty small area of upstate New York. Took myself to tennis practice, like rode my friend double on the thing all the time. We did wear helmets, though. I will say that was something my parents insisted on before we, like jump in.

Hamish: I think it is something about like the electric transportation being so quiet. People think that like a helmet isn't necessary. Like it's if it's creating noise and you have that like engine sound, they're like, yeah, helmet, definitely. But because the bike is quiet, it's safer. Weird human nature.

Osman: I'm not sure what's going on there, but put helmets on your kids and put helmets on your kids both adults should wear helmets too.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Do both.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And be safe. But kids be kids. Youths, you know, youths are gonna do what you are gonna do.

Hamish: What are you gonna do?

Osman: All right, well, with that, welcome to the House Einstein podcast. And if you're new to the podcast, this podcast is entertainment. If we happen to talk about real estate matters, please don't make any decisions on the basis of what you hear. Contact your real estate advisor. And if you are a House Einstein client, you know who to reach out to. And if you're not a client and would like to experience our brokerage, you can visit us at nine and see an array of agents that might suit your needs. And we're more than happy to help. And the House Einstein Brokerage is the sponsor of this podcast. But we are separate and distinct from the brokerage.

Hamish: And a special thank you to the brokerage as well for the sponsorship.

Osman: Absolutely.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Creates a space. We're in the office right now. It's sort of funny because this office is now turning into a podcast recording studio.

Hamish: It's getting the most use its head in, like, since I've been here for years.

Osman: I mean, this is why eXp is like, hey, we were going to give you discount brokerage fees because you don't get an office. We are a cloud brokerage because they don't need an office.

Hamish: So legally they have to have.

Osman: Like they have an actual physical mailing address.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: For however, many agents belong to that giant brokerage. But we actually have a physical office where we can meet with clients. It's actually use this space, but most of the time people don't want to meet here. So we go to their house or we meet in a coffee shop, or we're just in the car looking at running around, looking at property. So the office is really just a nice living room, and now it's getting a lot of use as podcast. 126 Holy cow. That's what we're up to.

Hamish: We are.

Osman: All right. Let me walk through the docket of things we're going to talk about, because complaining about cyclist is not one of them yet. And our closing table topic, that's the core topic of the podcast, the thumbnail. You probably notice that says inspection chaos. And this particular podcast is going to contain what I would say are our best practices to actually avoid the chaos. And we're also going to talk about some stories where chaos was very present and how that worked out. So we're going to talk about a lot of different things when it comes to inspections and how to resolve inspection issues. Keep in mind. We're also based here in the state of Colorado, which has a very distinct process. And other states may or may not line up with that process. So yeah, make sure you read your contract and talk to your agent about what this process might look like early in the buying process. The best time to understand it is not when you are under pressure of writing a contract. The best time to understand it is before you write the contract when you're casually or not. Seriously, you're not casual, but you're seriously looking at homes.

Osman: That's a good time to have this conversation with your agent to understand what their approach is, and even a better time is before you hire this agent. Have the conversation about what their approach is, because the spectrum of competency is once again broad when it comes to professionalism in the industry. And you really want an agent that knows what they're doing when it comes to working through the inspection process.

Hamish: Please read your contracts.

Osman: Please, please read your contract.

Hamish: You can even get it online. A blank slate Colorado division or real estate has the templates and it's like Mad Libs. You know. It's.

Osman: Sort of like. That's a really funny way to describe the contract process, Mad Libs. But I would agree with you that it is a little like Mad Libs, but you need to understand how those components of the contract work with each other, both from the buy side and the sell side. So we're going to get into it, and then we are going to hit our tales from the trenches segment, which we are specifically talking about EIFS, which we've talked about in the past, but I think this time we're going to share some well, what's the word, some dark tales from the trenches in resolving inspection issues.

Hamish: Sharing them trauma.

Osman: Yeah. There'll be some trauma and and how to avoid that. Trauma is something you may want to think about.

Hamish: And some bonding on the trauma.

Osman: Maybe some. Yes. Maybe some trauma bonding market updates. It's mid-June as we're recording this. It's June 15th, which means the data from last month is now solid enough to talk about. We do give a little sneak peak right when the month turns over, but that data is so fuzzy because of the rules that govern how agents will update the MLS. Some of them require their office to do the data entry, some of them do it themselves. Some of them have an office manager or an assistant doing it. But you are required to update the MLS within three business days of of a change in status, which includes closing. And that's both those both of our regional MLS. Your MLS may vary, but just keep in mind that data lag. And also frankly, the laziness of agents means the data will not always be accurate. And having tracked the data for a long I'm talking about over a decade, I will share with you that sometimes the data changes from years ago, like there's something that happened at an office where they're going through their files and they're like, oh, I forgot to put in this sale, or I forgot to close out this listing and suddenly the data will change by 1 or 2 transactions.

Osman: It's not uncommon. And the reason I know that is because I for a long period of time, I manually did the analysis.

Hamish: Exported.

Osman: And I compared the I compared the data from the whole time series, and I was surprised to see really old data changing too.

Hamish: And how frustrating, honestly, when you're doing like analysis and.

Osman: I mean, they're small data points that have been I mean, look, our economic indicators from the federal government get revised all the time. So it's fine. It's just that people should understand that the data is not fixed in stone, but by mid-month it should be reasonably accurate, reasonably accurate. So we will talk about June's market data. And then we have five shiny sales of the week to talk about. Sales of the week are notable sales that we think illustrate certain price points or conditions, unique deals or they're just a cool house and we want to talk about it.

Hamish: That's right.

Osman: And shameless self-promotion. We're going to be discussing the mythical unicorn horse property. That sort of unicorn horse is just a unicorn. It's a horse property that's really hard to find.

Hamish: It's like a liar. Yeah.

Osman: A liger.

Hamish: Yeah, a line and a tiger. A unicorn.

Osman: Got it.

Hamish: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Osman: No, that's. A good point. I get. What you're doing.

Hamish: That was a good pause, though. That's a good comedic.

Osman: Like, what is a liger? Sure.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: I mean we're talking about a very difficult to find property that matches a unique set of characteristics. Right. And it's typical for buyers to want certain things and also want a fantastic deal and also want a lot of time to think about it.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And and typically, if it's all the things you want and it's a fantastic deal, you have no time to think about it. Like, we need to write the offer on the hood of the car because there's a lot of other people probably looking for this. So understanding what works and what doesn't work. Understanding the market for something as unique. Right. This is a segment of the market where there's not a lot of volume. Understanding that is much more of an educational process for a buyer. And we're going through that with one particular buyer. But we'll talk about what he's hunting.

Hamish: For, those particular needs.

Osman: Those very specific needs. And if it happens to line up to a listener or not just the seller, but we have a lot of agents that listen to this podcast, then, hey, reach out. We'd love to hear from you. And then we've got a couple of in the news items, both of which I think are kind of like indicative of it being a slow week.

Hamish: Yeah, right.

Osman: Like we're talking about how the Boulder airport celebrating the arrival of unleaded fuel, and we're talking about how the county is no longer going to pursue alternating days for bicyclists on certain trails, which got the got the cycling community up in a tizzy.

Hamish: And those are the leads, basically. That's the news.

Osman: That's the well. We have we have our hot takes that we'll talk about with both of those. And then we've got a couple of carve outs. I'm going to be discussing adventure vans. I have one for sale. And if you're into van lighting I think the van life craze is sort of over. But if you're into a van life experience or I want an adventure van, maybe this journey and what's available in my fleet might interest you just for funsies. And Hamish, it's blank. What are you talking.

Hamish: I know it's do you have any clue from from my past week. Do you have any ideas of things that I could talk about? I could talk, I'll talk about obsession, the horror movie that's doing quite well in the the.

Osman: Not not the Cologne, the Calvin Klein Cologne obsession.

Hamish: Is that a Calvin Klein.

Osman: That's your age? Okay.

Hamish: Yeah, I think, obsession is a good one to talk about. Just fun horror movie.

Osman: All right.

Hamish: If you haven't seen it.

Osman: Sure.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Okay, I have not. No spoilers.

Hamish: Yeah, I won't spoil.

Osman: All right.

Hamish: Great.

Osman: All right, so that's our pod for this week. That's the docket of things we're going to talk about. And do we miss anything? We hit the disclaimer I think oh if if you're waiting for the newsletter, I've got bad news for you. I am slammed. And so the newsletter is an exercise that takes pretty much a day to get together and properly, and clients come first. And there's quite a lot of client activity right now, plus other things happening that make it particularly difficult. So I think we've hit our summer lull well, our summer intensity, the lull for the newsletter. Unfortunately, I will continue to work on it, but it might be significantly delayed. So my apologies to my loyal readers, I hear. You.

Hamish: It's marinating for quality.

Osman: Reach out if you have an actual real estate issue because you come first if that's the case. But if you're just a casual reader of the newsletter, you are at the lower level of the priority list of things that need to get done. So as one of our favorite authors says, prioritize and execute well. One of my favorite authors.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: All right, he's good. Let's get into it. inspection chaos. I think the best way to to describe what we're avoiding is to describe what you're trying to avoid. And let me let's let's frame it first from a, from a seller perspective. And then let's frame it for the buyer perspective. From a seller perspective. You've done all this work for months and months, likely to prepare your home for sale. And you now have an offer that's in hand and it has an inspection period. If it's a typical offer written in our local market, that inspection period is 10 to 14 days, and the buyer has the rights to issue what is called a notice to correct or inspection objection. And so the buyer is going to hopefully immediately schedule their inspections and then begin to look more closely at the house with their inspector and maybe with secondary contractors like HVAC contractors, sewer line repair people, roof repair people. And at the end of that process, they're going to issue you a list of items that they feel are, well, that they would like to have corrected by you, the seller. And it's a process that some buyers use to their advantage to claw back on the price. And because that is well known,

Osman: it has become the norm for buyers agents to write in language in the additional provisions. That's the section in the contract where agents get themselves into trouble because they pretend to be attorneys and they are not. And this is probably the most problematic section in the contract, according to the real Estate Commission classes I've taken.

Hamish: I believe.

Osman: That were they warn us repeatedly to not be dumb when you write things into here, but yet and just right into things. Right in things. And one of the most common is this language around what we refer to as health and safety carve outs. Right. This is the idea is the buyer's agent and the buyer are trying to signal to the seller that they are serious buyers, that they are not planning to put the house under contract, only to issue a laundry list of trivial cosmetic issues, issues that are related to the age, but are perfectly fine with regard to a home of this age like deferred maintenance sometimes falls into this like they really what the idea is, you're trying to tell the seller that you're only going to object to serious things like the roof or the foundation of a mold issue, or an environmental contamination issue, like asbestos popcorn in the ceiling.

Hamish: And.

Osman: Like, or a bad sewer line.

Hamish: I mean, there's so many.

Osman: Yeah, I personally don't like the words health and safety because they are subjective.

Hamish: Yeah, yeah.

Osman: Because a crack in the sidewalk, if it has a little inch long lift, could be a safety issue for somebody. A missing hand railing could be a safety issue. And both of these are relatively trivial if you get the house you really want. But a foundation issue or a roof issue, like I prefer things that actually have a dollar amount attached to them that are significant. And in Boulder real estate, where the median price is what it is, the majority of these issues are solved with less than 1% of the purchase price. Like we're not talking.

Hamish: About.

Osman: $100,000 worth of inspection issues typically. But this is where agents get themselves into trouble, and this is where buyers and sellers often have the most conflict in the contract process.

Hamish: And I think to in Colorado, there's a really tough power dynamic. Once you're under contract, the buyer basically has all of the levers and the sellers essentially at at the will of the buyer, not 100%, but that's kind of where it was born to have this like health and safety carve out or something in the additional provisions to be like, we're not going to be the buyer. That just abuses our power, right? That's the kind of like we're trying to come in good faith or.

Osman: Well, I mean, all of those things are true, but they're contractual elements of it. And there's also communication elements of that to the other side. And that's why buyers are putting this language into contracts at the recommendation of their agents. And this is also where things get sometimes problematic. And my approach has been in recent years to pick up the phone and have a conversation with the listing agent. If I'm on the buy side for what they want to see there, particularly if there is a high probability of multiple offers coming in, which is more common at the lower end of Boulder's market than the high end. If there's if we're looking at no competition, the House has been on the market for weeks. We don't put anything in there because there's no reason to signal to the seller that we're being I mean, in practice, we we hold our clients or we encourage our clients to be reasonable human beings. Right?

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Like we're not objecting to the paint color, but the Colorado contract allows you to do that. You can actually object to the paint color, even though you saw the paint color when you showed the home and the first time.

Hamish: Cracks in the driveway.

Osman: I mean, more typically cracks in the driveway or or other common deferred maintenance items that happen over time.

Hamish: And paint chips.

Osman: Paint chips are actually important. If the home was built before 1970.

Hamish: Nine, that's a yeah, that's critical.

Osman: But typically you can see this when you looked at the house. So let's get into best practices on the buy side, what we advise our clients to do, whether or not it's a bidding war, is to really have an honest look at the house during the showing, and we look for things that are likely going to come up on inspection, including the age of the furnace. We look at what the roof looks like. I will always walk around the outside of the house and see if there's any obvious signs of a problem, and it's the obvious signs the inspectors are going to catch, and whether or not we agree it's a problem, at least we know this is possibly going to come up, and we should have a reasonable expectation of how to solve this problem.

Hamish: So yeah.

Osman: One of the approaches, when you are in a scenario where there's likely competition and your agents encouraging you to write language into the contract that reduces your contingency rights is to consider dollar coverage. And this is that conversation with with the listing agent. Because if they're if they're opposed to dollar coverage, they prefer to see vague language around health and safety issues. We have that written as well. But the dollar coverage, one should signal confidence to the seller that this buyer is real. And if we put a dollar amount, let's say 4000, 5000 bucks, it's going to cover things like a hot water heater that's too old, but it's not going to cover full replacement of the furnace. If the furnaces at the end of its life, it's not.

Hamish: Bad roof.

Osman: It's definitely not going to cover a roof. It's unlikely to cover a sewer line repair of significant size, like if it's a minor repair. Maybe. But if it needs an entire liner, absolutely not going to be covered for five grand. So those are the types of things we know are like radon, radon systems, typically 1000 to 1200. They used to be 750 bucks, but they've gone up a lot in cost. So we know what the most typical things are. It obviously will not cover window replacements if all the windows are shot throughout the house. And somehow we missed it when we wrote the offer, and we want to object to that. That's not going to be covered in the inspection objection.

Hamish: We also cosmetics, right? As one of the things we'll say, not cosmetic items will specifically say something like that. And that just reminded me because windows I could see health and safety, but you're seeing it at the showing the seals blown out. So it's a okay.

Osman: So this is so the question is what's considered reasonable and fair. And for some people what's reasonable and fair is everything on the inspection report. And for others what's reasonable and fair are things that are not visibly obvious to them. When they looked at the house before they wrote the offer. And this is where there's a little bit of fuzziness, and there's also some strategy for the listing agent and the seller to consider. There's this little document called the seller's property disclosure, and in that document you can list the age of appliances, you can list the age of the roof. And if that document is available to the buyer when they submit the offer, or it is presented in the counter with a requirement that they sign it, right, you indicate that. So so we do.

Osman: On the listing side is if we did not have the SPD or seller's property disclosure online at the time that the offer was submitted, we make sure that we counter and mark the SPD item complete so that the buyer is is signing off, that they know the SPD is complete, they've been given the full disclosures of the home, and it doesn't mean that that buyer won't still object to the windows being 25 or 30 years old. They might.

Hamish: Be better not be a surprise to them as they sign.

Osman: But they already knew that that was the age of the windows when they wrote when they they signed the counter because they had that in the SPD. So it becomes harder for ethical buyers to argue they didn't know about this when they wrote the offer, or they signed the counter when it was in the SPD. So this is why it's really important to be thorough on the SPD from a liability perspective, as well as from a negotiation perspective for the seller.

Hamish: One thing I'm noticing we didn't get here and you know, we could push it down on the closing table. But reading through inspection reports and ultimately it's up to the buyer. But there are certain inspectors that we would call alarmist and then other ones that are very fresh to the game. And then you have very experienced and knowledgeable inspectors. And so like you're saying like up to the buyer, sometimes the entire inspection report is an issue for them. Sometimes it's only a few things. What's the I don't know. Is there any wisdom between okay, you have your inspection report, but is this Inspector Green or are they actually concerned about these things? Are they covering? They're there.

Osman: But I mean, that's a great, great question. And the buyer perception is that inspectors should be recommended and popular based on how good they are as inspectors. And that is completely false. And so if they were an amazing inspector, incredibly detailed down to the last, you know, oh my God. Tiny little crack in the drywall, they likely would not be in the business very long because the buyer's agents would stop recommending them. And so when I think of inspectors and don't take this the wrong way, inspectors, but there are shades of mediocrity. And what I want to make sure they catch are the big ticket items. And I want them to be honest. And what we typically get is an inspection report that is more thorough than what they show in person. So in person they can ask them at the inspection summary, what are the big items, what should I be worried about? And they will point them out to you. What's in the inspection report are these ten items and let's walk through them and you can actually go look at them in person. And then you can ask the inspector, how big of a deal is this? How much do you think this is going to cost to fix?

Osman: Sometimes they'll spitball it until you a number, and they will usually tell you point blank, look, I'm putting this on the inspection report because you should address this, but it wouldn't stop me from buying this house.

Hamish: It's not when they phrase it that way.

Osman: To it is not something that is is unusual for an age home of this age. It's also something that does not cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix. It's a handyman level repair that should cost less than 500 bucks. So I want you to know about it, and I have to put it in the inspection report to see ya. That's why it's in the inspection report. And that's why I'm also telling you in person that this is a pretty trivial repair, and you should be able to get it done for a few hundred bucks with a handyman. And if you want a handyman, I'll even give you even some of the inspectors will give you a handyman reference.

Hamish: That's like ideal.

Osman: But they don't put that in the report. And the reason they don't put all that detail in the report is because this is a report they know you're going to submit to the seller for negotiation purposes, and they want to see a so they will make it look worse in the report than they do in person. And that's typical. But again, like I said one more time, even the inspectors we know and love, the one I literally hired this week to go look at a property for me, I'm going to say they are shades of mediocrity. They're not amazing.

Hamish: Was it the same one that did a recent deal?

Osman: Yes. It's the same one we just did and they were reasonably thorough. And they catch the big ticket items. Sometimes they're wrong, like they were wrong about this issue in the home that we were right in the middle of negotiating right now.

Hamish: A later topic.

Osman: Which will come up someday not coming up. They were totally wrong, but they still called out an issue that required us to go down a due diligence rabbit hole.

Hamish: We did learn a thing or.

Osman: Two that we did, and it turned out to not be an issue, which was great. I'm glad they brought it to the attention of the buyer, but they also alarmed her on something that turned out to not be an issue at all. It was a nothing burger, but that's not our job as real estate agents.

Hamish: Good point.

Osman: Okay, so let me back back and say your real estate agent is not your inspector and they have an invested interest in the deal closing. So most agents are not going to do a great job of pointing out issues, which is a dumb way to approach this business, because it's going to come up on inspection and you just wasted a whole bunch of everybody's time. So if you're going out with an agent with our team at House Einstein, I can assure you that if we see it, we're going to point it out because there's no point in hiding it. Like if we put it under contract and then a week later, we're terminating because you paid $1,200 to find out the same thing. We could have told you right up front, that's a giant waste of our time. And so in our money, in our buyer agency agreement, is a provision that says Osman and company will do their best to assist your due diligence. And in case of me, I'll even put it, there's even a language around helping you with financial modeling and investment analysis.

Osman: But this is not a normal duty of a real estate agent to a buyer, and the buyer agrees to hold the real estate agent harmless because you are ultimately responsible as the buyer for your due diligence, not your agent. And the attorneys who adviser industry say this is a really bad idea. You should not even be doing this at all. Zero due diligence support is what you should be offering. And then my response to that is, why are we in this business if all we're doing is opening doors and driving people around?

Hamish: Negotiation but different.

Osman: Well, that's another area of value. Add negotiation, but inspection support, due diligence, support and frankly, avoiding writing offers on bad houses or things that your agents should be doing.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And more often than not, we're telling people don't buy this house rather than this is a good one. This one looks great on you. We're saying no, no, no, this one looks horrible on you because of all these potential inspection issues.

Hamish: Or you could do better, you know?

Osman: And after 20 years, we've seen it before, right? Like, how many times have I seen foundation issues? How many times have I seen a bad roof? I can't look into a sewer line, but the deferred maintenance starts showing up from the moment you walk in the door, and then when you see big ticket items staring you in the face, it's like hold up. Like it's shocking that they didn't address this prior to listing, and they're probably too cheap to do it. So I don't know if you really want to pursue this house because it's clearly overpriced for for the issues that are visible and obvious. Yeah, and sometimes negative slope is visible and obvious, sometimes big cracks in the foundation. If we can see the roof, that's usually an easy one.

Hamish: Oh my gosh. We we it's probably off market now, but there was a house that I saw when the roof was genuinely caving in.

Osman: Right.

Hamish: That was absurd.

Osman: One of the things we look at when we're walking toward the house is, what is the roof line look like? And we may not catch it, okay, but I can assure you I'm looking.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: I don't want to waste my time writing an offer for a house that turns out that it has major issues we could have avoided. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. So good agents provide that at the showing. And even before the showing, good agents are ones that try to reduce the time they're spending in the car driving you around. So if you want to see certain houses and you're one of our clients, the first thing I'm doing is pulling it up on a map and looking at how close is this to a busy road? How close is this to the train tracks? Because these are the types of things that are going to kill the deal for you, and there's no point in us driving to discover. Spend hours in the car, only to discover what was visible and obvious from a search on a map.

Hamish: Sidebar.

Osman: Sidebar.

Hamish: Given the amount of I mean experience you have in Boulder, are there now neighborhoods where you're like, oh, these are kind of the common issues for these neighborhoods. Like a, you know, the all these houses, without naming the neighborhood, I.

Osman: Guess, I mean, we can name the neighborhoods, there are certain spots in town that are known to have expansive soil. There are certain spots in town known to have deficient foundations, superior and Rock Creek, for example, when the entire development was built, there were lawsuits over those foundations. And at this point, I think it's settled and all the repairs have been made. And the tricky part is all those basements, most of those basements have drywall. They've been finished. So you can't see the foundation.

Hamish: That's the toughest part. Yeah.

Osman: And so when you get when you're looking at a house in Rock Creek of a certain age, this is in superior. I want to see some evidence of foundation repairs. I don't want to see no evidence because that creates a well, you know, it's still okay. But then I strongly recommend to our buyer that we look closely for foundation issues.

Hamish: Right.

Osman: And so you can see that in terms of windows and doors that don't open and close smoothly, there may be signs of previous drywall repairs as the seller is hiding, because if the foundation moved, it's possible that the drywall has cracked and moved to. So all of those things are stuff we're looking for, particularly in superior in Rock Creek. But it's not just superior. And here's an example in Boulder in the Table Mesa neighborhood in Highland Park, it's a really steep hillside, right. And some of the original foundations of those homes built in the 60s and 70s were deficient. And we personally have been involved in the six figure negotiation over foundation repairs. This is before your time.

Hamish: Yeah, it was it was. Otherwise I wasn't.

Osman: On the showing. I'm like, it looks like there's been a bunch of tuck pointing done on the corners and the brick, but it's probably normal settling and it's fine. And the buyer said, you know, I think I'm going to want to get a structural person out here to look at it. And I was like, great, here's the company we recommend. And she called them. And what's interesting is this is a company, I'm not going to mention their name because I think they have a mixed reputation. But this is a company that specializes in repairs. It's not a structural engineer. And that guy spent an hour at the house with a big level.

Hamish: I think I've heard this one keep going.

Osman: And and it turned out if you think about a foundation like a box, the foundation, the walls of the box were leaning downhill. The foundation showed significant signs of compromise.

Hamish: Oh, yeah.

Osman: Yeah. And when we issued our inspection objection, we initially did not include the report. We just wrote the report's findings, and the seller immediately called a structural engineer out and had them come look at the house and then sent us back the structural engineers letter. And that's when, with the permission of our client, I sent them the report and I copied the structural engineer on the report who had sent us this letter saying the foundation is fine and everything goes dark for 24 hours. Like no more emails, no more phone calls from anybody. It was very strange. And then the next day I get an email from the structural engineer, and it turned out that they worked together, the structural engineer and the structural repair company.

Hamish: Oh, they're they know each other.

Osman: They know each other. And they met out at the house. They went to the house and looked at it together. And in the letter, the engineer says, I am refunding the seller's money for the letter. I'm wrong. The structural the repair company is right.

Hamish: Wow.

Osman: And I should have brought a larger level to my inspection. And that was it. And the seller said, absolutely not. We're not going to do a six figure credit for repairs. So see you later. And so for a week it went totally dead right.

Hamish: And in your fashion were you like just so you know, you now have to disclose it?

Osman: Well I. Mean, the listing agent is experienced. They know that. They didn't have to say it, but it took them a week to deal with this emotional loss of 100 grand. And after a week. And they bought the house in this condition, by the way, they did not do a structural evaluation. It had not been that long.

Hamish: Had it moved. I mean.

Osman: It probably hadn't moved since they owned it, but the fact that the house needed major repair to to shore up the foundation with helical piers, it was over a hundred grand and they eventually agreed to the full credit, but it took them a week to the deal terminated. We were out of the deal and then it came back together a week later, after they had a week of come to pick the God of your choice, come to that God and face reality. This is where they were.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And sometimes people have to, you know, deal with that whole cycle of grief and loss. And that's where they were, because they were not expecting that, and they had not been that thorough when they bought the house not that long ago. And so but they credited us for that 100 plus grand where we probably could have been more aggressive was we didn't ask for the landscaping to be credited.

Hamish: Okay.

Osman: Because when you roll in with heavy equipment, you're destroying landscaping.

Hamish: And it's their, their to do the structure. They're not there to address it back up.

Osman: We wrote the offer. The landscaping look beautiful and landscaping look horrible. But we decided that that was a fair loss for the for the buyer to take is that we'll deal with the landscaping repairs. You have to pay for all the structural.

Hamish: Some give and take.

Osman: And that was a good that was a good negotiation. It was a challenging one. It was one that was probably not what the seller wanted. But my buyer was happy with the deal and they got the location they wanted, which is and it's a fantastic house and a fantastic spot, and I'm sure it's doubled in value since that deal happened because of how rare that spot is in the park. Okay, so that's a tale from the from the from the transit. I wasn't planning tell, but I did.

Hamish: Because from the closing.

Osman: Table, because foundations really are are big ticket items. And before we go through and stop for a second, and one of the things that we've started putting in our additional provisions in a bidding war scenario is the reiteration of the good faith provision in the contract. So even though this good faith provision exists for everybody, people tend to gloss over it. They don't really understand what it means, they don't pay any attention to it. And by putting it in the additional provisions segment of our contract, reiterating it, I want the seller's agent to tell the seller that he took the time to explain good faith to his client, and his client understands good what good faith means. You're putting earnest money in an escrow account. You fully intend to purchase the property and as is, where is condition through the inspection process, right through the limits of what the contract allows and the contract allows. The buyer, I would say, encourages the buyer to do their inspections. And if there are major issues now, it doesn't say major issues in the contract, but in practice it's not minor issues that you should be objecting to its major issues.

Osman: And when you object to minor issues, the results are usually so unfavorable to you as a buyer that this is why we encourage our clients to focus on 3 to 5 big ticket items in the inspection process. Because the inspection report will have 25 items, many of them are $500 or less to resolve in total. Not not like each of them like hire a handyman and will probably solve most of these issues for 500 bucks.

Hamish: Folks like a couple of days if that.

Osman: Focus on 3 to 5 big ticket items, and if the seller is reasonable, they'll address all of them. If they want to negotiate, they may address three of them, but there's some room for planned concessions in the process. So that's what we usually encourage. And that call involves foundations, sewer lines, roofs. And then the biggest ticket item that typically comes up for certain homes is EIFS. And even as we're sitting here in this building, this development here in Uptown.

Hamish: This is the building right from the story.

Osman: This. No. Oh, it's not the building of the story. So this this complex had a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the builder. The association sued the builder, and the builder filed a claim with their insurance company because they didn't install the EIFS correctly. EIFS stands for exterior finish Insulation System. It's a foam board that's glued to the outside of the house, and then a skim coat of drive. It is put on the outside. It looks like stucco. Sometimes it's called artificial stucco, but it is not stucco. And the benefits of this has insulation. So you're adding R value to the outside of the house. The negative is that if it's improperly installed or improperly maintained, moisture gets behind the foam and rots. It rots the OSB, it rots the studs.

Hamish: Everything it touches.

Osman: Rots everything it touches. And you're trapping that water there. It can't it can't get out because of the foam.

Hamish: So stucco breathes, right, like actual stucco. I don't know, I don't, I don't know. Okay. This is where.

Osman: I. I like. Stucco. Is a really old product.

Hamish: Yeah, but.

Osman: But stucco is not a material that breeds. It is. It is a from my understanding, stucco is like, is like a mortared material.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And, it's not the same as Dryvit on the outside of a house, which, if you were to dig into it, actually has a little bit of give to it. It's not like stone or mortar, and you're not sealing in the foam board with stucco.

Hamish: Right.

Osman: Like what people typically. And I'm not an expert in building. Okay. I have worked in the construction industry, but you've got you've got OSB and then you've got like what looks like a metal honeycomb material and then the stucco is trialed onto that. So you're not adding any R value, but you're also not trapping the moisture the way that foam board does. And so I'm not entirely sure why stucco doesn't have all these issues, but it doesn't. It's very uncommon for stucco repairs to be expensive either. It's low tech. It's really old EIFS at this point is over 20 years old too. So it's not exactly new technology, but it's also not commonly used anymore. Everyone's moved to these green board systems, which are which are like a zip tie system that's supposed to be taped and also has issues if it's not properly installed. So this is one of the reasons if you're doing new build, you want to be on site. You want to look closely at what people are doing and you want to look closely at at the at the way seams are sealed. In homes. Okay. We're getting a little bit a field.

Hamish: Yeah. You had this deal with this complex.

Osman: So this, this building had multimillion dollar lawsuits that were settled. And then it took about a year to get all the repairs done. Washington Village also multi-million dollar lawsuits and invasive investigations across the complex to figure out where's the trapping water and where is it not? And they eventually settled it. And we had a deal at one point in the middle of Washington Villages where we had an escrow, I think we escrow like 25 grand and sat there and an escrow account for like six months. And at the end of the day, I don't know if any of it was removed or if the seller got most of it back, but it we had to do that to make the deal move forward. Because in the middle of the deal, this lawsuit hit the hit the complex. And so we had to come up with something that make the buyer feel comfortable that this is going to be resolved.

Hamish: Right.

Osman: I've also had deals completely break up over EIFS, where the sellers parents who work in insurance said, oh my God, the house is, you're out of here.

Hamish: We're sorry. The buyer. I was like.

Osman: Well, yeah, not the seller's parents. The buyers parents. My apologies.

Hamish: No. You're good. If it was the sellers.

Osman: Okay. What about smaller ticket items? Believe it or not, mold is usually a smaller ticket item here in Colorado because we live in such a dry climate in places like the southeast in Florida, we know that people sometimes have six figure negotiations over mold. I haven't seen one that's crossed five grand. It is always been relatively easy. You figure out where the water is coming from, you stop the water, you remove the damage material and replace it. And usually it's confined to a pretty small area. And then we're done. I've had us have like phantom mold issues where we're chasing with mold test over and over.

Hamish: You have that story.

Osman: And that was just a box of leaves that turned into a couple thousand bucks worth of chasing, you know, mold tests. But but in any day and any, in any event, mold, at least as far as I've experienced it personally, have been small ticket items and radon and water heater and and most of the time negative slope depending on how long it's existed. If the negative slope is bad and it's been there a long time, it can cause major damage.

Hamish: Yeah, that would lead.

Osman: To a hole that's a foundation repair. But if it's a negative slope that hasn't caused any damage, it's moving dirt around. So it's not usually massive amounts of money unless you want to hire one of Boulder's fancy landscaping companies, in which case it could be. But if you hire your neighborhood landscaper, that doesn't isn't doesn't live in Boulder but drives here. That is a small mom and pop team. You're talking about a couple thousand bucks, probably.

Hamish: And it's the function over form, you know. Are you going for pretty or do you want it to have a positive slope? Right.

Osman: Right. I mean, you want it to have a positive slope. That's like if that's your goal, you know, gutters and gutter extensions and moving some dirt around usually solves all of those things. And in most cases, buyers, particularly at the entry level of the market, look at this. Like I can move dirt like I can. I have a wheelbarrow, I can get some dirt.

Hamish: Around, and we've got some friends, I've.

Osman: Got a landscaping, you know, this is a summer project over the weekend, but for higher end homes, it could turn into a more significant item. But all of this is also easy to correct prior to listing. So this is the one thing we haven't talked about is that.

Hamish: And that's a good point.

Osman: Sellers should seriously consider a pre listing inspection, and we have often paid for it for our sellers because it adds so much value to the transaction process. You increase transparency, you increase trust, and you have the opportunity to correct the issues found on the inspection report with the contractors of your choice. And when you present all of that to a buyer who is thinking about writing an offer, here's the inspection report and here's my addendum, or here's my cover page on all the things we corrected for you. Right? As a buyer, you increase trust, you increase the probability of the deal closing, but you also decrease the romanticism of the house. And they're not true invested in the house. So this is like a first date where the person's handing you their medical report.

Hamish: Yeah. And you just know them, right?

Osman: Like you really want to have some romance and you want the buyer to also have some skin the game. So there is a downside to pre inspection reports. As you remove the romance you remove the skin the game. But you do increase dramatically that if they're actually writing an offer you're going to close because they knew all the things. And you also fixed a lot of the things prior to listing. That's our recommended approach.

Hamish: In a tough market, it's kind of tough. It's kind of a hard thought to be like, okay, well, I'll shell out for a pre inspection report and even then, you know, is my house going to sell. But it is a I think a lot it's a much more secure way to make improvements on your home for its sell ability. Get ahead of the issues and then paired with you know, like a staging consultation from us in the stager that we work with, you bring kind of a very complete package to market versus kind of selling it blind and being surprised when there's big ticket items.

Osman: It everyone has their own approach to it. A lot of sellers are wondering, why am I paying for the buyer's inspection? Yeah, and you're not. You're saving a lot of money on the choice of contractor and the timeline of contractor. If you wait for the inspection process often there's only a day or two to reach resolution, and so you will pay a lot more than you probably would have for a hot water heater or for repairs. Or you may have the buyer freak out and bail out entirely. And so pre inspection reports are actually a really good idea. As long as our client understands what the trade off is. And that's part of that is walking our client. The seller in this case is what we're talking about through the buyer journey.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Right.

Hamish: And putting them in the buyer's shoes right.

Osman: Put yourself in the buyer's shoes and imagine your your energy, your vibe as you go through this process. And what's your energy and your vibe like when you have this inspection report that's thorough and that shows you've addressed most of the repairs that were needed, and also says we're not addressing this because it's just related to the age of the home. It is what it is. Maybe it's cracked sidewalk, but we we are already replaced the furnace. They don't say, oh, you replace the furnace with the cheapest model. They're just thrilled they have a new furnace. They don't care that you went with a cheaper shingle, they just care. And the cheapest roofer? You, they're just happy you got a new roof.

Hamish: The roof is done.

Osman: Yeah, right. So all of. So you have to. But if you're doing it in the inspection process, suddenly the buyer is going to want the gold plated furnace and the most expensive roof they can possibly find.

Hamish: And their specific contractor. And yeah.

Osman: So there's there's conflicts of interest that can be avoided or at least understood prior to getting to that point. And there's another game that some agents play. And I'm going to I'm going to be very clear about this. They intentionally underpriced the house to remove inspection conditions, to get multiple offers so that the house sells quickly with less hassle. It's it's I would say it's like 1 in 20 listings. We see people do that. And there may be one in our in our sales of the week, because there's some of these that were were pretty intense bidding wars. I think it was a half million dollar above list sale in here.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And I didn't actually see this house, but this could have been one of those scenarios where they intentionally priced it so low just so that they would get the bidding war. And that is that approach is predicated on either one of two things. Either the seller didn't know where the seller intentionally also agreed on this as a strategy. It's not a common strategy for Boulder. It's super common in Bay area markets where people will pre inspect, give you two full weeks to get your offers on.

Hamish: The California listing model.

Osman: The the yeah, the California listing model. You have two full weeks. Here's the inspection report. If you want your own inspector go for it. But we're not going to take any offers that have any contingencies. So you're financing contingency. That's your problem your inspection issues. That's your problem. We've disclosed everything. Take it as is or not. And that is driven by an intentionally low list price. So that 100% is why you see crazy bidding wars in the Bay area. And also all that, all that AI money. In the market.

Hamish: I demand to yeah.

Osman: Not common in Boulder an option. Okay. But I almost never see it. In fact, I don't think I've seen it a single time.

Hamish: I as a buyer, I would be cautious to spend a lot of money on an inspection process before being under contract to submit an offer that you might not get accepted.

Osman: You don't have to spend anything. You can rely on the buyer's inspector.

Hamish: You could, but right. Anything additional or any secondary you're paying for.

Osman: Okay, but if you're serious about buying the house, spending 600 bucks on an inspection.

Hamish: I'm serious about buying the house, but I don't know if I can have compete.

Osman: Whatever other offer, you might spend 600 bucks and not have a chance at the house. And that's the part that sucks. And I feel like when you pre inspect, you should use a reputable inspector and you should do the basics right on sewer scope. I don't know about an infrared test, I just paid for it for the one I have under contract.

Hamish: But you have an infrared.

Osman: I have the camera. I know, but I don't have the time. Yeah, I don't have the time.

Hamish: Oh, man, I'm. With you.

Osman: It. So pay the 50 bucks and let the inspector do the infrared photography. Plus, that house is occupied by tenants.

Hamish: That's right.

Osman: Five college age boys. And I really don't want to be in the middle of that. It is my infrared camera. Almost certainly based on based on the cosine. It's almost certainly animal House over there.

Hamish: That's the staging was not staging but it it was so funky. I've got some pictures I'll share with you.

Osman: You're talking about the House Avenue contract. Okay.

Hamish: All right.

Osman: Well, we're going to leave that one out until if we close, because we're not the inspections on Thursday. So we'll talk.

Hamish: About hey, while we're here. Thank you listeners. Last week we posted Osman as our shameless self-promotion. And Osman is under contract. So it worked the.

Osman: Work I was here, the manifestation worked. But it was it was the market. Mr. market brought it to us. Yeah, I would have loved to have it come from interior channels.

Hamish: It would be really fun.

Osman: And it's not a done deal yet. There are some things about that particular property that could be problematic. So we are working our way thoroughly through it in good faith. Earnest money's deposited and and if hopefully it works out, we'll see.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Okay. I think we have covered this pretty extensively.

Hamish: I think we're good. Do we want to do anything. Inspection issues due diligence.

Osman: Document I do want to clarify that. So the due diligence segment of the contract, even though it's no longer new, it is still untrodden waters because there isn't as clearly a defined process for reaching resolution as there is for inspection issues. In fact, there's not even a standard form which if real estate commission you're hearing this, there should be a standard form for due diligence, objection and due diligence resolution.

Hamish: If you're going to have the deadline for objection and resolution, why.

Osman: Is why is there not a standard form? I don't know, I'm not on the forms committee. I actually thrown my resume to be on the form committee, and they didn't knock on my door or even call me. So I'm not sure what that's about, but it should be a standard form. So due diligence documents are things like permits or warranties or invoices and receipts or utility costs, or previous inspection reports or environmental tests, all of which you should be asking for in the due diligence segment of the contract. And if there is a red flag that shows up in those due diligence documents, you should issue the objection by the appropriate deadline and you should reach resolution by the appropriate deadline. But there's nowhere in the contract process that well that is defined in the contract process. But the standard forms are not.

Hamish: So the how to is not.

Osman: The how to. It's it's unclear. So I we are now in our first due diligence document objection with a different deal and we will work our way through it. It's documents are not really an inspection objection item. So keep that in mind that you may want to not conflate these things, but most agents are more familiar with the inspection. All agents in Colorado are more familiar with this inspection objection resolution process than the due diligence document. Objection resolution process.

Hamish: Question for you. I I'm sure it's both, but I almost wonder if like due diligence document objection can also be like, hey, I want this particular document and you haven't given it to me. I'm sure you could probably that would fall under the same objection umbrella.

Osman: I, I would think so, yeah. If you ask for a certain document and they didn't provide it, I think you can issue an inspection or a due diligence document. Objection that you never received the utility bills.

Hamish: Yeah, something like that. And then it's the findings within that you can also object to. That's cool. Yeah. That makes sense.

Osman: Okay. So that's the distinguished and good good question how it's different from the inspection objection and resolution process. And to put a bow on this topic, I'm going to reiterate that it's really the buyer's agent that sets expectations. And this is where an experienced buyer's agent that's been in the business for a decade or longer have done so many deals. In theory, they've done so many deals that they have walked many clients, many buyers through how to work through due diligence, develop a notice to correct, which is like Martin Luther nailing your objections to the to the door and then together between buyer and seller, helping people come up with a solution that works for both parties. It has to work for both parties or there's no deal, and the deal automatically will terminate on the inspection resolution deadline. If the parties can't reach an agreement, which there's one of those in play right now for us today at 7:00, and we are 6.5 hours away and don't know how this story is going to end, but we are on call to solve it.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: So availability of your agent to actually be able to help you reach resolution, develop your notice to correct and issue and negotiate with the other side is vital. And the deal we're currently working on, we'll talk about in the future. But I'm so impressed with this agent. Generally, it's been a while since I've done a deal with this agent, and certainly not one that was this involved, and his communication has been fantastic, and I've met him with his communication by also giving him a lot more communication than I normally would, as because it's a mutual process to come to resolution. It is not a punch to the seller in the face, and the seller punches the buyer in the face approach if you want to maximize the result. If there's also unethical approaches, okay, you can. Once you're under contract, you can demand a massive concession for something that is part and parcel with an older house. Right?

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And, and and this is I've been there. The listing agent has said to me, that's the most ridiculous effing thing I've ever heard.

Hamish: I got to meet that agent recently.

Osman: Objecting to this. And I have said, you're absolutely right. Yeah, I completely agree with you. It's it's absurd. And at the same time, our client's going to terminate if we don't get this x dollar amount. So your choice, I hear you and I agree with you. And it's also true if we don't get 50 grand out of your seller, that we're done.

Hamish: Before it close before we close out. Question for you.

Osman: Wait. Hold on. Let me just with a bow and let me just say so there are ethical approaches to working together and resolving real inspection issues. And then there's nonsense and a laundry list and let's throw everything and and the pie into the bucket. Everything and the hat. There's a word. There's there's an analogy. Everything in the kitchen sink into the into the notice. To correct that approach usually results in far better results. Focusing on 3 to 5 real issues usually results in the best outcome. And at the end of the day, whatever we object to, we have to come up with resolution that works for both parties. If we don't, there's no deal. Period. And so you as a buyer can play chicken because the seller doesn't have the ability to terminate the contract. You as a buyer have the ability to terminate the contract, and you have the ability to withdraw your objections, which you can do one minute before the deadline expires. And yes, I have been there many times, more typically in the early part of my career where we are right to the finish line, playing chicken over an inspection objection process, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Osman: It just depends on the seller and their agent who's advising them. And and and do you want this house or not? Right. Because you could play chicken all the way to one minute before the deadline and then rescind your objection and stay in contract. Bonkers playing chicken.

Hamish: Yeah, we we sure love it anyhow.

Osman: Yeah that's sarcasm if you're wondering.

Hamish: Yeah. So question what do you think? And I don't even know how it would be enforced or anything, but I've started to wonder about like inspections where buyers will get a credit. There's nothing enforcing that the buyers use it on what they objected to. Do you think that should ever be a thing? Or it's like, okay, I'm going to collect this, call it, you know, $30,000 credit over my objection to the cracks in the driveway, but I'm never going to fix them. I just wanted the money. Like, is it because the argument could be that it's worth. 30,000. Dollars to me.

Osman: As a seller? You could say, I'm going to put this money in an escrow for three months, and you have three months to submit the invoice for the crack driveway repair that you used on me to get this credit for whatever the dollar amount is.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And you're going to use that contractor. We will only pay that contractor 1800 to 2500 bucks to seal the driveway cracks. And we're only going to put that in escrow. If you really wanted to do that.

Hamish: That would bother so many buyers.

Osman: It would bug buyers and it doesn't hook. That's very like spite driven.

Hamish: Totally.

Osman: So the sellers, this is where you typically want a credit because sellers are motivated to save as much money as possible. And in theory, buyers are motivated to get the work done with the contractor of their choice and hopefully have quality work done. And the price differential can be very large. So usually buyers prefer a credit, but not always. Sometimes the buyers want the work done, and there's also a difficult thing to navigate with regard to the inspection resolution, because the resolution is supposed to be given to the lender, and if the lender sees a major issue on the resolution, they may require that that issue to be corrected prior to closing. And so you have to add that little additional piece of like where the lender is in a way keeping the buyer honest, like if you're objecting to it. I'm objecting to it because this is my your house is my collateral for the loan.

Hamish: I'll show your lender. You're really objecting to this? Well, you're never.

Osman: Had a seller threaten to show the lender this resolution.

Hamish: And this is all spiteful, like, you know.

Osman: Well. I mean, this is sort of spiteful gamesmanship, but humans are humans and people behave in spiteful ways subconsciously all the time. And so understanding human nature, I think, is important. And and the right mindset is one of collaboration, focusing on big ticket items and hopefully getting a result that works for all parties. And if it's not the right house, rather than issuing the inspection objection that you're going to terminate on anyway, it's better to just terminate. Just terminate. Don't even give them the inspection report. Wash your hands and let let's move on. Because if you give them the inspection report and your notice to correct, you're also putting an obligation on the seller now to update their seller's property. Disclosure all future buyers supposedly need to know what you now know in practice. Does that actually happen? I don't know, I think sometimes sellers will not update the SPD and some agents will pretend to not know about this issue. Yeah, I recently had one where I asked the seller prior to the listing hitting the market. Do you know if this house has EIFS on the outside? Do you or the seller know if the exterior finish of this house is F.S. and their answer was the seller does not know.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: They didn't say anything about them not knowing.

Hamish: But what about you?

Osman: Right. But what about you?

Hamish: Right.

Osman: And,

Hamish: Anyway.

Osman: Yeah. Read the tea leaves.

Hamish: Yep. Okay. This, working here has, removed my naivete, but I am still quite naive, especially on human nature.

Osman: Yeah, I mean, we're all learning. I'm not an expert in human in human nature either, but I definitely value the study of human nature because it influences the advice we give our clients. It also influences whether we take a client or not. It's important to get a good read on people, and it doesn't mean your read is always right, but at least you should have the ability to read people and and yeah, that's where sellers are always optimistic that their house has no issues, even if they've done nothing to maintain it over decades. Buyers are always, always convince the sellers hiding things. And they might be. And it's better to use the SPD seller's property disclosure as a guide, but don't expect it to be thorough or complete because it rarely is, and do a thorough inspection process. But be realistic about how good the inspectors are and have an understanding of the objection and resolution process, and also make sure this is really the house you want, because if it's really the house you want, usually the inspection issues can be resolved in a way that satisfies you.

Osman: But if it's not the house you want, you just need to get out and move on because it can be a drawn out process to no end. If you.

Hamish: Yeah, don't force yourself to buy a house you don't want, you know, it's. Yeah.

Osman: Like there's no amount of fixing inspection issues that's going to make this house more desirable for you. Like a new sewer line doesn't make a house desirable.

Hamish: Oh, my God, it flushes so smooth now, right? Like completely changed my opinion.

Osman: I have a new roof. The house is worth so much more to me now. It doesn't. These are just deferred maintenance items. Well, the roof is. The sewer line. Could just be a break. And we definitely have had that. Okay, I think it's time to move on. We've beaten this puppy to death on the closing table. So let's move on to tales from the trenches.

Hamish: Yeah, let's do that.

Osman: And this is a real deal. It was in the prospect neighborhood in Longmont. I'm not going to mention the address or the listing agent, but we put this house under contract. And when we were looking at the house, it looked like the chimney surround was wrapped in. IFS.

Hamish: Right.

Osman: I tapped on the wall and it had a little bit of hollowness to it, which isn't which in my. If you get a feel for what feels like it's not 100% predictive, but it's reasonably accurate. I'm like this, I think this is. And when you looked up, there was like a horizontal, like a diagonal crack close to the chimney cap. Well, sure enough, the inspector flagged it as and as being a problem up there. And the listing agent, their response was, my husband's a builder. This is a $7,500 maximum credit we're going to give you. And we had to negotiate for more time because we needed an actual estimate from an repair company to go up there, test the EIFS, see how much moisture was up there and provide a reasonable estimate. And the reasonable estimate was ten times the 70. It was $75,000 to repair. And at the end of the day, we got that as a credit. I think we may have escrow for it. I don't remember exactly because this is years ago. But the interesting part of this negotiation is how emphatic the listing agent was about how minimal the cost the repair costs would be.

Hamish: How confident, right.

Osman: And we had to work with her and the ego of, okay, your husband's a builder and you guys know a lot about EIFS, I hear you, but the buyer is not going to hire your husband we need actual estimates.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And that means they actually need time to go out there to to look at it and evaluate it and write up an estimate. So we need to extend the resolution deadline. And they eventually reluctantly agreed to extend the resolution deadline. And and yeah, it ended up being a $75,000 repair just for the chimney surround.

Hamish: And so.

Osman: And the seller paid for it. I just don't remember if it was escrow or not, or if they just paid for it as a credit upfront, but I think the escrow for it because they were in disbelief. But it turned out to actually have all this damage surrounding the chimney in the and rebuilding it all was very expensive.

Hamish: I'm a they got there. You guys had your estimate submitted it 75 K did the listing agent. She wasn't like, okay, I'll be going up there and write me an estimate or anything like that to fight back with.

Osman: Or I think at that point she knew the gig was up.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: But yeah, but what was interesting in this negotiation was just how strong the ego was, how like and this is where understanding human nature is important, where somebody is saying, my family is in the business. This is not going to exceed 7500 bucks. It's a simple repair. Stop being ridiculous.

Hamish: Chill, chill.

Osman: I've dealt with ifs before. Even I remember her saying that. And in negotiation, telling somebody they don't know what they're talking about is not going to result in good things.

Hamish: Yeah, that never goes well. Yeah.

Osman: Like you say, I don't think you know what you're talking about and fight with that agent over there. Competency is not going to result in them wanting to encourage this process to continue, instead reasonably asking for more time. We need to get an independent company out there that's an expert in EIFS to actually provide written estimates. We need more time. You are welcome to do the same, but without that time, we're not going to be able to come up with a reasonable resolution and we're going to just terminate. So it's up to you. And they agreed to give us more time and our clients behaved ethically. They got real estimates, they got the work done. It was 75 grand. It was a big number. I'm throwing out 75 grand as the roundup. But it was it was approaching $100,000 repair. And and it was just a very interesting negotiation because of dealing with that super strong ego and confidence of the listing agent trying to berate me into pushing our client to just take the $7,500 credit. And boy, I'm so glad they didn't because it turned out to be a lot more expensive than anybody expected.

Hamish: It's yeah, it's like, okay, you may be extremely confident, arrogant even at this point, but I'm not. My buyer isn't. We're going to check it out. There should be no issue for us going to get an opinion here. You know.

Osman: Exactly.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And at this point you also have skin the game because if the seller terminates or they can't actually terminate, they can say we're not going to reach resolution, they can stonewall and we're not going to extend the resolution deadline. So the contract, take it or leave it. If your buyer doesn't want it, the contract automatically terminates and we'll give them their earnest money back. That's their exit, right? Like they don't have the ability to force the contract to terminate. They can just stonewall. And they could have. But they also then need to disclose what was the issue that caused the House under contract.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And that should be one of the first questions you ask once you're under contract with a deal that has fallen out of contract before, I would say 1 in 5 contract properties properties that are under contract will then fall out of contract for one reason or another. Maybe it's the buyer's financing. Maybe the buyer just had a change of heart and didn't like the paint color, but they issued a termination notice. And that termination notice has a checkbox.

Hamish: And that's what you request. When you're under contract.

Osman: You're under contract because at that point the seller, if they refuse to give it to you, you have a big red flag. But if you ask for it before you write the offer, you may they may be very reluctant. I would personally wait. I think it's better to have leverage in the deal before you paid for your inspection. You have it under contract. You've tied it up. There's no other buyer that can steal it from you. That's when you ask for the due diligence documents, which should include the termination notice from the previous deal. And if they refuse to give it to you or there's no follow up with that, at least the agent who terminated. Okay, you don't necessarily need to call the buyer that terminated. But if there's no documentation other than checkbox inspection, pick up the phone and call the buyer's agent. And it's Boulder's a small town. Most of them will tell you the truth. And that truth may not get back to the original seller, and they've already gotten the earnest money back. So good luck going after these people. But they may tell you, you know, we checked inspection because the buyer didn't like the color of the house.

Hamish: And that's totally. And the seller is not going to know that because but.

Osman: They. Really love. The real reality is they love this other house. They hit the market at the same time, and they decided that they love that one better than the color of the house or this other one. And they terminated on an inspection. And and in theory, the contract gives you the right to terminate on color. So you're still I mean, you.

Hamish: It's a bad look.

Osman: The risk of the buyer's agent telling you that is that they potentially compromise their client. They really shouldn't tell you much of anything, but in practice they do, because this is a small town and you don't necessarily need to relay all of that back to the seller. But you need to fully understand why that buyer terminated, because it may or may not be. It may be the case that the seller is not disclosing what they actually know. And if that's the case, you should run before you pay for an inspection.

Hamish: That buyer's agent will let you know or at least steer you in a direction.

Osman: Maybe. Yeah, and this is where reputation matters, right? If you're good with your community and you communicate and play well with your colleagues, they will play well with you. And when I first got into this business from New York City, I was so hyper aggressive because I was from the investment banking world in New York. And I realized that system doesn't work well here. What works better is to play well with your colleagues, represent your clients really well, but also play well and treat them respectfully. And you will get respect back. And that's why I think I've been pretty successful in the Boulder market. And and you can see this with agents that don't play well. Their reputation is.

Hamish: In the gutter.

Osman: In the gutter and. Absolutely.

Hamish: And speaking of this, agent we're under contract with right now as kind of the testament to him and you guys working together very well and being additionally communicative just to get through and find a solution.

Osman: We'll see if we. Got there.

Hamish: Yeah. We'll see. But from what I'm seeing in the sidelines in the group chats, you guys are, very collaborative. And it's.

Osman: We're doing our. Best. I think. I think he's doing his best. I'm doing my best. We're trying to keep the deal together, but also protecting our clients.

Hamish: We have a recent experience with an agent who won't even return your call. So it's a night and day from that.

Osman: That's true.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: That's true. There's an agent that we're in a deal with right now, and we'll talk about this when it closes or doesn't close. But her unavailability is just I think it's indicative that she's got a full time job.

Hamish: Oh, yeah.

Osman: And she can only call during her lunch hour or after work. And she doesn't want us to know that. And having been an agent that was working nights and weekends, I in the beginning of my career, I respect that. But it would be nice to know that she's just not available, because.

Hamish: That's where communication would make the.

Osman: Big that would help. That would help a lot.

Hamish: But before you would totally work with that, of course. Yeah.

Osman: We've already concluded that even though she's been in the business a long time, ten years, it's there's a reason she's with the discount brokerage, and it's because it's the cheapest place to hang your license.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Okay. Or maybe she has family obligations. Okay. We don't know.

Hamish: Maybe she's caregivers.

Osman: She could be caregiving to an elderly parent. I don't really know what's going on. It's just very odd how many hours go by without the response.

Hamish: Okay.

Osman: Let's move on to our market update.

Hamish: Oh, perfect. Good deal.

Osman: And listeners, we hope that that walking you through the inspection process and all the different ways it can go right or go wrong is helpful to you. And of course, if you're interested in our services, we're happy to represent you. But these takeaways are are relevant and hopefully useful to you, whether you use us or not, and probably in most markets. Although again, I will say that what we talked about is specific to the Colorado market and the Colorado contracts process, and not necessarily relevant to South Florida.

Hamish: Yeah. And agents out there listening to we're getting more and more emails. It's good to hear from you. Stay tuned.

Osman: It is good to hear from you. And we're going to have some as a guest soon. So excited about that. And if you're interested in being a guest, we are welcome and open to business, even if you're not within our brokerage. I think it's an experiment, but I think it'll be a fun one.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: All right. Can we do the market update now? Are you ready?

Hamish: You're allowed. Yep.

Osman: Am I allowed to talk about.

Hamish: The market? Yeah. Permission granted. Okay, June.

Osman: I am once again a little sleep deprived. And so if I'm a little slow on the uptake in this conversation, it's because I woke up at two in the morning and then couldn't fall back asleep again until 430.

Hamish: Which to nocturnal.

Osman: It screws up my whole morning routine of meditation and journaling and and reading. That is my preferred morning. Rather than that two hours in the middle of the night thinking about all the things that are in play right now.

Hamish: How much you wish you were asleep.

Osman: I wish I was asleep. I would not say stressed, but there's a lot of things happening right now. Okay, let's talk about Boulder County. Single family houses, detached only not condos and not townhomes. And this is data through the end of June. We're talking about the month of June data. And there were 440 new listings that hit the market last month. That's a decrease year over year of 13.2%. Total homes for sale. I'll make sure I have the right data here. Okay. 923 houses were for sale last month. That's a decrease of 13.3%. Pending sales, there were 302 pending sales last month. That's down 1.6%. And closings 346 buyers found themselves with the keys to a lucky. Lucky buyers found themselves with the keys to a new house in Boulder County last month, an increase of 1.8%, and then the median sale price was $910,000 in Boulder, an increase of 7.1%, and then price per total square foot had a shocking pop, and we got to $369 a square median, and that was 12.5% higher than last year. And when you look at the chart, you sort of see the last couple of years, the market like having a lot of variations summer to fall and into winter. Right.

Osman: Like the market typically sees the highest dollar per square in spring and then drops to the lowest dollar per square in the late fall and early winter. But this little pop in June is a little unexpected. So like that variability last year narrowed. And now we're seeing this little pop. And I'm very hesitant to be a technical analyst of real estate trends. Like I feel like.

Hamish: Sample size.

Osman: Look the sample well not for the county. Sample size issues are less relevant for the county, but the broadness of this data, right. We're talking about all single family houses in all locations in Boulder County.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Like we're talking about the entry level house.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: In in Longmont on the northeast corner. That could be $500,000. And we're talking about the $9 million sale in the city of Boulder. Like, there's so much data in this set that it's not relevant to you as a home buyer or a seller. What's relevant to you is what the market looks like to your specific and unique situation. We have talked about that so many times, so please take this with a grain of salt when we're talking about county and city market trends. All right. Let's talk about attached dwellings. Only because this is a segment we don't cover a lot. And I think it's time to because it's sort of looking like deal environment right now. And there were 187 new listings down 12.6%. The overall inventory of homes for sale that are attached stayed steady at 548. That's a slight drop of 0.2%. And then Boulder County, the number of homes that are attached under contract, 99, down 2%, and then the number of closings, there were 130 lucky buyers who got the keys to their townhomes and condos last month, down 5.1% from a year ago, and then sale price. What happened to sale prices? Well, the median sale price was 484,293, which is up 4.1%.

Osman: And the price per total square foot plunged last month. So the price per total square foot, I think, is much more relevant.

Hamish: Than that's an average of all the homes.

Osman: No median of all the homes.

Hamish: Okay.

Osman: Yeah. Median of all the attached dwellings that sold last month, 338, which is a decrease of 16.9%. And if you look at this chart, which you can't see in this podcast, but if you look at it.

Hamish: Screenshot it.

Osman: From 2024 to 2026, you kind of see a downward trend line and you can screenshot it later, Hamish, and share that with our audience so they can see that how.

Hamish: It looks like. Don't know they're right.

Osman: You want me to screenshot it right now.

Hamish: Yeah. Yeah okay.

Osman: I will screen I will screenshot it right this moment Hamish. And come in. Where's the screenshot button?

Hamish: I don't know just Mac have print screen.

Osman: No no. No. That's not do print screen okay okay. All attached dwellings any square footage any bedroom in bath count. That's the what the chart shows. All right, let's move on to the city of Boulder.

Hamish: All right.

Osman: So for those of you who are new here, the city of Boulder is within Boulder County. And. But Boulder County also includes Longmont and Lafayette and Louisville and Lyons and all the unincorporated parts of the county, all of which are Boulder. But now we're talking about the city of Boulder only, and in the city. Let me double check and make sure we have Boulder City, because it is super easy to grab the wrong data.

Hamish: Boulder city, Utah.

Osman: The City of Boulder, and new listings 138 new listings hit the market in the city of Boulder last month, down 13.2%. Inventory plunged to 354. That's down 14.9% year over year under contract. We're also known as pending sales 97 last month. That's an increase of 2% from a year ago. So you're hearing this supply is dropping but pending went up slightly. And then you look at the number of closings. There were 121 lucky buyers in the city of Boulder last month. For single family detached houses. That's an increase of 27.4% from a year ago. So more buyer activity pending sales are up. More closings, inventories plunging. If you've been sitting on the sidelines, you may have blown it because the market is starting to roar back and the data is starting to support that. I don't think that's all price points and locations. There have been a lot of sellers that have dropped their prices from the 4 to 3 million range and the 3 to 2 million range, which.

Hamish: Is.

Osman: We've seen that they've crossed tranches. Exactly. We've seen that. So buyers have gotten the sellers have gotten the message and the market has, I think like so. So if you look at the big picture for Boulder, historically, there are long periods of upslope and then there are relatively short periods of downward market movement. And if you're lucky enough to have high inventory and have had two years of down market movement, it's getting it's looking more and more like that periods ending. And so you may want to get off the sidelines if you've been waiting for a while and sellers, you still have lots of competition, but it's welcome news that the market is no longer quite as soft as it has been.

Hamish: Especially in the attached segment.

Osman: And we'll see what the what. Well, we haven't gotten it yet.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: We're only talking.

Hamish: About detached okay.

Osman: So let's talk about sale price. So the median sale price for single family detached house was 1.3 million in the city of Boulder last month, an increase of 11.1%. And the price per square was 540, which is an increase of 3.1%. Again, that's median. And I like median. It's a little bit. The averages get skewed by house sizes and prices in Boulder especially. So I prefer to look at the median. Your data may vary, but that is direct from the MLS. And all of the brokerages in our community are required to put their sales on the MLS or pay penalties, and for the most part, they do so the data is reasonably accurate. It's also arm's length transactions, unlike what you see, for example, with the tax assessor data, where it could be family transactions and you have no idea if that's a market transaction or not.

Hamish: Yeah. Good point.

Osman: Okay.

Hamish: And you only get the assessor value then to.

Osman: Yep. Exactly. All right. Let's talk about City of Boulder attached dwellings. These are townhomes and condos 94 on the market. Sorry, 94 new listings last month, down 13.8%. Inventory. There are 301 attached dwellings on the market. That's an increase of 1.7%. And represents, by the way, almost the highest inventory that we've seen in the last decade.

Hamish: Wow.

Osman: The highest was actually July of 2025, when there were 304 attached dwellings on the market. We were back at that number, or just shy of it at 301. We'll see what happens with July data if that goes up or not, but it's bouncing right off the rev limiter, so to speak. On the supply side, under contract we are looking at 45 listings. We're under contract or pending in the month of June. That's a decrease of 13.5% year over year and closing 63. Lucky buyers got themselves the keys to their attached dwelling, their townhome or condo, but that's down almost 15% 14.9% year over year. In terms of closings, I just had a client. We will not mention their name, but they just reached out saying that their rental ends in October and they are thinking about either renting or buying, and they would be open to buying a townhome or condo because the market conditions might support it. At this point.

Hamish: I spoke too soon on the attached. Yeah, yeah.

Osman: Okay.

Hamish: So do I know this buyer?

Osman: You do?

Hamish: Yeah you do.

Osman: We'll talk about them. The funny one off the pod. They're all funny.

Hamish: Okay, fine. Okay.

Osman: So. The median sale price 495,000 last month. That's an increase of 7.3%. But let's look at $1 per square basis. The median dollar per square for attached dwellings in the city of Boulder last month was 440, or down 5.2% year over year. Okay, that's your walk through Boulder County. We have.

Hamish: The city. Of Boulder.

Osman: That's your walk through the city of Boulder and Boulder County. We've covered them both. But data is different for Louisville, Lafayette, superior, Broomfield, all of the Denver suburb markets we cover as well, and into Lyons. And I also really have a thing for the mountain towns. So if you want data that's relevant to your particular house hunt or relevant to the home you're thinking about selling and you're open to becoming a client, reach out to house Einstein and we will do an analysis very specific to your unique situation. And we're happy.

Hamish: To much more actionable information.

Osman: Well, useful and actionable. Relevant. Just keep in mind that on the sell side, what's relevant in July is not relevant in November. So we ballpark pricing is probably all you need for thinking about selling your house. And then when we actually go to list the house, we need to look at the competitors. And where does your house line up in the competition. And I would not recommend listing it in November. By the way, if you're past October, you might as well wait till January and get the house really ready. Take the next three months and dial it in so that you're ready to go rocking January 1st with your listing, the videographer, and the photography. Everything should be perfect because you have three months, but do not. It's almost always a mistake to list in the fourth quarter and even in the late third quarter. And I don't know why agents aren't telling the people this, but it is 100%. I mean, how many two decades of looking at this data, it's over and over again a mistake. So oh my gosh.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: If you're if our client wants to do it we'll do it. But we tell them this is not a smart idea. You're the decider.

Hamish: If you can wait wait.

Osman: In George Bush language, you're the decider. But our honest advice is don't list it right now. Like we will sign the listing agreement so that we do all this work for you. And we will go live January 2nd, not January 1st. No one's looking at real estate on on New Year's Day.

Hamish: Yeah. There.

Osman: Wow. Maybe they are. If they're avoiding their family. I don't know.

Hamish: Look in their runes. Little hungover.

Osman: Only that's such a rookie move. Going out on New Year's Eve. All right. Okay, that's our data analysis. So we get the sales.

Hamish: Of the week. I think that's that.

Osman: Time for sales of the week. And if you're new to the pod sales of the week is the segment when we talk about notable transactions that represent property types or price ranges at certain locations we really like, or houses we just think are cool and want to talk about. And we can't talk about active listings on the pod. I do talk about it in the newsletter, but for podcasting purposes we are restricted to only close transactions. All right. Our first one 303 Holly Berry Lane in Boulder. Do you want to jump in with your thoughts on this one?

Hamish: Hamish I haven't looked yet.

Osman: You haven't even seen it.

Hamish: All right.

Osman: Let me let me jump in with the overview. Hamish is unfortunately got hot takes on this because he's had no time to review, and I've had time to think about it a little bit. So this property, Holly Berry Lane from a location perspective, is one of the most desirable spots in Boulder. And I'm not the listing agent and I didn't represent the buyer. I'm telling you that honestly, as an independent party to the transaction, but somebody who's been in this community and worked in real estate for well over 20 years, this spot is magical. You're at the very top of color Mesa, and you have easy access to Enchanted Mesa, which gives you very close proximity to Chautauqua. It's a really cool spot. You also get a bunch of random hikers that park their cars right on Holly Berry Lane, so that can be a little annoying. And you also, in some cases, get a home that backs up to stunning, beautiful open space. Sometimes there are homes that back right to the trails, and this might be one of them, where you could get people literally hiking through your backyard.

Osman: You also have exposed higher exposure to wildfire risk because you are really up there in the wildland urban interface, but still a killer location and a location that is very well supported by luxury homes that dot the landscape. Up here, people have invested a lot of capital, and I think you can safely put money into this location, probably as long as you keep it under ten mil, which is sort of shocking, but true, right? You're at the very top. And affluent people really like to be at the very top of hills. And so there you go. This particular house was built in the late 60s. It's only 2300ft². It's a two story which is more desirable for Table Mesa because there are so few of them. But it's really about the dirt here. Okay, this is a 80 300 square foot lot, and it is backing to the open space, and it is facing to the south southeast, at least the lots oriented this way on the little cul de sac or lollipop. All of that is indicative of a home that likely is going to get torn down and completely rebuilt totally at some point in the future because of how valuable this little perch is. So it's almost irrelevant talking about this house.

Osman: But I do want to talk about what we see on the ground today. Four bedrooms, three baths, 2300ft², two car attached garage. So on the small side, but livable. And they've done some nice things to the interior, including the post and beam. Look to the living room, the central fireplace, the redone staircase, nice big windows to the backyard. All that natural wood is very current in its look. I don't know about butcher block countertops. Once you've had them, you probably don't want them again, but there's a whole bunch of reasons for that. Kitchens. You know, the bathrooms are a little dated. I like the vaulted ceilings and the exposed wood paneling. All of this super pretty. And maybe the buyer is just going to leave it all alone, but they're investing in a location that will support recapitalization easily up to the ten mil mark. Although at, you know, for that much money, people really want a much bigger lot and want space from their neighbors. So maybe that's exaggerating to call it the ten mil mark, but for sure, up to the five mil mark, you're going to be pretty well covered.

Osman: Of course you have to build within your setbacks and all the other rules that apply, but the rules are about to get less restrictive. So don't be surprised to see, like a nice big Adu or something like that and a completely redone house in the near future. What else should we talk about? Oh, the deal points. Okay, so the House listed May 21st as coming soon for a day, and then it went active and it was under contract within the week. Now that's just when the status changed. We don't really know what that that scrum looked like. The status is required to change within three days of three business days of it going under contract. And it did sell for a very substantial 2.4 million, 2,411,000 from a list price of 2.25. So, you know, you're looking at 180 grand or so above the list price and a deal that closed in cash. So. There you have it.

Hamish: Yeah, you're right. Not the largest lot being on the lollipop. You get that smaller front yard larger backyard which can be a nice little touch. And I mean all the things that I would say as well. The fire danger I think is a human mind is forgetful. But the end car burn scar is still there. Granted, it's on the other side of an car. But no, a great little area. I'm. I shot this location with Ian not too long ago, and I can't identify where I got my shots. And I think the house to the left of it has been redone since then. Because there was a boulder, at least that I remember in one of my shots. But.

Osman: I.

Hamish: Mean, the little spot.

Osman: The house. The house on the left side is sort of the Ghost of Christmas future. If you look at the aerial photos, who knows what you know, what the potential build out really is for this lot. We haven't done that analysis. And the tricky part is, if you're in a bidding war for six days, you don't have a lot of time. So you have to make fast decisions and therefore having a good knowledge base to make those decisions as vital. Can you build a reasonable house on this thing? Probably. Is anybody going to protest the 1969 era house from being completely demoed? Probably not. Is the tax assessor map a reasonable approximation of the lot lines? Well, maybe it's probably about right, but they're not. They're going to tell you point blank it's not survey accurate. So you're not going to be able to determine exactly your build out potential. But you can ballpark it. You can spitball it. And I think that I think that the buyer is going to be happy in the long run for this particular house. And I and I don't know if they're going to they're going to tear it down now or in five years. But don't be surprised when it gets torn down.

Hamish: If you're unhappy with it, go outside. Look at your open space.

Osman: Right. Just go hang out in the backyard. And I think this is well played.

Hamish: Should change.

Osman: Even though it was a frenzy, you know they went so much of a list price.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: All right. Our next one went the other direction. 255 Linden Drive. And did I mention the address of the first one? I think I just jumped in with location. All right, all right, so Linden Drive is right on the edge of Spring Valley. Spring Valley Road and Lake Brier are where most people think of as Spring Valley, but there is a little pocket there that's also part of Spring Valley, and this house is in it. And it may be one of these houses that is not actually subject to the association, even though it's in the subdivision.

Hamish: Okay.

Osman: Because my listing a few years ago, right, right. Very close to this house, was very much that situation where it was technically in the association, but not subject to the rules and had no dues. And this had no dukes either. Built in the 70s, 3000ft², five bedroom, four bath with a two car attached garage. Downside is it's right on Linden. There's no hiding that. It's right on Linden and it's right next to Wild Plum Court. You're going to get some traffic exposure as cars turn up and go driving up and drive their engines downshifting, you're going to hear some traffic noise, but you're so close to epic open space and social trails, and you're actually not that far from downtown because you can easily cross onto the fourth Street bike path right around the corner. So this is a really clutch location. It's elevated above Linden Drive, so you get really nice views. 70s air construction is horrible, but you can live with it or you can tear it down and redo it.

Osman: And in this particular case, I think because of the proximity to Linden Drive, it sat on the market for almost 45 days before it went under contract, and the buyer negotiated a pretty decent 120 grand off of the list price, and it closed for with no additional helps. Yeah, no additional concessions. Not a cash deal. Known agents on both sides of the deal I think well represented I like. So if you look at the interior photos image this one's got you know like they, they hired a painter. It went a little too on the white side a little cool side. Today's looks a little warmer. But it this is how you help an older home sell is it's completely emptied. The kitchen has some nice updates maybe from 10 or 15 years ago. And then it sort of got a whitewash. Natural wood tone. Look to it. This is what's current. It's not the gray stuff. And if you can live with that Linden Drive issue, you got a pretty spectacular little perch.

Hamish: Listed in April. One of the pictures off the porch. Dead grass and snow. So a little bit earlier there, but yeah, I'm.

Osman: Yeah. Listed April 22nd.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Kind of a long contract process now, I guess it's a little more than 35 days. Is not exactly that long.

Hamish: And then this to, last sold 2019. Is that what you've got on your end? Can you tell if they did anything to it or if it's just a a very fortunate holding period.

Osman: You know, I don't see the previous listings. There's only the one for some reason. And it last sold for 1.3 to an LLC. So unclear what, if anything, they did. It wasn't on the market in 2019. It was a private sale. Oh so from the trust to this LLC.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And so we don't really know what the house looked like. It doesn't look like there are massive improvements. It looks like a pretty cosmetic update and then cash out. So maybe let's call it generously, $300,000 worth of work. And then we could do the internal rate of return if we wanted to see what their annualized rate of return was.

Hamish: But I will say these listeners, particularly on this episode, from hearing our closing table, would know, some kind of next steps for inspection process. Say you were under contract on a home like this. I'd want some.

Osman: Due diligence for sure. The full inspection, all the due diligence documents. It looks like on the MLS, there was nothing actually disclosed. But you want the full disclosures and go deep down the rabbit hole. Water is is a potential issue. This is this house is on Spring Valley Water, which is its own little water district. And so you want to investigate what that means, and it probably means contacting Spring Valley Water and talking to the neighbors. The lot size is massive, but I'm pretty sure this is unincorporated Boulder County. So let me just double check that, because then your subject to all of Boulder County's rules, even though it sure looks like it's in the city of Boulder, and it is it is planted, but it still may be unincorporated Boulder County. So but really big lot size, which is nice. Since I brought it up, I'll show you how fast you can check this, right. Like, it's not that difficult to check.

Hamish: Doing it live.

Osman: And I just close my window for all the listings for the rest of fresh listings. So. Yeah. Unincorporated Boulder County. Yep.

Hamish: Okay. Yeah. And that speaks to your experience, seeing it, knowing it's platted but still having belief that it's unincorporated.

Osman: Well, you actually have, I think I would even argue you have more stringent, house size limits in unincorporated Boulder County. So that's something that's really important to understand. Okay. Let's move on.

Hamish: Yep.

Osman: I personally would say we have a potential seller that's a little further up the road here. And this price point is probably indicative. And this house is a really good example of the work that you need to get done in order to make it more sellable. And

Hamish: for Linden.

Osman: For a house that's especially a house of a compromise location like Linden. It just is what it is. There's no there's no sugar coating it in. Any agent that pretends that this is not an issue is an agent that's lying about it, like it needs to be priced aggressively and it needs to at least be marginally improved cosmetically. And this was right. It's not amazement, amazing improvement, but it's reasonable.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Like it's livable.

Hamish: Yeah. Same with Holly Berry. You know you can go in there. It's certainly on the lower end of what the neighborhood supports.

Osman: But Holly Berry is a much better by Holly Berry is an epic location like the spectrum of location difference is pretty dramatic between Linden and Halle Berry. Yeah. Okay. 3990 Pleasant Ridge Road is our third sale of the week. Built in the early 60s, and on Pleasant Ridge, which is this little subdivision between the city of Boulder and Boulder rez. So it's sort of north east of the city of Boulder, but southwest of the rays. It's kind of this farm belt of land and stuff here doesn't sell that often. It's a little swampy, right? The location is lowland, but the ridge up here should have lifted it up. So I think you're not going to have any water issues. Big lot. Almost more than three quarters of an acre. And the house itself sort of irrelevant to this, right? This really is about the dirt. You're buying a lot of dirt, and the 60s era house is almost certainly going to get completely, you know, redone.

Hamish: Or placed on.

Osman: You know, the interesting thing about the photos is the ditch running through it. So I'm kind of curious about. Right, you know, flood mapping and how that all played out. But the fact that it's on this elevated little perch means it's probably fine. But one of the that's one of those things where you have to make a determination really quick. And there are floodplain maps to make that determination. But what's astounding about this is how low it was listed. It was listed under 1.5 1,475,000. I'm not sure what comps they were using because of how rare this listing is. We know the listing agent. She's very competent. I know I'm sure she knew what she was doing, but she got a bidding war and it sold for 2 million, which is 525,000 over. So more than half a million over the list price by a very reputable and well known buyer's agent. I kind of wonder if she was representing herself because she likes to be in the building game. And and they recently closed the high dollar transaction for one that I think she was involved in the construction side, so or at least her family was.

Osman: So I suspect this is another like this is a lot that's going to have like a $7 million house on it in five years. That's what you're looking at. And especially.

Hamish: For the.

Osman: Area for this is what, you know, people really love this pastoral landscape with a view and the privacy of Pleasant Ridge Road, which dead ends up here, right? Like it's a private, private spot. One of the due diligence items should be conservation easements around all the land that's protecting the view. So hopefully that's part of their due diligence. Or was and they they buttoned it up and they wouldn't of course I'm sure it was knowing the agents involved. They're very competent. So super interesting deal. And gone in you know a blink of an eye. Listed on June 18th under contract, officially June 26th, but probably a few days even earlier than that and closed on July 10th. So total time on market, you know, less than a week of availability and and closed within three weeks. And of course cash deal gone.

Hamish: Yeah I when I'm surprised to see in the photo stack is a monte this one just up the road. But I looking at it on maps I think that's probably the closest little shopping spot you've got.

Osman: So I don't know why I'm in the photo stack. It's really not anywhere near Monte.

Hamish: Kind of.

Osman: But with that said, you know, I guess you want to have some amenity photos. It's it's not that far from a monte I like. We're walkable. They're in 30s from here. But.

Hamish: Yeah, thanks to our sponsor.

Osman: But. I mean, there's other stuff you could have included to, right? Like, they also have Pearl Street Mall in here. I know, like, the rez is in here.

Hamish: The Reds. Makes sense.

Osman: Yeah, maybe. And and then, you know, downtown Pearl I don't know about. And see you. Why why is Folsom Field in here? I don't really know.

Hamish: It's like a you know, they're advertising. Solely selling.

Osman: They're selling boulders.

Hamish: What they're doing.

Osman: Right. You're getting everything in Boulder. Okay, let's move on. But this is definitely a spec home or or a custom home build in the next five years.

Hamish: Keep an eye on easily for sure. Yeah.

Osman: All right. We're still in the general vicinity. And this is the Valhalla subdivision. The address is 4774 Valhalla Drive. And all of these streets in this area are sort of named after Nordic themes.

Hamish: I love.

Osman: The I think that's cool. You've got Odin Avenue, Door Avenue, Valkyrie, Valkyrie drive. Like, this is very Nordic, and I don't know when this subdivision was was created. My guess is the late 70s, early 80s. The house itself is from 1982, and most of the lots in the subdivision are about an acre, so it all feels very spacious from each other. Nothing really has killer views in here that I recall having seen a few of these houses over the years, but you're getting such close proximity to the rez. So if you're into water sports or just like being close to the water, that's the big benefit of the Val, the Valhalla subdivision. And it does feel a little more rural and private than, say, being in the city limits itself. But you're really close to the city, just like the last one on Pleasant Ridge. But this one doesn't have the view it was listed. So this is a 80s era house, three bedrooms, three baths, only 2088ft². So not a very large house, but I would call it traditional design with a nice wraparound front porch, a paint scheme that's dated but not horrible like it's a paint scheme from maybe 15 or 20 years ago.

Osman: The big selling point is that wraparound front porch and decent design. Yeah, one bedroom on the main, two in the basement. So it's a ranch with a basement, right? As small as, beautiful type house, detached garage, and listed at 1,000,250 May 28th under contract almost immediately. But that first buyer bailed out. So I remember we tell our clients that even in a bidding war, 1 in 5 is a good rule of thumb, for it might come back. And this one did. So it was back on the market on the 10th and back under contract on the 11th, probably to somebody who lost out in the bidding war. And they got it for 1,265,000. So a nominal $15,000 over list with a small concession, another $1,500 for something or other that the seller paid for.

Hamish: Kind of a slender home.

Osman: Slender?

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Like it's skinny.

Hamish: Yeah. From the photos, at least, it looks like it's, you know, a little narrow and a little long.

Osman: I mean, to me, it just looks like a classic cottage type house that's modeled after, like, the 40s era craftsman from Sears. And then it has some nicer things, like vaulted ceilings and decent closets.

Hamish: Looks like that detached garage.

Osman: It's the garage that really caught my idea, because if you look closely, you'll see it's not just the two car garage. There's an annex to it. And then the photos you see like this, I mean, it it looks very home done. Right, the installations poking out. But you have a big workshop with a fridge in there, a bunch of dangerous extension cords dangling all over the place. But. And then the walkout basements cool with the the, the ivy growing on the decking like that looks like a nice cool spot to hang out on a summer day. Like it feels very oasis in the woods. And you've got the little you've got. I mean, there's so much land. You've got the little garden plot and the mature trees, like, it's really. It's really quaint, really cute. A little on the small side.

Hamish: Yeah, yeah, I think it'll be developed.

Osman: I don't know about that. I think that it may be, it also is a home that at this price point, could be an end user that is just in love with it. And it's cute. It's gotten adorable to it. It just has kind of a muted paint scheme with a more current paint scheme. They probably could have bumped that price 50 grand if they painted it.

Hamish: Yeah it yeah it's missing sizzle but it is cute. You're right.

Osman: It doesn't have like I, I think it's sort of curb appeal if you can look past the paint scheme.

Hamish: This can be the last one. We're walking through it.

Osman: We're walking through 1060 35th Street. So the baseline neighborhood is sandwiched between what I call the research side of Q. Yeah, the more serious side of Q and it does have a lot of students in the neighborhood, but it's not the party zone like the Hill. So it also has a mix of families and young professionals living in the baseline neighborhood. And this is your typical entry level house where they've done a garage conversion, three bedroom, two bath, 1323ft², no basement decent, 80 to 200 square foot lot, almost 8300 square foot lot. And the home was built in the 60s. The location is kind of interesting because it's it's on the corner of Madison in 35th, and Madison gets some traffic, but I wouldn't say it's a super busy spot. Really, what you're getting is such close proximity to town. I mean, you're right in the center of town and you're on the serious side of Siu, so very rentable. When you look at the photos, you see, you know, the garage conversion is maybe with looking like it might have been without a permit. Who knows? We'd want to check permits on it.

Osman: Nice vaulted ceilings, tidy backyard, livable house and the lack of a garage is a big deal for a lot of people moving here. They want to have at least one spot to park the car out of the snow, or at least stash all their gear, right? The camping gear or the bike gear. All of that's really important to them. So I'm I'm kind of surprised that it didn't sell faster and for more money. It was listed in May at 845. They cut the price after about a month to 829 five, and then eventually it went under contract not once, but twice. The first buyer bailed. The first buyer went under contract May 29th, bailed out ten days or 11 days later. Second buyer put it under contract a week after that and it closed for 795, which was, you know, a nice $35,000, $36,000 discount to the list price.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And you know about. Right, these, these basic ranches. 750 is sort of the floor for baseline and Martin Acres baseline being a little lower. And this house had vaulted had some some skylights that add architectural detail. The kitchen's done I think it's actually a pretty good deal. The sunroom addition with the stove looks really tidy and nice. I don't know about the art. It's cool. It's a cool house. I think it's a decent deal. The one thing is that it also is radiant heat. You can see that in the photos, and so you probably cannot easily add forced air. You're probably in the land of mini split. But the one thing that is pushing down on the valuation is the hundred year flood. So it it looks like it's in the 100 year flood. And that gives you permit restrictions as well as requiring you to have flood insurance if you have a mortgage. And and those homes are also harder to sell and creates downward pressure on pricing. But I don't know, it seems like a fair deal if you're our usual advice for the 100 year flood is don't write because of all the restrictions and the flood risk. This time will be coming from Skunk Creek. Unless you're getting a trade off.

Osman: Like if you're getting an incredible view or you're getting right downtown.

Hamish: Something to make up, you know, something to track the buyers that were initially scared away from the floodplain.

Osman: But the house doesn't have a basement. So that's the other piece, is that you're not going to have a flooded basement if there's a flood event, but you could have water damage anyway. So we would strongly advise you get that flood insurance and understand the permit restrictions for the future by being in the 100 year flood.

Hamish: At first I was really shocked by the price and I was like, there's no way this would you know, this is like dilapidated Martin Acres home pricing.

Osman: But it's in the. Flood and it's.

Hamish: One. Based on one level.

Osman: And it doesn't have a garage. And when you add those factors in, that's how you get to a totally it's a reasonable price and it's updated.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Right. So here's the thing. If you buy a house that's in a compromise location, like in the floodplain, you actually are going to spend money to update it in order to get it sold, because a lot of or you're going to discount it by even more in order to get it sold, because buyers are not dumb. And so and but although some of them don't understand the floodplain and some.

Hamish: Are misrepresented.

Osman: But some agents don't advise their clients about the floodplain, we don't know the situation with this particular deal other than the listing side, very competent, and it's very clearly disclosed in the 100 year flood. So it is what it is.

Hamish: Say, Levy.

Osman: Okay, that's our sales of the week this week. And we went through it pretty quickly because clients are calling.

Hamish: Yeah, we are getting there on time.

Osman: So we're how. Far are we.

Hamish: Shameless self promotions next. And we are actually at about two hours so.

Osman: Okay.

Hamish: We we got some moving to do. We might skip news again just because we know.

Osman: Well we're going to touch base on it really quick. But shameless self-promotion is our segment where we take a few minutes to talk about a client and what their needs are. And this is a client who owns a really, really attractive house that fronts on Wonderland Lake. And they've spent a lot of money updating this house. It is stunning. And they want to move to a ranch style horse property, right. Like they want I kind of call it the Yellowstone Fantasy House. Respectfully, they don't necessarily need a giant lodge like the ranch, but hobby ranch horse property, something that they could have a few horses and have some nice views.

Hamish: Maybe some.

Osman: Toys, maybe some toys and be out of the city. Right? This feeling of just being in that pastoral landscape around the city is something that they're looking for. And this type of property I find really juicy as a search because there's so much to learn and understand. Water rights, the value of water rights are all over the place, and sometimes we see homes that are underpriced. More often we see houses that they pretend like the water rights aren't an issue, but they are, particularly if you have aguas in mind, and that Agius can save you a lot of money on taxes. Even if you're not the farmer.

Hamish: You can land right eggs owning.

Osman: And zoning. With ag use, you could save a lot of money in taxes. So we continue to be on the hunt. If you own property between the city of Boulder and the city of Longmont, and that is pastoral and would be perfect for horses, it actually doesn't need to be turnkey. This buyer would prefer it not to be turnkey, is actually looking for a home that probably is going to get torn down and redone in the next five years, so they would like to, you know, it's really about the land, the views and the potential and the and the water rights and understanding those water rights is is really clutch to a successful sale. But if you are an owner and thinking about selling in that zone, reach out to us if you've got something. I don't know the actual price cap of where we want to go, and I don't want to reveal it necessarily because that could compromise our client. But it's substantial, so don't hesitate to reach out if you happen to have a property like that.

Hamish: Yeah, I'm meeting them today.

Osman: For the first time.

Hamish: Yeah. So that's. Right, I don't know. Next week I'll tell you if I was on the money. You know, I've got a feeling you're you're on the money.

Osman: All right. We're going to do hot takes in the news really fast because it's sort of a slow news day when we're celebrating the launch of unleaded avgas. And what's really funny about this article. And we'll put a link into it. So this is the airport, right? Basically, the movement to try to create housing at the airport is dying for a variety of reasons, not least of which is common sense in my opinion. Like this is not necessarily the best thing to do is to have more housing in our only general aviation airport in the city of Boulder, or close to the city of Boulder. I mean, Longmont is not that far away, but a lot of people recreate and use the airport, and it's been there for a long time. Right? So get trying to get rid of it feels very, I don't know, very progressive, shall we say. And this avgas article just makes me laugh because it's celebrating the arrival of unleaded aviation fuel. But as you know damn well, Amish, the majority of people with older aircraft are probably going to start using additives. If they can't get unleaded.

Hamish: The old heads for sure, I think to it says here it's compatible with 70% of piston engined aircraft. I and I don't remember a lot of the comments that I've seen in like, I'm in a airplanes and coffee group on Facebook that I somehow became part of, but not this article. They were commenting on something similar. And, I think it's it's a choice of economics, right? Or if it's the same price or something, then they'll go for it. But there's a lot of old heads that swear by, you know, nothing runs better than leaded. And I've got to have it in all my cars, even the modern ones.

Osman: So I don't know about that. That's like your catalytic converter.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: This is I, I don't think you can use leaded fuel in a, in a vehicle that's designed for unleaded. But these old aircraft were built, were engineered for leaded fuel.

Hamish: Yeah. Soft valves. And, there was one comment where he's like, I run it in my lawnmowers because it runs better. And I'm like, okay.

Osman: Man, your lawnmower is not going to drop out of the sky.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: But with that said, like the UL 94 and I'm not an expert in this in any way, shape or form, is supposed to be used supposed to be an option for up to 70% of piston engine aircraft and that and you can convert your your plane that was designed to run on leaded fuel to now run on unleaded fuel. But it does incur cost. And we're talking about something that can drop out of the sky. So I think the vast majority of these of these owners are probably going to continue to use leaded fuel. And if it becomes unavailable, they're probably just going to switch to additives because, because.

Hamish: Because it falls out. Of the. Sky, you know.

Osman: Because humans. Right. I think it's cool that unleaded fuels available. I also think it's this idea that we're celebrating. It is sort of silly.

Hamish: I'm hopeful it takes the heat off of people trying to close the airport, but I'm doubtful at the same time. So.

Osman: All right.

Hamish: Bicycles.

Osman: Bicycles. According to Mitchell, buyers are former Daily Camera reporter and favorite Twitter X user. I guess you could say the commissioners say they're no longer going to pursue the alternate trail access days trying to segment segregate our our hikers, bikers and equestrians. I think there was enough of a backlash against Claire Levy in particular for pushing for this, despite the polling that said they didn't want it. And the biking community is getting more aggressive. And frankly, maybe they should be because they don't have a lot of options compared to hikers and equestrians.

Hamish: And when you think about it, really, they don't. Yeah.

Osman: But I think there is there's a huge opportunity for training. Right. So every once in a while I will go hike. Bittersweet on a day that the cyclists are using it. And boy, it's dangerous because there's so many blind turns and some of those cyclists are hauling, hauling and.

Hamish: As fast as. I can.

Osman: And it's a narrow trail with steep drop offs. So there are some places where I get alternate access days makes a lot of sense, but there's also a lot of places where education can solve this. Like, I get it right. It's scary having a bicyclist come come raring at you and you have the right way.

Hamish: Yeah, right.

Osman: And that's the part that a lot of cyclists don't get, is that they actually need to be more courteous to, especially older hikers. Right? Like their balance isn't as good.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: It's such a no brainer that cyclists are creating their own problem. And I am a cyclist. Okay.

Hamish: You're allowed to.

Osman: Say it's not all cyclists. I love mountain biking, but I also have been a hiker and been scared out of my wits to somebody coming around the corner and yelled at them where they came around the corner really fast and almost crashed into me on a blind turn with the drop off.

Hamish: I mean, I don't want to make this like an anti cyclist thing in a genuinely like kind of, you know, there should be more trails and stuff, but I am so tired of driving on like some sketchy roads and I try to give cyclists as much room as I can, but there they don't have any room to be on the road to begin with. I'm like, why are you here? You know, I get that you want to bike, but there is no shoulder. And we are.

Osman: So this is where you and I are going to get into it. Because I got to tell you, Hamish, they're so vulnerable.

Hamish: They are. So, so vulnerable.

Osman: And it only delays the driver a few seconds to wait until there's a safe place to pass.

Hamish: Totally. And I do.

Osman: Okay.

Hamish: Right.

Osman: All right. But why are they there? Because they have the right to be there. Because cycling is healthy. Because it's a great way to experience nature. And all of Boulder has to offer and drivers. I'm with you, right? It can be frustrating, but at the same time, boy, just just calm down. You're only going to lose a few seconds. Wait for a moment where it's safe. Do not take a risky pass.

Hamish: Oh, not.

Osman: Do not lay on your horn right next to the cyclist. Like, give them a break, man.

Hamish: I don't do any of that. And when I it's one of the like few sanctions times that you can cross the double yellow and go all the way over. So I do that. I think it's really fun. And I like to be like here, cyclist, have as much room as you can. But I for more than anything, it just creates concern for the cyclist. Whenever I see that, I'm like, this is so clearly an unsafe space and I'm paying attention, I see you, I'm giving you room. But boy, I cannot speak for the other motorists that I've had to honk at because they were coming into my lane. And, you know, it's just it frets me and yeah, they've got the right they, they actually shouldn't avoid these roads because the drivers are unsafe. The drivers need to wise them up. But it worries me. So that's where else I'll. Be at.

Osman: All right. I'll let you have the last word on that one.

Hamish: Do you? I think we've got a no.

Osman: I think we're mostly in agreement.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: I feel like there's much debate here.

Hamish: Yeah. You bring you. You're right.

Osman: Other than. I guess I have some latent anger.

Hamish: To your Boulder.

Osman: County that pass too close to me when I'm on a bicycle.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And create unnecessary risk to save a few seconds when we're coming up close to a stop sign and I literally catch the car that didn't. Unsafe pass.

Hamish: This is the most embarrassing thing to do.

Osman: And one of the biggest areas of conflict I personally have had is Boulder Canyon, because that dirt path that runs along the side of Boulder Canyon that then turns into a paved multi-use path. For some reason, drivers feel like all cyclists should use that all the time. And the problem with that is that cyclists, particularly on the downhill stretch, can be going 3540 miles an hour.

Hamish: They need.

Osman: A way faster than you're allowed to go. It's a multiple of how fast you're allowed to go on the bike path. And it's a misunderstanding for drivers that all cyclists should be on the bike path. When the bike path is not actually a commuting or professional cycling or even amateur cycling route. And even I can as a, as a out of shape cyclist, can go 35 miles an hour down the boulder, down Boulder Canyon between four mile and downtown, and there's a narrows portion where the where that bike path is and there's a concrete wall. And the last time I was going down.

Hamish: This is. Yeah.

Osman: As you were going almost 40 on, on my e-bike, a pickup truck went pulled up right next to me and instead of passing safely, decides to stall there, right next to me and start yelling at me. And then a car is coming the other way. I literally slammed both brakes to to create space for this pickup to come back into the lane. I don't know why he felt like they needed to park right next to me and start yelling. I couldn't even hear what he was saying. The wind's rushing through my ears. All I had to do was look over and I realize he's a guy with his window down in the oncoming traffic next to me, yelling at me about not. And he's pointing at the bike lane, so he's yelling at me for being in the roadway.

Hamish: And this is when you made.

Osman: The gave me such a panic attack. And so I hit the brakes. He swerves back in and I literally am behind the guy the whole way down the rest of the Boulder Canyon. I caught him at the ninth Street intersection, ninth in Canyon. I caught him and he rolls down his window and is yelling at me again as he stopped in traffic and I'm like, dude, like literally, you saved no time and you created so much risk. And I really wish I had my camera going to watch this ridiculous situation unfold. Yeah, I hate.

Hamish: Ridiculously Dangerous.

Osman: And do it. If you're listening to this and you're black Toyota Tacoma and you had mountain bikes on the back of your car, I just don't understand what you were thinking, that that was a good moment to lecture me about lane use down Boulder Canyon. So anyway, yeah, I get it. People get angry and I still have some latent anger at at somebody almost killing me down Boulder Canyon.

Hamish: And that it's the vulnerability is like cars are death machines, you know, compared to a bike.

Osman: You're in a cage, you're in a metal cage. Surround it. Have some patients wait 10s. You're going to end up at the same place. Maybe you lost one light and in this case, no lights. I caught the guy.

Hamish: Yeah, and it is. My favorite guilty pleasure is to go all the way in the other lane to avoid a bike.

Osman: Or why it's a guilty pleasure.

Hamish: Because I'm like, oh, I'm back in New Zealand. You know, it's a nice thing I do.

Osman: All right, let's get into our carve out, because I've.

Hamish: Got that was almost.

Osman: On an inspection resolution and we're running out the clock.

Hamish: We are. It's your first. Tell us about your event.

Osman: I think you should go first.

Hamish: Perfect. It's me first. I'll tell you guys about this movie. It's called obsession.

Osman: Obsession?

Hamish: Have you heard anything about it? Really?

Osman: Nothing.

Hamish: Okay.

Osman: Who's in it?

Hamish: Nobody big. It was built or filmed on a $750,000 budget. And I believe it's hitting. I think it's in the hundreds of millions at this point in the box office. Like it's one of the highest returning, films.

Osman: It's actually in theaters. It's not just getting DirecTV. Netflix.

Hamish: Oh, no, it's actually extended time in theaters. I think it just hit voodoo weird. Really big. So funnily enough, there's a real comedy sketch group called that's a bad idea. And they do quite a lot of sketches, most of them inappropriate. None of them like embarrassing or gross or anything, but just funny. But you could always tell watching it that they were grading their footage. They had specific Luts that they were using the footage in the film that they were the video that they were presenting was like far and above beyond somebody just taking it with an iPhone.

Osman: Okay. So it only positive really. All movies are graded. So is it graded in a certain style that you like?

Hamish: These are. The real skits from the group. That's a bad idea. Just the skits and the reels that you would see on social media were like professionally done.

Osman: Okay?

Hamish: And so it kind of like piqued my interest. Last year, Curry Barker. Won the sketches. I'm giving. You the. Yeah, this is. The story.

Osman: So bring it into the movie.

Hamish: Yeah. So any last year, Curry Barker, the director and writer of obsession, released a short horror film called Milk and Cereal on YouTube. And that did very, very well. And it was a little one. It's cool to watch it. Milk like milk and then cereal like serial killer. It was kind of neat. Well, yeah, he ended up getting a deal to put together and write and film and direct this movie called obsession, and it's quite creepy. It's a wish horror. So, you know, somebody in there makes a wish, and then it goes terribly wrong. And the way that it was shot, everything. I was on edge the entire time. I was very stressed. I was unhappy as I was watching it, which is to say, it was a really good horror movie.

Osman: But there like a lot of jump scares. Or was it more like in your. Yeah, more of a psychological frightening.

Hamish: It was. Very it was very psychological. And then the jump scares, I was genuinely disarmed at the times when they happened, and I kind of knew that something was going to happen, but I couldn't place where the horror, you know, like if you're being hunted by a serial killer or there's a ghost or something, you can kind of anticipate when the ghost is going to be violent or to what degree the violence is going to happen. But the way that it went from like, okay, this is creepy, but I don't know, you know, how bad it's going to get yet to Holy cow, where we're jumped the Rubicon, where we're beyond murder. We're in like an insane cult thing like that happened, and it felt like ten minutes of watching the movie, and your heart's beating out of your chest. I mean, it was. Horror movies usually don't stick on me. This one, it got to me. I get chills thinking about it. There are a couple scenes.

Osman: That are like, went to the theater to. See it.

Hamish: I did a date night. It absolutely was soft launch. So soft. Launch that soft launch. Me hard launch is like you post a picture of them and you want to go, yeah, yeah. Soft launch date.

Osman: Okay. That's like, what is soft launch? What is this lingo you're using?

Hamish: Okay. But no, it was really good movie and it was cool to see Curry. Barker went to film school in New York. And you know now he's like getting a lot of praise and stuff. But it was cool to see from comedy sketches on on Facebook to a full fledged production movie.

Osman: And he spent 750,000 on making a feature film.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Wow.

Hamish: Tiny budget. And of course, there's a bunch of complaints from like, the grips and everybody that worked on the set not getting paid. But the deal is it's flat rate, you know, because you don't know how much it's going to gross and all that stuff. Yeah.

Osman: Well that's interesting. I mean, have you heard of the Rocky Mountain Horror?

Hamish: That's that's a cult following, right? Yeah. The picture show.

Osman: No no no no no no. Oh, no no no, I mean, there's a film festival. I think it's called the Rocky Mountain Horror Film Festival. Where the Colorado horror there is one. There's a horror film festival here in Colorado. I think it's in the fall. You may want to check. I didn't know you were in horror films. You may want to check it out.

Hamish: I'm really not really in the horror movies. It was the fact that I'd watch these guys on Facebook and I liked their skits and then seeing all the reception stuff where I was like, yeah, sure, why not?

Osman: I like horror films, but not the ones I like, the ones that are psychological thrillers like Babadook and which, like The.

Hamish: Babadook, one. Dude that was. Yeah. This one. It's pretty light in the gore. There's a couple of scenes, but, it really it's it's the individuals involved in it. Nobody is a hero. Nobody would necessarily like. Which is a fun one because your brain is trying to find someone. Yeah, I'm I'm trying not to spoil it, but check it out. Like if you. Yeah.

Osman: All right, I will deal. Leah does not like horror films, so it's rare that I can get her to watch one with me, but I will try. It sounds interesting. I doubt we'll go to the cinema. We just don't like. We haven't been in the movie.

Hamish: It's on voodoo now, I guess so.

Osman: Oh, okay.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: All right, we'll check it out.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: All right. My carve out. Where do I start with this? So if you are into. Van life or into adventure vans. I have one for sale. And I built out this van. I got van brain, hashtag van brain. Then this is like 2016, 2017. And after searching for the better part of a year I. And making the decisions. Right. This is before the all wheel drive sprinter was available. Or the all wheel drive transit. There were no all wheel drive vans really, that were camper van type options. That made me sense. So a lot of people were converting Ford Econoline and and after doing a ton of research, I came to the conclusion there's two companies. There's a company on the West Coast and a company on the East Coast, and the company on the West Coast does a conversion that's push button, but not as rugged, like literally push a button on the dash. And the company on the East Coast does a complete front axle transplant from basically an f 450 or 550 trucks with big brakes. Leaf Springs gets rid of the solid axle.

Osman: It's solid axle front and puts in Detroit true track, which is like a form of limited slip on the front end and individual wheel lockers, and does it as part of a six inch lift and puts the van on 35. So now it is a totally different machine.

Hamish: Monster van.

Osman: It's like monster van ish. And I decided if we're going to do this, and when I was a go with this company and I called them and I researched their reputation online, they're a company called You Joint Off Road. And I decided, all right, if I find a van, maybe I'll take it to them for the conversion. I shopped a bunch of local van builders, and none of them were building things that look like they were well done and could retain the what's called rock, which is which is roll stability control.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: So the four wheel drive conversion that you joint does retains the RSC and everything just works. So I found a van I think it was like in the Kansas City market. And the guy originally ordered it with a rear AC and C air conditioning.

Hamish: Oh okay.

Osman: And carpet. But that was it. And then wood paneled the interior and did basically no other mods. And I think he used it as a tow vehicle because I pulled up the address on Google Maps of where it was parked, the address and the old one of the seats, and there was the van next to a boat, and the van was also ordered with a tow package. It was a small boat and it's in the lake. It's in the Lake District. So I think this guy used it as a van to take his boat to the lake, and it had 11,000 miles on it when I bought it. It was a 2011 body, 2011 engine, and I bought it in 2017 or early 2018, and I took it to you joint in North Carolina and had them do the conversion, drove it back. And then a year later I had Colorado camper van do the top.

Hamish: That's right, the top.

Osman: And then I had Titan Vans, which is based here in Boulder, install Sienna seats, which have integrated seatbelts using dot quality hardware so it's safe on L tracks. You could pop it on, you could take it on and off, take these seats in and out literally in minutes. They're so easy to pop in and out.

Hamish: Captain's chairs?

Osman: Yeah, they're captain's chairs. The legs go up and you have, like, recliners back there. The back seats are better than the fronts. It's got swivels in the front. It's got the camper van top, and it's got L track in the back. Where you where it's it's sized for van trays, which are the one bike rack bike trays that you could put in place there that will easily hold bicycles. So the idea was you could tear out all the interior in minutes, or you could put whatever you want, you could put in cabinetry and you've got a full size bed on top. So it's really comfy. It's really rugged and it's been a great van. It's also getting older and I got a fantastic deal on a replacement van, so this one's got to go. I can't have two adventure vans, right. The only tricky part is it has a weird thing going on with the emissions monitoring system that I'm going to solve. It's not failing emissions it can't get tested for. It's not beginning emissions because it's not ready for emissions. And there's something going on in the powertrain control module that's been driving me crazy. I've taken it to two different shops and it's going to the Ford dealership next week.

Osman: We're going to solve it, but the van only has 51,000 miles on it. List price is 55, which if you look at what this thing is, you know, the conversion on the four wheel drive system alone today would cost you 35. And that's without the luminous bumpers in the barrier.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: You've got the whole rear box in the back, the ladder. The front has got fog lights and the you joint front end it it looks great. It functions really well. It's really rugged. It can be converted back into a cargo van in minutes if you need it for work. I've used it to haul motorcycles. I've put in place a little piece of L track to mount a electric winch, which I then do a snatch block to the front between the seats, put a rope between the seats on those bases, which are also bases, and I've got the ability to pull a 500 pound adventure bike into the van easily, and the van carries it like it's nothing like. Yeah, the van like it's nothing. I also added airbags to the back, mostly to smooth out the ride, because I realized the airbags in my plow truck make that when they make the ride really smooth. So I'm like, let's make the ride really smooth. So I had you put in airbags in the back. And so the van has been really well maintained, full synthetic oil changes and it only has 51,000 miles.

Osman: It has the 5.4l two valve, which is not to be confused with the 5.4l three valve that's in the Triton series trucks.

Hamish: That has problems with the spark plugs, right?

Osman: This does not have that problem. And so it's a super reliable engine, although not exactly a powerhouse. I would not use this to tow heavy things. Yeah I did put a it does have a rebuilt transmission. So the transmission had an issue in Billings Montana. And in 2019 it was there for like three weeks. And they put in a like it's not a brand new transmission. It's a completely rebuilt transmission. And Browns transmission in Billings is a giant facility. While I was there for a few days, not happily stranded, I talked to all their shop people and literally like the guy with the least amount of experience I could find had like 11 years at Browns. Like, these were all really experienced guys like really experienced shop do the transmission and it's had no issues since. But I went ahead and put it in a cooler as well, because one of the things they told me is that transmissions failed due to heat. And so you really need if you're going to run a big adventure van down the highway in Billings, Montana, you want to keep an eye on the transmission temperature. And I didn't even think about that. That's why the transmission likely failed.

Osman: So I put in a big cooler in the front, and I've been monitoring the transmission through the OBD port and it never gets hot. So it's been fantastic ever since. No issues on that front. And the only thing that drives me crazy is this emissions readiness monitor that's just not triggering. And the Ford dealer, I'm sure hopefully will solve this. But even if it needs a new ECU or powertrain control module, it's 500 bucks on eBay and they'll program it to your van. You just need to give them the Vin so I could just swap that out myself. It's a couple of plugs and it attaches to the wall. So this is not it's like swapping in a motherboard on your computer or something. It's not that complicated.

Hamish: So we'll use part being so cheap.

Osman: The one thing that I was not thrilled about is the TPMS sensors were taken out from the original van, but those pressures is so much higher and the Van Eco cannot be. No one wants to program it for lower pressure, maybe because of liability or something. So the TPMS lights on, it's always been on. It annoyed me in the first week of having the van. In fact, I think I had Chris do this at Fletcher in Fletcher in North Carolina, at Eugene. I had him put a little piece of electrical tape right over that, like TPMS light, because it's annoying and I don't want to see that. So that's the only weird. Those are the two things the emissions readiness monitors and the TPMS light. It had a it had a ARB awning on the side of it, which I had attached with Z brackets, and that darn thing fell off and scratched the side a little bit. So I will include the Z brackets. I think the solution is to go through the body with set screws, and that way it can't fall off. And then put the Arab awning back up or awning of your choice. I wasn't planning to include the awning. It's also wired in the back with a house battery.

Osman: The top goes up and down. Giant full size bed. It's it's a pretty amazing van. It could be your van. Hamish for 55 grand.

Hamish: Well, gee, thanks for your special grace. Yeah, I brought it up to my contractor and he was like, oh, no, he was looking for a sprinter, too.

Osman: I mean, it's got new tires on it, a new battery. I just did the brake flush yesterday. It's been really well maintained. It's got super low mileage.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: The equivalent sports mobile is $100,000 van with way more mileage. So genuinely this is better than a sports mobile because you don't need a kitchen. And the equipment today is far better than what Sports Mobile used to equip equip their vans with. And the four wheel drive system is the best in the business. Not unlike, in fact, people bring their sports mobile to to you to have them converted, and there is a joint Colorado to even service it. It's on the Western Slope. So they used to be right here in Boulder County, but they moved to the Western Slope.

Hamish: Yeah, as you're. Making a case for the maintenance on it. But I'm not even a shell here. Osmond is like the most maintenance minded and focused on mechanical everything that I've seen. It's, A little obsessive.

Osman: 2 to 2 focused on.

Hamish: Well, it's a damn thing. Good thing for resale. So you. Yeah. You're solid.

Osman: Maybe the one thing I didn't do and I've done this with past vehicles is create a white letter, white paper of all the maintenance and then all the photos and documents. I didn't do that with this van because I wasn't intending to sell it. So you're gonna. I mean, I have a lot of documents. You could go through my Amazon purchase history and see all the synthetic oil changes I bought or all the oil filters I bought, but it's sort of a pain the butt to have to recreate all of that. When I didn't do it originally, I got a little lazy with documentation, but for sure this van gets oil changes regularly and with the most expensive oil I could find, Amsoil Signature Series like Amsoil oil filters like it's absurd. Off off off the charts maintenance on.

Hamish: Plus plus plus.

Osman: It should take you easily to 100,000 miles and a lot further without any problems.

Hamish: Especially being like forward and originally like a work van.

Osman: While also yeah all the parts are also Ford, so things are cheap. Unlike a sprinter, everything's cheap and any dealer should be able to service it. There's nothing in the van that is custom to a point where it's unavailable, and you joint continues to support it, because I've asked that guy questions. Chris, as I've gone through this, what's going on with the emissions monitoring thing? He's like he said that these occasionally powertrain control modules sometimes fail, but he's actually never seen one fail. Like, okay, super rare.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Weird problem.

Hamish: I got faith in the dealership. They better just have like a spare. They can swap in, you know. But I guess it needs to be programed to the Vin. But then they're the dealership. They have the equipment to do that.

Osman: They could reprogram in. Right?

Hamish: They better.

Osman: Be able to hope they will let me buy an aftermarket, because if they say it costs $3,000 for a powertrain control module, I'm going to say I'll bring one in.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: But then they're going to say.

Hamish: Like, great, I've got one.

Osman: Of the problem and we'll have a debate over that.

Hamish: You're the guy to debate. Like, if anybody's good at it.

Osman: Your diagnosis is right.

Hamish: It doesn't matter if it's the factory part or not. No.

Osman: Let's try the non factory part. Yeah, yeah we'll see.

Hamish: Okay

Osman: I think you can wrap this. You can take us out Hamish.

Hamish: Oh wow. It has been a long time. Let me scroll back to our little wrap up notes. Dear listener, thank you very much for joining us for podcast 126. If you'd like to, you know, stay stay up to date on what else we are up to, including the newsletter where we talk about active listings, more in depth market analysis and other interesting deep dives. Check us out at How Science. Com sessions letter. You can sign up there. There may be a delay on this one, but they come out as soon as we can. And yeah, if you'd like to follow us on our social media, we are available everywhere. Instagram. Blue Sky x, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook of course, and TikTok if you're of the persuasion, if you have anything else, if you want to get in touch with Osman for his van, he ain't hard to find as he likes to say hello. Com will have contact info there as well. Thank you again for joining us. We love the feedback. We are getting more emails with ideas with people wanting to join on the show with feedback. We just love to see it. So keep that up.

Hamish: And if you would like to leave us a little review on something like Apple Podcasts as well, it always helps us gain visibility.

Osman: Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. And yeah, we'd love a review and we'll catch you next time.