House Einstein Podcast #131 Transcript

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Osman: Alpine Balsam. We paid 366 million for something worth 121 million. Was it worth it? Last week, after a CORA filing and months of pressure, the city finally released its full cost reconciliation for the Alpine Balsam project. Open Boulder dug through it and published a white paper on what went wrong. Worth reading if you want the full picture, here's the short version. For 366 million. The city got 144 units of affordable housing and 138,500 square feet of office space. What should that have cost? Housing. The city's own benchmark is $120,000 per unit times 144 units. That's 17.3 million office space. It's cratered since Covid. Google paid 782 square foot in 2021, and Boulder County just paid 355ft² in 2024. There's currently 163,000 square feet of vacant new class A office space sitting at the 29th Street Mall. Even using a generous $750 per square foot estimate for the planning period, 138,500 square feet equals 103.9 million. Market cost 121 million. Actual cost 366 million. Premium paid 245 million, more than 200% over market. And now the city wants voters to approve a $400 million bond for more capital spending without ever explaining how Alpine Balsam ballooned into the largest cost overrun in city history. Before we hand over another 400 million, we deserve that explanation. Until we get one, I'll be voting no on Ballot Measure 2K, and that was supposedly written by Terry Byrne and Terry. I apologize if I'm mispronouncing your name, but that is an Open Boulder board member who happens to have been a CPA with over 25 years of experience building financial teams. Lived in Boulder for over a decade, ran for council and of course is now on the board of the Open Boulder organization that just endorsed a slate of candidates. And with that. Welcome to the House Einstein podcast. This is House Einstein Podcast 131 and I'm Osman Parvez. With me is Hamish Crabb.

Hamish: Hello. Hello, Osman. You can look at that camera and in theory know that you'll actually be seeing through that camera at this time.

Osman: So what Hamish is alluding to is we had some technical difficulties in the last pod that we have. Well, he has double and triple check that are set up. So that does not occur in this podcast. So if you happen to have watched us on video last week, this week will be ideally will be much improved on a video. On the video front, the sound I think you said was fantastic.

Hamish: Yeah, last pods sound was great, and then right before the burn that sound was not so good. So it's evolving progress. But, ideally this is the, the best podcast yet. Yet I say they're only going to get better.

Osman: Well, we don't know. We haven't even recorded the podcast. So this is what we're doing now.

Hamish: Yeah. It's not astrophysics, this Event Horizon or quantum physics.

Osman: Well, that's where the term comes comes from. Yeah, right. That's that is what an Event Horizon is. It's the edge where light can no longer escape the gravity of a black hole and becomes the Event Horizon where it turns black. That is exactly the limitations of our vision. And so that's what we'll be talking about for and in, in terms of our Event Horizon, we're only covering about a week. Yeah I think this is we're hyper local. And we really would love to chat about some of the fun and interesting things that are happening in our community. And we think you might want to hear about them too. So hence the new segment. Yeah. And then the next one is the closing table topic. That's a recurring segment we've had for quite some time this week. We're talking about the Pearl Street Arts District. It's a massive project that has the potential to radically transform the area around Boulder Junction. Again, we'll see.

Hamish: The same. Let's just wait to get into it.

Osman: Well I mean I've been tracking this since 2005 with the Transit Village Area Plan and the train we were supposed to get by 2019. We're finally apparently getting a train, so it's exciting to see what will come. And we're going to go into details on what is expected to be built, what the proposal contains, and what some of the costs are for the new Pearl Street Arts District. And then we're going to hit our Tales from the Trenches this week. We've affectionately titled This Dumb Money, and we're going to be talking about one particular deal that involved a seller losing over 20% in a relatively short period of time. So, yeah, that that one is is good. It could be a little painful for some people to hear, but I think it's important when you are being pushed by your agent to offer more than list. And we don't know if that was the case in this particular deal, but if it was and it's it's pretty typical that some agents will encourage you to go guns blazing, even when market conditions or the property type, the desirability of that property in the future don't really justify going that high. So there's some there's some lessons to be learned from this week's Tales from the Trenches, our market update. We're going to hit what's been happening this month in September. So this is sort of a late to mid-month update. It contains some relatively shocking statistics. So I want to really hammer home what's happening in this market as we head into the fourth quarter. And buyers and sellers adapt their strategies to be, well, more reflective of actual market conditions and less reflective of the hype you hear from most real estate agents.

Hamish: And wishful thinking.

Osman: And wishful thinking, right? Sales of the Week is our next segment. We've got five properties on tap for this week, and I'm going to just go ahead and read you the addresses so that you are prepared for what's coming. 546 14th Street. That's in the Chautauqua neighborhood. 2959 S Lakeridge Trail. That's in Lake of the Pines. 8835 Pine Cone Ln. That's in Louisville. And it's a new build, one that we want to contrast to a property that we were in a bidding war. Well, we almost were in a bidding war. We decided to our clients decided to let it go. But it illustrates sort of an interesting dichotomy happening in the market between older homes that have been updated and virtually new homes or brand new homes, and some of the things people aren't thinking about when they think about that price delta between the updated older home from the 90s and the brand new house from 2026. 909 Sunflower Street in Louisville. Oh boy. I think I may have confused which one is the contrast. I think sunflower is the one we're contrasting to Tyler, not Pinecone Lane.

Hamish: The sunflower that you build. Yep.

Osman: Sunflower is the new build, not pine Cone Lane.

Hamish: Pine cones. The one.

Osman: Pine cone is the one. Yeah. Thank you. That one illustrates a different market contrast. And if you are thinking about, for example, buying a family friendly home in Table Mesa, we've often had to drag our buyers to consider Niwot much smaller market but often has better quality homes with some of the same school dynamics, larger lots more private, all sorts of things that buyers might want to think about. Now, what is less available? Of course, than Table Mesa, which by itself is very unavailable. But I.

Hamish: Think.

Osman: Yeah, really important for buyers to consider it. So sorry I got a little confused about addresses. 909 Sunflower is the one that we want to contrast with Tyler. And then we have 2335 Dartmouth Avenue in, high Highland Park. Yeah, in Table Mesa that had its own bidding war. And I happen to know a lot about that particular location, because I used to live nearby, and I have run hundreds of times on the trail that is behind that house. So I want to I want to touch base on that particular bidding war and whether or not it might have been worth it.

Hamish: For a behind the scenes, you know, it usually will work in a penalty and put together these, the docket for today. And, Osman had me read through the Sales of the Week picks for this podcast. And, I'm very excited. I'm excited to hear about your take on Dartmouth Ave because I have some opinions of my own. Yeah.

Osman: Yeah, we all have.

Hamish: Location dependent. Yeah.

Osman: We have a segment we like to call shameless self-promotion, where we talk about one of our buyers or sellers and what they're up to, and then we've got Hot Takes. And in this week's hot take, we're obviously going to be talking about the $400 million blank check that the city of Boulder would like you to write for them. In terms of approving the ballot measure, we'll talk a little about this white paper. I don't know a lot about Open Boulder, although at a glance there, their particular politics seems to resonate for me, which involves fiscal prudence and transparency, focusing on the well, we'll get there in the Hot Takes and then just past its Resilient Schools proposal. It has a lot of people up in arms. We're going to hit on that. And then finally we'll wrap up with our usual carve-outs. Hamish, what are you talking about? This week.

Hamish: I want to talk about I think misnomers is the correct term, but we're going to kind of talk a bit about the multiverse and universe. We won't get to woo woo or, or too spiritual, but I think it'll be a fun conversation. And, it's been hearing the term universe used a lot on podcasts, and I was like, well, I thought everybody was kind of on the multiverse train. So that's to come.

Osman: Well, carve-outs are an opportunity for us to talk about whatever we want we want to talk about. And, and typically it involves something that we're working on as a personal project or maybe some travel. And I'll be talking about Taste of Fort Collins this weekend, which is, boy, quite the contrast from what Hamish is going to be bringing in this carve out. So hopefully we can hold that together with some sort of cohesion for you. And with that, I think it's time to jump into it. Let's get started.

Hamish: So what's coming up this weekend? Yeah. All right.

Osman: So we're into the Event Horizon. This is the new segment for us as I mentioned before. So bear with us as we kind of stumble around it a little bit in the dark. And hopefully it comes together for you as a listener. Ké Mundo Friday, 6 p. m. to 9 p. m. is the first one on our list of things to talk about, so if you're looking for something to do this weekend, Ké Mundo is a salsa band that's been around for a long time. I want to say 10 or 11, maybe 12 years. They've been around, they perform at band on the bricks, they perform at other venues, and they often host a performance at the St. Julien. And it's the type of thing where people will be dancing, will be drinking. They. St. Julien's a very attractive hotel. They've been outside. They've also been inside. So I think likely they'll be outside, given it's an 11 piece band. But always that's sort of weather dependent. So I guess we'll see. But if you're looking for something fun to do. Hamish, have you heard of Ké Mundo?

Hamish: No I haven't, I'm looking them up now. Apparently means burning or sitting on fire in Spanish. Okay.

Osman: Well that's great.

Hamish: Thanks, guys.

Osman: It's a fun place to go. It's a fun event to go for a date on, right? Like, if you have a special somebody and you want to go dancing and not feel intimidated, like this is pretty low key. Yeah, not everyone's salsa dancing. Although for sure there will be salsa dancing people that are experts in the crowd. But there's no judgment at these types of events. And anytime I've seen Ké Mundo and I've seen them quite a few times, it's been a fun experience. Usually we catch them by accident and so seeing them coming up, this might be this might actually be my Friday night. So don't be surprised if you happen to see me in the audience with my beloved, because it is. It is a fun experience and she definitely loves dancing, even though I'm far from the world's best dancer.

Hamish: I was going to say we talk about music, fun events, and all sorts of things going on in this segment. We both have a mutual salsa instructor, friend Eric Freeman. Yeah. And that might come up at some point. Or he could even be a guest.

Osman: Well, I mean, I'm not that close to Eric anymore. I have not taken one of his classes in at least 15 years.

Hamish: Oh, yeah.

Osman: So I don't even know if he would remember me, but for sure, he's he's a very, established instructor.

Hamish: Yeah. Well, cool. Yeah. I never heard of Ké Mundo, but you've seen him quite a few times at this rate. So, now it's a name to kind of keep out for.

Osman: Our next one's BK charade. And this is a young millennial comedian who is from Boulder, and he is performing at the Louisville Underground Friday at 8 p. m.. And as somebody who shares some of his heritage as an Indian American, as somebody whose family hails from British India will say so, we're not getting confused. My family is is Punjabi, but I definitely would like to highlight more things that have a diverse perspective on it. And this comedian is up and coming. He just I guess, was, you know, the guy from Super Troopers, the, the Indian guy JJ mispronounces, but he, he is a hilarious actor and comedian himself. And he played his body double I believe in.

Hamish: Oh, okay.

Osman: In this upcoming film. So or upcoming pilot for for for one. I don't know if it's another. It must be another Super Troopers, but I'm not sure.

Hamish: So if you could see the body double.

Osman: Have you ever been to Louisville Underground? Yeah.

Hamish: What is it? It's a kind of a speakeasy type of situation. So there's a backdoor entrance through kind of an alleyway, and, it's wicked. I mean, you can get in there through tilt, pinball as well, if you need your accessibility, but, no, it's very cool. It's kind of a speakeasy. It's underground. The cocktails are really tasty, and they've got a nice little venue there. I've done, they had a Great Gatsby night. I've done some comedy shows there, and things in the atmosphere's just really awesome.

Osman: How big is the venue type? Yeah. Like. Yeah. Is it smaller than License No. 1?

Hamish: I don't know, License No. 1, I'd say it's probably this office and a half. Okay. Yeah. So it's it's pretty small.

Osman: The License No. 1 has a regular comedy night as well. And it's pretty intimate. And you have to get you have to book your table and you get, like, there's premium tables and ordinary tables and there's little benches where you're kind of propped up, squished together. So it's a very tight feeling. And I kind of think that's the same thing at Louisville Underground.

Hamish: I think so, especially on Lincoln Park tonight. Definitely been there on a lighter night. And there's room and it's fine, but on a packed night you're it's kind of shoulder to shoulder. And the atmosphere there is is pretty dang electric.

Osman: And if you're looking for this event, you'll find it on Eventbrite. Mundo is free, so there's no cover to go see Ké Mundo. But, it's I think it's probably a pretty minimal cover charge to go see charade and support our local comedians. Yeah.

Hamish: And I guess now's a good time as any to mention pretty much every subject or property or event that we cover. I will be linking it in the show notes. If you're listening to the audio only podcast version, the best place for me to be able to link it is on our website. So in the podcast description there will be a link to our website, the transcript links, show notes, everything there.

Osman: Excellent.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: All right. Hamish, this is one you threw on here. Have you ever you ever been to this?

Hamish: Yeah. I, I have not been to the free day at the Boulder Reservoir, but I've definitely been to the Boulder Reservoir quite a few times, and they've. I mean, not recently anymore, but they, remodeled the building, and it's actually really neat. I vaguely remember working there at some point. And, for me personally, September 26th is when this event is it's a little cold to be swimming at the Boulder Res. So if you want to, I don't know, sunbathe or just be by the beach. Quote, unquote. It's probably a good move, but, yeah. Free day at the Boulder Reservoir.

Osman: September 26th. But here's the thing I how so what I've heard about the Boulder Res, and I don't know if this is accurate or not, but what I've heard is that your permits for watercraft, including inflatable stand-up paddleboards, but they basically disappear immediately. Yeah, they're like.

Hamish: Years out.

Osman: I think there's. Well, is that true or sale.

Hamish: Or like five years out.

Osman: I can actually book a permit five years in advance.

Hamish: I'm not sure. I'm like, okay, book ability.

Osman: Well, we don't really know.

Hamish: So read it.

Osman: Yeah. So if you actually know what the story is with the Boulder Res and watercraft permits, feel free to comment because we don't actually know. But I imagine that the free day doesn't mean free of permits. It means that you still need your permit to be like, but they're not going to charge you for entry.

Hamish: This is for your beach.

Osman: Yeah.

Hamish: This is for swimming. This is. Yeah. I know there's rental for kayaks and stuff. I had a friend that worked there. You can get, I think, kayaks and, you know, those tiny little plastic catamarans, those are rentable, but, yeah, this is this is for swimming. The free day of the Boulder Res. And, yeah, September 27th, us.

Osman: And then our own Boulder thon is coming up on September 27th, which is a marathon, a half marathon 10K and a 5K. This is one that I always laugh about because I haven't actually done the Boulderthon. We should because we are runners, my wife and I. But typically we're doing something else this particular weekend. But it ends at the Pearl Street Mall. And the one thing that you'll notice on social media are all the people that are caught by surprise by the route and find themselves trapped or aggravated by traffic. So from an Event Horizon perspective, this is both if an encouragement, if they're still tickets available to go run. But if you were in town on the 27th, which is Sunday, right? Yeah, you're in town on Sunday. Plan ahead for traffic and possibly being boxed in. You may want to look at the route for the race and plan accordingly. But look, Boulder is one of the healthiest cities in the country. We have so many people that are into athletics, and running is a big part of the culture. Cycling is another big piece of the culture, and our home grown races, including the BOLDERBoulder and the Boulderthon are colder. Boulder are cherished. Yeah, these are events that bring out the community and they're so much fun. So if you if you happen to be, around for the Boulder thon and I don't know if tickets are even still available, you should consider it because I'm sure it's a great time and maybe can't do it this this week myself, but maybe in the future it's something that we could try out.

Hamish: And I was going to say to if if you're running is not your flavor, the celebration at the end is, you know, anybody's welcome. So you can come in and get the contact runner's high.

Osman: And it's 7 a. m. to 12.

Hamish: Yeah. That's that's what I found on.

Osman: The are you going to go to the finish line and take some.

Hamish: Of those. I'm not around this weekend which is a bummer because this next one, Coffee and Classics on September 27th.

Osman: I would have Sunday same day.

Hamish: Yeah. Same day seven to noon, which is.

Osman: Like.

Hamish: Eight.

Osman: To ten, right?

Hamish: But boy. And now I'm thinking out loud with the boulder.

Osman: Is that happening with the boys? Are you sure Coffee & Classics is happening at the same time as the boulder?

Hamish: Yeah. So.

Osman: So this is classic cars.

Hamish: Yeah. That's right. It's my understanding. I think the boulder's got a fairly large classic Porsche community. And so you get to see, a decent amount of the older Porsches. Of course, there's going to be granddad with his Corvette and the New Balances. But just a lot like Osman and I were talking about toxic car culture. This is not that. This is. You grab a coffee, your car is parked, you're not revving it, and you're just going around to talk shop. So it's a really low energy type of thing. I've wanted to come to one for the longest time seeing this now and bummed the next one's not till October. I think they do the last Sunday of each month.

Osman: So I would look carefully at the where the finish line is for the Pearl Street Mall, for the Boulderthon and eighth and Pearl. I've been by this when it's happened on Sunday, and it's right in front of Spruce Confections. Okay, this first confections frequently has a jazz ensemble performing as well. So if assuming you're not going to the Boulder thon, this would be a fun Sunday morning experience to combine classic cars. Yeah, great coffee. Spruce Confections is a beloved bakery and coffee shop for throughout Boulder. I mean, but this is their primary location.

Hamish: You got to wonder how that's going to look on Sunday with the boulder on and the cars and classics at the same time.

Osman: I imagine the finish line is not at eighth Street. I think that's why the why the routes.

Hamish: Hopefully don't interact too much.

Osman: We'll find out. And this last one Hamish September 30th which is what day is that like Wednesday next week.

Hamish: Yeah I believe that's like.

Osman: Wednesday September 30th.

Hamish: This one's a little funky I saw it and I the big one is you know you've got kimono on there. Local boulder band strategos is a local composer. And I started listening to music after finding this event. And you know of course this event, Event Horizon segment gets us a little bit more community oriented. And I think at the same time, you know, there's some give and take there. So I started listening to Stratus and it's very cool what composition is nowadays. It's no longer classical only. So there is a lot of electronic elements and, very ambient music. So Stratus and the Boulder Philharmonic, September 30th, 7 to 9 at the eTown Hall. Just neat. Local artist, modern composition, modern composers is something I hadn't really thought about. And, I sure some could make the argument that DJ's are modern composers, but after listening to what Stratus is, music is, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. It's it seems to have a little bit more depth than just like your typical dubstep or EDM type of music.

Osman: All right. So I'm going to the eTown website to look for this event. And where do I. I don't see it. I see Nick Forster's hippie bluegrass church.

Hamish: ETown Hall.

Osman: Town town is is the I mean, eTown is the radio program on NPR and they built an amazing facility. I don't know, this is like ten years ago. They completed it maybe. And they continue to record eTown, the show for NPR. But where in. Are you sure about the where did you see this Stratus? And. Well, I guess we'll put a link into in the description. You don't need to go looking for it now, but I guess the reason I'm asking is. Look, that sounds like a lot of fun. And you're, like, free on Wednesday. So, you know, I, I believe in immediacy. And the 30th, you know, that might be a good date night for my lovely bride. And I, because eTown is such a great venue, the it's it's intimate. The acoustics are fantastic. They've got light snacks and drinks downstairs. It's an institution that is such a part of our arts culture here in Boulder.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: So. And this, this particular event, Stratus and the Boulder Philharmonic combine sounds like a lot of fun. And it also sounds like it should already be sold out, which is why I was checking this. Link because it was already sold out. That's a bummer. But if it's not, I, I'm probably going to buy tickets.

Hamish: That's interesting too. I'm not seeing it on the, Italian schedule page. However, I'm seeing it every. You just look up Stratus and Boulder Philharmonic and you can find it. It looks like, Bandsintown is kind of where you can get your tickets. Okay, so it will be linked. Great. Yeah. And venues. Good to know about that though. I saw eTown and I was like, that's such a strange name for a town hall.

Osman: You don't know about eTown? Wow. Okay.

Hamish: Yeah, I'll tell you about Lewisville, but I don't know.

Osman: That's really funny because it's such a I mean, it's such a a it's a radio program that's been going on for a long time. And Nick Forster has been part of our arts and music scene for a really long time. It's an interesting show, and if you ever have an opportunity to catch a live recording of eTown, totally unique as an experience and I think it's free. I don't even think they charge for for attending the recording, but it's not like the full performance. It's like, I think we saw Ben. What's his name? Ben. Oh, his last name is escaping me. Really famous musician. We saw them perform at eTown and it was really cool. Yeah, but it was like. It was like cinema interruptus. Like it was like these segments were being recorded. Not like you're sitting there for a whole performance by the artist.

Hamish: It's like, yeah, a little compilation of highlight reel type of sampler.

Osman: Super intimate, super interesting. Yeah, fantastic.

Hamish: Yeah. I'll get the link on there. But yeah, after just listening, I'm like, oh, cool, somebody local. And that's actually a bit of me.

Osman: So but this sounds like a full performance. Not not the eTown radio program. This is the.

Hamish: World premiere of a Challenger Deep. So I guess Event Horizon. Challenger deep, it is a Stratus album. And so he's going to be playing, parts of that with.

Osman: The Boulder Philharmonic. Yeah. Fascinating.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Okay. With that, that wraps up our Event Horizon segment again. If you found that interesting or useful or entertaining or even if you didn't leave us a comment, I'd love to hear from you. And I think we're going to keep it, because the idea is it also helps us focus on fun and interesting things that are happening in our community that we can then go attend. And it's very easy when your focus nose to the grindstone on work and serving our clients to lose track of what else is going on in our community. So this is sort of a, you know, the Venn diagram of why this this segment makes sense is it helps us stay rooted in community. It also creates fun for us. And also hopefully is an interesting banter for y'all to listen to while we while we go on and on about interesting things coming up.

Hamish: It's a good reminder for me to look away from the desk, look up, you know? Right.

Osman: And if it was a little rough this time, you know, give us a little grace. It's a new segment for us, so we're not entirely sure how to how to play off of each other for that particular topic area.

Hamish: Yeah. Okay. Now it's the closing table.

Osman: Okay. It's time for the closing table. And this week we're talking about the Pearl Street Arts District. And the reason this one came up was I was in a finance committee meeting for the Dairy Arts Center. And, I can't really go into details about what we were talking about in that meeting, but, the Pearl Street Arts District came up and how it is, how we view it on how I view it. I'm not speaking for the Dairy Arts Center. Let me be clear. How I view it is that it is a bigger venue that feeds into the ecosystem. It was a missing. It's a missing niche for it's a big a much bigger facility than the Dairy Arts Center will be or and, or is and it can serve larger artists. And I think it will really benefit Sundance when Sundance begins. Of course, this is years away from completion. So we'll see how it how it plays out. But it's not just a 2,500-seat theater, which is the centerpiece or one of the centerpieces. It also includes 500 new homes that are in close proximity to Boulder Junction, where we should have a train station, and it includes 30,000 square feet of food, beverage services and start up retail. I don't know what startup retail is or where those words came from, but that's what's.

Hamish: Going to be like no non franchise. Okay, I would imagine.

Osman: Well that's impressive because Boulder has a long history in the food industry of new. Yeah new food products being originating here in our community like this is going on for many decades. So if that's actually what they're talking about that's exciting. And connected plazas and linear parks create a walkable, bike friendly district. The cost is estimated at 630 million, but it's not the city of Boulder that's running the show, so it probably will be. It won't turn into 1.2 billion, hopefully. Yeah, but we're talking about a lot of infrastructure, right. Like the they will like it will likely be a special taxing district. I imagine, given that the current infrastructure there doesn't support 500 new homes. Keep in mind that we're talking about apartments and townhomes, condos and townhomes, but that still assumes 2 or 3 people per unit. So it's a significant number of people that would be drawing on our water resources and our sewer resources. Yeah, also potentially our electrical resources. And there's been a lot of concern over that in the city of Boulder, given how often we are going dark in Boulder or due to infrastructure failures. Yeah.

Hamish: And the man Boulder is still one of the few cities that I see that has above ground power lines, or at least where it's, like very present, right? Like I'm sitting in an intersection, just like been seeing those in a while, but, yeah, I mean, it's it's more development. It's attached with development from the real estate side of things. But that's sort of saying to is a much needed rehearsal space and kind of stage area. And especially with Sundance coming, these, websites like Pearl Arts district. com is I mean, it's just so utopic and the renderings and everything, you know, I love to see a world where it's this vibrant.

Osman: For sure.

Hamish: Streets not far off, though, the mall.

Osman: I mean, a couple things. You know, some would say they stole the name Pearl Street, but no, it's actually on Pearl Street. It's just the East side. And the locus of our community has been moving east for the last few decades. So 30th and Pearl is a very vibrant or very active location. It also is that location that has all that vacant office space currently, but at some point that will likely be filled. The interesting thing is that they did use the word startup retail, and I didn't catch it when we put the segment together. And I think it's a really, exciting thing, if that's what they're actually talking about. And it's not something that we're misunderstanding. And so here's what they wrote on their page that for Boulder's creative community, dedicated rehearsal and performance spaces can support local dance companies, theater groups, musicians, film organizations, youth programs, nonprofits, and community events throughout the year. And that is actually sounds very similar to what the Dairy does, but on a smaller scale. And the Dairy also, of course, does it as a 501 three, a nonprofit. And so the, the spaces that the Dairy provides are done below the cost of the Dairy, like these are discounted for these organizations. So I kind of wonder how how the new theater will work. But of course, a lot of this is unknown. It's a vision, and it's years away. But the proximity to the, the, the train station is what makes it particularly interesting. So imagine, there's a artist performing in the theater that would potentially fill it pretty easily. And now you don't have to hop in your car and find a place to park. You can get on the train. You can get on the train in Louisville, where we were yesterday, you could get on the train in Denver, and we're from Fort Collins and come into our community and enjoy an evening or a weekend. There will be a hotel, supposedly, without a ton of beds, but but a hotel as well in the location. So I think it's it's excellent for our arts and creative community to have more space, to have more venues, to have more opportunities to, to do art, to express.

Hamish: Art venues like, yeah, the infrastructure of art. Right. For art. I was going to ask like as being on the board of dairy, you hear about these things coming along and I think dairy is being a nonprofit kind of in a different position. But you would hear news like this kind of open armed welcome collaboratively. Right. Like it's not so much I think maybe another venue would hear news and be like, oh, no, competition is opening up down the street. Or maybe the arts just operate in a different world altogether.

Osman: Well, I think this pattern exists across industries. You'll see concentrations of similar themed businesses and people will go there. I think it's one of these, the concentration benefits. All lifts all. Yeah.

Hamish: And rising tides.

Osman: The dairy has no shortage of people that want to use the gallery space, the theaters or, or the physical space to conduct classes. So I think that this will be a net benefit. I would love to know more about the financing side of this, and it's a little opaque how it's intended to be. It looks like a for profit project. And the primary developer, you know, has got a lot of warm, fuzzy language about sustainability in it. And on their website. I did look at that, and it looks a little greenwashing to me, but I don't really know. I don't want to be critical of people I don't understand. You know, I have not met and I don't really know what they're up to, but they're sure talking the right language. You know, any new development is resource intensive. Construction is one of the most resource intensive industries on the planet. So it's kind of hard to, you know, you might build a LEED net-zero building, but all the materials that went into that building.

Hamish: Still had to get built.

Osman: And the concrete. Right. Like there's no way of getting around it. And at the same time, I think this is just part of the world we live in. And, and a lot of these businesses, including Conscious Bay, are doing the best they can. And having worked in the development industry before, I would love to see the model to better understand, you know, because one of the one of the ways that this can be profitable for the developer is all the housing, right? All the private housing they're building that they sell for profit. Yeah, there, of course, will likely be subject to affordable housing.

Hamish: I think there's a 15% or something.

Osman: Right, that the requirements for affordable housing in the city of Boulder. But it's the for profit housing that makes this affordable and the amenities of that housing by the theater and the other arts venues in that concentrated area could help bolster the sale prices of those units. Yeah. And right now we're in, like I would say, we're in one of the worst downturns I've ever seen for attached dwellings like the market is sort of imploding. I don't think that's the long term for housing in Boulder. But, it when it's sort of the timing of this, at the same time we're seeing such a slowdown.

Hamish: And the race just went.

Osman: Up and. Yeah, but by the time this is constructed and finished, years from now, rates will be more normalized. So I think that.

Hamish: For the developer to fund it though. Do you think.

Osman: But as a former analyst I really want to see the model. And it's a private model. They're not just going to email it to me, but I'm really I would love to have the developer, you know, on the pod to walk us through, not just the community benefits. Don't just give us the sales pitch, but transparency on what you guys are trying to achieve from a financial perspective as well, because that's important. And I don't, you know, we live in America. Capitalism is is what we have.

Hamish: This money first.

Osman: Pretending we don't is the part that I find offensive, that there's not a money motive to this, but it does seem to be something that is very exciting and will benefit the greater community. So I'd like to learn more.

Hamish: Yeah, completely agree, especially about the current state of attached dwellings and in the market. It's so boring.

Osman: It's sobering. But most of what's on the market is not what I would consider. But I've used this language before and it's adult friendly, like what you see a lot of for attached dwellings in the spectrum of options and boulders, a lot of old stick frame construction from the 70s and 80s that has not been updated in many years. You can hear the neighbor through it.

Hamish: There's a fire hazard. Just there's a bunch.

Osman: Of stuff on the east side of town that is really quite old. And so when you get people looking for, a second home in Boulder, or you get people that want that are young professionals, or maybe they want a place to downsize to, they don't want to move into something from the 70s. They want to move into something that they would love to have guests over, that have closets that are reasonably sized, that have tall ceilings, and.

Hamish: To be proud of.

Osman: Big windows that they feel good, like this is their lived environment. And if they can afford it, they want to have something that reflects their their tastes and desires. And it's their home. Right. So Boulder has a shortage. Good call of what I call these adult friendly units. And the reason I'm saying adult is, is because the other stuff is really often packed with students. There's high student density in the stuff from this built in the 70s and 80s. So the options are actually even though we'll get into this, into the market update, even though the market dynamics look pretty dour, the options are not massive for people looking for.

Hamish: And then like you said, to like the particular type of amenities. Kind of make or break the desirability of certain attached dwellings to, you know, we're releasing a Gold Run listing here soon. And after putting together, I've got 90% of the video drafted the amenities on it. It's one. I mean, where where else are you truly getting something like that without spending so.

Osman: Much more? You spend twice and you can go to the Peloton. Yeah. And you'll get very similar, functionally similar amenities, but not not as similar like the Gold Run Community Center is what it is. It's decades old, but functionally it has pretty much everything you need. Yeah, and parallels what you'll see at the Peloton. Yeah.

Hamish: And walking through the steam room. And I was like, man, this is nice. Tempted just to, you know, go have a steam. But yeah one to watch.

Osman: And we'll we'll continue to talk about the Pearl Street Arts District. It's such a huge development. It's it fits into that Transit Village Area Plan and it's coming along. So I want to make it clear that we're not I may sound like it, but I'm not anti development. I think that the community continues. It needs to continue to grow and change, to stay alive and vibrant and seeing investors and developers plan to put in over $600 million into this location that currently has a lot of industrial use. I'm going to lose IRL shop, okay, I'm actually a customer of URLs. I will be sad to lose the source shop, but it isn't necessarily the highest and best use of that location. Right? And as the city has changed over time, it makes sense. I would rather see an arts district there than an industrial district there.

Hamish: Right. Especially I think Boulder's moving away from industrial as it is. So, no. And I this is, you know, it's proof in the pudding. You are pro-development in this case. And, you know, you're not flatly, I think, as you've been accused.

Osman: Of being anti development across.

Hamish: The board. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think of it before we beat this horse to death, like thinking of the 55th and Arapahoe development. It's just a cube right.

Osman: I'm not I have not I'm not sure which I know that that's the locus of a lot of future development. Yeah, we talked about that before. And one of those buildings that's being built looks really like a giant cube. Yeah. And it's very esthetically unpleasing to me personally. Right. And I also yeah, I'm speaking about my own personal ascetics. It's the giant box is kind of a cube. Depressing. Yeah. Right. Like I feel like there should be some. Something is the walls need to articulate on the outside and yeah, it's shocking that they can build it because I know they pushed really hard to have better design language in our code. And this is where I keep coming back to development on Nantucket versus development here, where they made no illusion that these aren't arbitrary decisions that they're making. And the architects would have to work with the design review people at the city to get projects approved. And they weren't. They were just saying, we don't think this is an appropriate design. The dormers are too big or we need we need a design that is more reflective of the built environment and not what's there now or not. So it it.

Hamish: Yeah, no, we're not on guard.

Osman: We want instead Boulder has this giant code book that doesn't work right for guiding esthetically attractive developments. And I think it's time to throw away a lot of the code book that is really about design language, and just put in place a 12 person board that reviews every proposal and doesn't pretend that it's not arbitrary and capricious decision making, like it's completely arbitrary, maybe not capricious, but arbitrary. They're making these decisions that it's.

Hamish: One of those like, own things.

Osman: Or about a second.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And they're they're just going to say, we don't like the design of this because of X, Y or Z have half of those people be designed professionals, architects and others and have half of those people be laypeople?

Hamish: Yeah. Residents of Boulder.

Osman: Resident Boulder works.

Hamish: For.

Osman: Me, and they can be two students on there, and they can be two tenants in there. It doesn't have to or two renters on there. It doesn't have to all be homeowners. Let's have a mix of residents of Boulder and a bunch of architectural professionals. I think I'm down for that. Yeah, radical. It certainly wouldn't be worse than it is now having approved.

Hamish: Yeah. And I think, the net result would probably be a little bit more cohesive to Boulder as a feeling even. Is this horse dead?

Osman: I think we've killed the horse, although I don't want necessarily think it should be cohesive, like an arts district should have some avant garde buildings. It should not look like Boulder Junction.

Hamish: The same thing over and over.

Osman: And the new the new, modern art museum that's going in right here does not look it should look like a modern art museum. Not like every other building in Boulder.

Hamish: Yeah. Where I'm thinking is like, Oh, shoot. I think it's called a vista. The just, like, block of condos and apartments off of 36 by Broomfield, new Vista of Vista. You could travel like three states over and see the exact same design. That's where I was just like, I'd love to see. Kind of uniquely boulder like we can have.

Osman: A.

Hamish: Is that is it Vista like I.

Osman: Know exactly.

Hamish: Yeah, yeah.

Osman: And it's it's one of the bus stops on, on the, Skyride.

Hamish: But yeah, you'll just see, you know, these apartment buildings that are the same design copy and pasted across the country. And I think, yeah, that the whole idea is to get away from that and have something kind of uniquely boulder. It doesn't have to look the same, but, maybe we'll have a design pod and have an architect or something.

Osman: I would love that. If you're an architect listening to this and you want to chime in and educate us on how architecture is changing across the country and whether or not Boulder's keeping up or even advancing that conversation or advancing that movement. We'd love to have you, because I feel like this. This is the conversations we should be having as a community.

Hamish: Boulder's go to a history of architecture to, you know, with the links.

Osman: And I mean, we have our share of famous architects. Yeah. But I mean, every community has a history of architecture. It's just the question is, is it architecture that's recognized as as something that.

Hamish: Publicly accepted.

Osman: Is worth something, right? Meaningful? Is it art? And we definitely have had our share of mid-century in particular. But since then.

Hamish: Yeah, been kind of.

Osman: Like where is the where is the Hertling of 2026?

Hamish: Yeah, I'm just imagining that, thinking of that masterpiece that was just pulled down that mall off of oh, was it Valmont in 28 where the old DMV used to be? I mean, it was a really ugly.

Osman: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're talking about the diagonal plaza and how horrible it isn't all down. Yeah, that's for sure. That was a challenging one because the ownership was spread out across so many different individuals and entities that it was difficult to get. It's difficult to get things done in that location.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Okay. We should move on.

Hamish: Where you happened? Yep.

Osman: Wow. We're never yapping Amish. We're having intelligent and entertaining conversation.

Hamish: I like to think yapping can be that.

Osman: All right. Tales from the Trenches. Dumb money. This one's a little challenging to talk about because, I feel for people that lose money, particularly that we're not, in a space where they expected to lose money. So in Boulder in particular, there's a common reframe, rephrase. What's the word? There's a common saying saying that you don't lose money in Boulder real estate, that Boulder real estate only moves up. And this couldn't be further from the truth. It is actually quite easy to lose money in Boulder real estate, particularly if you find yourself facing a multiple offer or bidding war scenario. And bidding wars are not new to Boulder. We've had them for well over a decade at this point. I remember when they became quite common and I was surprised by it. And then we developed all sorts of techniques to guide our clients in, in how to be prudent in bidding wars. So it's a particular area of frustration when I see somebody lose as much money as this recent closing. So we're talking about a property in Dakota Ridge at 877 South Terrace Street, and it closed at the end of July, the very last day of July. So not that long ago, and it happened to have closed at a time that I was not quite as available to focus in on this particular deal. Let me let me pull it up for a second. Hamish, I emailed you.

Hamish: I've got it open.

Osman: So let's talk about the property itself. It was constructed in 2003, and it is a south facing single family house with 3500ft², five bedrooms, four baths. You have four bedrooms on the upper one in the basement, so that's a classic layout. It's a it's a narrow house, right?

Hamish: That's a narrower on a smaller lots of Dakota Ridge like characteristic of the neighborhood. I've got the video I'm going to link in the description of Dakota Ridge.

Osman: So we did a video on Dakota Radio Hamish is talking about. And this is a pattern of development. As you move forward in time and closer to the present, you will see that the way that development occurs is that you get larger properties on smaller lots and eventually you run out of even small lots because Boulder doesn't have many, with the exception of the planning reserve, which I fully anticipate will be developed in the next ten years, there isn't a lot of land left for larger scale developments, and Dakota Ridge is one of the last larger scale developments. It's on the very north end of town. It's a great location and it's continued to improve over time. You know, when it was first constructed, there was a strip club on the south east side of the neighborhood. There isn't any more, right? I mean, there is a there is, homeless housing, right. There's a homeless.

Hamish: Yeah, there's the shelter.

Osman: Shelter there, but there is no and there's permanent, housing for people experiencing homelessness. But there's the industrial use has started to decline. The trail access has improved dramatically. So the location is continue to get better. This is a south facing unit built only 23 years ago. So relatively new was it comes to Boulder housing stock. But it's classic. It's a big house on a very small lot. Big relative for Boulder standards, right. For throughout the country, 3500ft² is not considered big. But it's reasonable for most families. Right. Four bedrooms on the upper one in the basement. And it checks the box for what a lot of people are looking for. And enter the Wayback Machine of 2022. Near the peak of the market, buyers were just throwing cash at properties and some agents were aggressively encouraging this behavior. And I remember it quite vividly, because we were frequently confronted by a scenario where our buyers were going to lose and they weren't going to lose because they were not going to lose because they didn't have the money they were going to lose because we were not pushing them. And I, I meeting after meeting, we would go into these bidding wars with our clients, into the war room, and they would ask me how much would we offer and to help guide them. We would look at what the last few closings were, and then we would also I would call places.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: I would call listing listing agents with properties that were in pending status or active backup status, meaning these are deals that literally just went under contract. And when you ask the question the right way and you have a good reputation in the community, listing agents will tell you where things landed. If you ask directly, what's the what's the contract price on this bidding war, they would never tell you.

Hamish: Okay. Yeah, unless you're super close.

Osman: It's how you ask the question. Yeah. And they would almost most of them would give me some guidance on where things landed, because there's a spirit of collaboration in the real estate community here in Boulder, particularly among agents that have done many deals together over many years. They will give you a little.

Hamish: Some of them brag not not so much. The collaborative.

Osman: Brag.

Hamish: About what the closing price or what they're under contract for.

Osman: Back and then they would after they closed.

Hamish: They would even under some of them there have been like, oh yeah, we got a bunch and we're 150 K over.

Osman: And I mean that occasionally. Yeah. This is not edge case. You're talking about bragging in a private conversation. Yeah. They're not bragging publicly. No bragging publicly would happen after it closed. Right. We got 15 offers. We closed 150,000 over list. And of course trying to take credit for that. Not market conditions or not buyer stupidity that resulted in this behavior or not. Right. So dumb money is the is the what we've named this.

Hamish: Sorry to have derailed you there but yeah just thinking about agents that brag. Okay. Some money okay.

Osman: Let me go on like like you keep derailing me so I'm not going to be like, I'm trying to, like, finish out this segment. So in short, in April, the buyer paid almost 300,000 more than the list. They paid 257,000 over list. Probably they waived all sorts of contingencies to that was very common at the time. Not recommended, but very common and a source of frustration for us because we would tell our clients, and I still tell our clients this when we are in a rare bidding war, which we sometimes are. We were in several this summer that I can't advise you to go significantly over the list price. You should pay what you feel comfortable paying. If you want to go over list, my recommendations are do not go over. Don't don't offer a dollar more than you're going to like regret. Figure out your regret number right and don't go over that number please. And then we would often guide our clients in terms of how buyers think. Because in the absence of concrete data, people typically go to the big round number. And so if you're thinking about numbers that you're comfortable with, pick the big round number you want and go above that number. Don't go. Don't do the big round number right like I was. I'll never forget being the recipient of the offers. Five offers all the same price, all above list. Everyone went for the big round number and that's when the light bulb went off. That. That's what buyers are likely do in the absence of good analytics and the absence of good guidance, they're going to throw a dart at a big round number. So pick the round number that's slightly a pick a number that's slightly above that big round number but not a number you regret. And remember I'm not encouraging you to do this because the comp suggests that the list price is probably what it should be selling for. There's a reason the agent chose this list price, and in most cases, agents were not choosing those list prices low to drive a bidding war. It was more of a happy accident that was happening. So, I mean, the California model is an intentional model for bidding wars. What happened in Boulder in 2022 was not the California style of driving bidding wars, and we've talked about that in the podcast in the past. But I'll refresh your memory in case you're new and the California model, in particular in the Bay area and other frothy environments, is to intentionally list low but give buyers two full weeks to view the property, view it multiple times, come with your own inspector, of course, they also the seller also pays for an inspection that's available for you to review, but if you want to inspect it Beyond that point, you are welcome to do so. But there's no guarantee you're going to get the house. You might spend $1000 or $2000 on various due diligence items and then not be the winner, right? And then all offers will be collected on the same date, and the listing agent will tell you that. Look, if you put contingencies in this contract, you're not getting it. Like we're going for the best price with zero contingencies, just so you know. And there's nothing illegal about that, but giving the buyer two full weeks to do their due diligence increases the probability that the buyer is going to stick. Right. They really want this place. They've had their inspection.

Hamish: Yeah. They got their chance.

Osman: They've they've calculated their commute time. And instead in 2022 and this continues today. What was happening is people were were throwing in the offer guns blazing and often bailing out. Today we're not seeing bidding wars across the board, but we still are. We just talked about one last week that we avoided. So anyway, the buyer paid 101. Sorry, the buyer paid 1,807,000 for it when they closed on it in April of 2022. Let's fast forward to today. And the property was listed in June at 1.5. So they listed at they listed at 307,000 below their acquisition price. And they sold it at that price very quickly. Okay. But not in a bidding war. They sold it. It took 11 days before it went into pending status. So buyers had well over a week. Remember, there's three business days allowed for agents to change status. So it could have been a week to ten days, maybe the full time period. If they changed at the same day, they weren't looking for backup offers, and it was sold with a $3,000 concession for something or other. Unclear what that was for likely inspection related. So slightly below 1.5, and you're looking at over a 20% loss from their acquisition to get this property sold, which is incredibly painful.

Hamish: I wrote a buyer. I'm impressed the seller was receptive to this list price to begin with, and they updated it. Right. You've got both listings in here. It's been repainted. The photography is bussy improved. I'm not sure if it's staged per se. I've got a disgusting green. Maybe I'm seeing.

Osman: Some ground and tan frontage.

Hamish: The interior.

Osman: Oh, you're talking about the interior? Yeah, I'm looking at.

Hamish: My bed.

Osman: Okay. So. So sorry. Yeah. I mean, look, they owned it for four years. And it looks like. Yeah they put in some upgrades new washer and dryer, new gas furnace and likely a whole bunch of other things including paint. And in order to get it sold, that's what we're telling our sellers right now too, particularly for attached dwelling, is that you have to address the cosmetic issues to even have a chance at getting.

Hamish: This all about emotional, I don't know all about, but, you know, a huge impact to the buyer's perception of it.

Osman: So one of the lessons, the lessons are that, boy, some sellers made out like bandits in 2022. And when we have another market that's like that, it's a time to dump your bad real estate. Because there is bad real estate even here in Boulder that underperforms from a rental perspective, or if it's a home you own, if it's not desirable for the broad market, right? It's in a corner, it has a dysfunctional layout, or it's one of the less attractive designs. Right? Like by levels in Table Mesa are not as attractive as two stories. So multi-level homes and Table Mesa, for example, on busy street corners, a frothy market like 2022 turned out to be the optimal time. But of course, hindsight is 2020 and we're now in 2026, and we're still seeing people engaged in bidding wars in which we are saying this some of the same things, which is be judicious, but we're also warning them that disciplined approaches to purchasing real estate are not rewarded in a bidding war. You're very likely that we go through this whole process and as we had with a different client this summer, we ended up in a distant third, like off by more than 50 grand from where the top two offers landed. And boy, they were so annoyed and disappointed. And I even though we told them that you're not likely to win this because our approach, we're not pushing you, we will never push you in a bit more. If you want to write a crazy offer, I'll write it, but I'll probably document that I told you that I'm not the one pushing you. You decided this price on your own.

Hamish: One, right?

Osman: But I don't feel good about it, because I. Winning is sometimes losing. When you won the bidding war, and four years later, you're selling the house for a $300,000 loss?

Hamish: Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes winning has to be losing out on the House.

Osman: And that's before commissions.

Hamish: I know.

Osman: Add another 6% roughly.

Hamish: Yeah. What a bath. This isn't the one that was by that discount brokerage. That one's still in, North Boulder up ten. Okay. Wow. 2022, man. And another pod. But like, I've got friends that bought in 2022, and they're having to sell now and they're taking baths.

Osman: So how do you approach this market? I mean, that's a topic for conversation with you and your agent. But have that conversation. And one of the questions I would encourage you to ask them is that, hey, look, if we end up in a situation where it's a competitive offer, how are you going to guide me to making a smarter decision in writing that offer? Walk me through it and. I mean, truly their answer. If there shouldn't be any discrepancy between their answer and what they actually do. Right. So you may want to check for this when it comes time to actually write an offer. And if it turns into a scenario where there's perceived probability of a competing offer, right. Like what will happen is the listing agent will say, by the way, I got another offer. Most of the time that's true. Not always, but most of the time. Now what does it affect your desirability for the House? If it does, how much more are you willing to pay for somebody else's interest in the house? Like, how are you basing your decision on what this home is worth to you? Those that's the conversation you want to be having with your agent. And that's why this is the tale from the trench. And be careful to not be the dumb money that's going massively over the list price for a home that yes, it's a nice house. It was built in 2023. It checks a lot of boxes, but it's on a tiny lot, right? It's in the far north corner of Boulder. It's right in the middle of the wildland urban interface, surrounded by open space and high fire risk on three sides. It doesn't have Table Mesa's track record with schools like.

Hamish: There's not really a restaurant or grocery stores around.

Osman: It's a grocery store. Desert up. And I love Dakota Ridge. Okay, so if you're hearing this and you live in Dakota Ridge, I'm not dissing on you. I'm trying to be practical and realistic about the pros and cons of the neighborhood. And there are cons, so it may not have been the best place to go guns blazing in a bidding war.

Hamish: Question for you. And we've done this napkin math before, but for years, 300 grand, not including commissions. What's the how much did they pay in rent, quote unquote.

Osman: For this? We didn't I did not do the math. I'm not going to do it instantaneously. But yeah, the lost you know they could have rented. But life changes right. Maybe a family member, maybe their jobs changed. Maybe they're getting divorced or getting married. You know, household formation drives these things. And it's also quite possible that a $300,000 loss is a rounding error on their balance sheet. It's irrelevant to having lived there for where they want, where they wanted to be, but it still sucks. It's among one of the biggest losses I've seen in sales this summer.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: To advise you. That's what I would say as the biggest takeaway. And then. And then pass that. Ask really good questions before you sign on the dotted line in an exclusive agency agreement with somebody who's who's who may be pushing you instead of advising you. And I don't know. That's the case here. Okay. I don't know what that was like. I wasn't part of this deal, but I know that they won the bidding war, only to lose and see this property drop massively in value. And it's not a high end property. No, it's not a $3 million deal where we've seen $1 million discounts. It is in the mid market of Boulder real estate.

Hamish: Market update.

Osman: That's how you want to introduce.

Hamish: Boy it's been a September. How's it looking from a market perspective. Well no I've been doing the weekly market updates and last week's that I posted on Friday was very interesting because I saw more inventory coming to market than I had in like the past three weeks. On a like a percentage increase week over week basis. I attributed that to real estate agents advising their sellers to hold off listing on a Labor Day weekend. What a what are you seeing in the in the data?

Osman: Well. Look at your over year, the week after Labor. Being a bit of a bump, like Labor Day weekend is probably not the best time to list. Right. And with Parents weekend coming up in early October, if you have an attached dwelling, that might be a good time to list. It's what we're planning to do with one of our upcoming listings. But I did look at September market data. And so the day of this recording is September 23rd. So this is current two today, which covers the first three weeks of the month. And what we have seen is this is for Boulder County, not the city. I want to be very clear, as of this morning, 287 new single family houses hit the market this month so far. And of those, 287, 47 are in pending status, meaning they are either under contract, pending or active backup. Both of those statuses are pending. One of them signals to the market that the seller is open to a backup offer. The other one says, hey, we're under contract.

Hamish: This is class.

Osman: We think it's closing, so we don't really want more showings. We're not interested in your backup offer, but for from a data analysis perspective, both of those categories or classifications are pending. And with that in mind there's 17.7. So and four properties have sold. So they've sold they they were listed this month and sold this month. Which means you're looking at 17.7% are either pending or sold. Of those 287 new listings, less than 20% market absorption of new listings. But just keep in mind that includes people that have refreshed their listings, right? Okay, so when you think about that from an economics perspective or a market balance, perspective is generally perceived that 5 to 6 months is considered a balanced market. And that's for all inventory, not just new listings. When you add an all inventory, we are way below that 17% number. So this is yeah broad brush of the market. We are looking at a buyer's market for single family houses in Boulder County. No argument. It varies dramatically by price range and location. As everybody knows as we've talked about ad nausea. And then let's talk about townhomes and condos. So this is the part of the of the of the update that I was kind of astonished by when I looked at this data, 127 new townhomes and condos have hit the market in Boulder County this month. So far, only eight are in pending status and zero have sold, so that means 6.3% absorption of new listings so far this month, which is shockingly low when you think that means you have 90, roughly 9,494% 93.7% of new listings so far this month have not found a buyer yet.

Hamish: Crickets.

Osman: So what does that mean for you? Well, consult with your agent, but if your agent isn't capable or you're considering switching agents or looking for an agent, you can reach out to us at how signs. Com and we will treat you like a client with straight talk and advice based on your unique real estate situation. But in short, as we enter into the fourth quarter, which begins in October, we are looking at a very strong buyer's market and how to navigate that intelligently. Is really your mission as a buyer and seller. First from the sale side. From a listing side, we usually encourage our sellers to consider listing in January. In a normal year. Yeah, this year, the Winter of discontent for sellers. In addition to strongly suggesting you might want to wait, we also are pushing all of our sellers to properly prepare their listings, particularly attached dwellings, which means fresh paint, which means addressing all cosmetic issues, which means professional staging. And then on top of all of that, pricing aggressively. So this is not a market to test buyers to see if there's an appetite for overpaying. I can tell you there's zero appetite, particularly for attached dwellings. So before warned, if you're entering this market as a seller, you really need to be prepared to be realistic. And you don't necessarily need to be taking $300,000 losses to get your property sold, but you certainly have to price the market. So that's that's required. And I would even go further and say you need to lead the market, not follow the market in pricing and be successful. And on the buy side, boy, you've got a lot of choices and every price point you can afford to be patient and you should absolutely go after stale listings, particularly if they contain the signature of a seller who might be willing to be negotiable. And if they're not negotiable, move on. There's always another house.

Hamish: I got an email this morning from a agent, and the subject line in all caps is 20 K and seller concessions. So there is clearly a lot of there are a lot of sellers, I think, out there that are really trying to get their their properties moving.

Osman: There are but don't fall for the concessions email. It still needs to be priced to market and that so that the addition of this is where usually what we find is a seller that doesn't want to do the work and they say, okay, we'll, we'll because the house needs paint and carpets, we'll, we'll give you $20,000 in concessions. Actually, what they should have done is do the carpet and the paint and make the house look attractive with that $20,000, instead of trying to get the buyer to take on the risk.

Hamish: You kind of shoot yourself in the foot from an impression standpoint that way. I, you know, we work with a lot of buyers. Few select buyers are willing to imagine beyond the home that they walk in on. So like the, yeah, that those first impressions, the emotional appeal when you're inside the home, it's a disservice not to do the prep initially.

Osman: It just it just isn't reflective of how buyers make decisions, right. They make decisions on emotions so they see the house because it checks the boxes of their functional needs and is in the price point that they feel comfortable with. And then they walk in and within 30s, they've made a decision on whether this is the one or not, and then after that they backfill with rationality about the price. Yeah, right. Like like that's that's secondary. Now after they've already made the decision whether they want the House or not. So you have to focus on emotional appeal. But then when it comes to that second phase, that conversation of does this is this priced right? It should be priced right. They should be able to get their head around the price slightly higher. They might still be willing to make an offer, but if you're if you're pricing off 2024 or 2023, you are way off the mark. You need to be priced off this summer and falls activity all just began.

Hamish: And the comps, because I think the market slowed down so much are kind of, they're difficult to find exact comps.

Osman: So meaning that there's not enough volume to write, but there's enough general market data and there's nothing.

Hamish: Where it distinguishes a good agent.

Osman: What else could you buy at this price point in this neighborhood? Maybe it's not functionally identical as a true comp would be from an appraisal perspective, but from a buyer's mind. What else could I spend at 1.5 in Get? And it needs to be compelling. It needs to be compelling for the last few weeks and the last few months so that when they see it, the buyers that have been in the market for the last few weeks, in the last few months will see it as value, but the value is secondary to the emotional appeal.

Hamish: Yep. And yeah, you're you're a you're not testing the market to see how much you could get here. You're gonna. Yeah. It's not positive news. We're able to provide our clients right now. It's very realistic and grounded and that's positive in its own right. But it's not. Yeah. Time to get your time to get rid of your ugly duckling property. Property?

Osman: It's not time to test the market. And if we represent you on the buy side, our mission is to help you make the smartest real estate decision that you can make. And if we represent you on the sales side, our mission is to help you sell the property for the most money, but also sell the property, not just inflate your ego with a price point like we actually want to be successful. And if we are not able to be successful because the pricing is wrong or you're not willing to do the work, we will probably pass on the listing. We don't. It's just work with no pay. Right? Like that's that's what a failed listing is. It represents a lot of work and not actually closing. Right? Right. So that that is not a good business model for success. It's also why the failure rate for real estate agents is close to 80%. It's like 75% of agents that try this business fail.

Hamish: How many make it through the first three years?

Osman: It's a very small number of him. Yeah. That's like the 25% number. That's what I'm saying.

Hamish: Sister in law. And you have been talking to her.

Osman: Okay. Let's move on. So that's the market update for September. We'll revisit the data once the month closes. So probably the first or second week of October will come back to this.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: It's time for Sales of the Week. And so I got I got to say that Hamish, I feel like every time we introduce a segment, we should like do so with some gusto.

Hamish: We need like a little sting or. Yeah.

Osman: Well, look, I you're, you're in a cameras in photography, and I've been following this guy on YouTube for probably 7 or 8 years, and he's got his own little catchy, cheesy channel name. Right. It's called Nose photo. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's got a giant fro. And when he introduces a segment, he does it with such cheese that it's actually kind of funny, right? He looks a lot like one of our clients, by the way, without a fro, you haven't met this client in the person, but you will someday. So they have very similar mannerisms anyway. But the point I'm trying to make is he introduces it with some gusto. Yeah. And so we need to introduce our segments with gusto to maybe not with as much cheese as friends, but for sure with some some kind of excitement in it. Because this should be its own segment. It is its own segment.

Hamish: We've got a great lineup to this week.

Osman: We have a great lineup. Yeah, Sales of the Week. And these are the lessons from the Sales of the Week. And some of them are a little bit. Oh I don't know. I would call it opaque like what exactly happened in this deal. And let me open up my little

Hamish: Are we low to high today or hide or low.

Osman: Oh, let's go high to low.

Hamish: Okay.

Osman: People want.

Hamish: That last one.

Osman: I mean, people want the high dollar numbers first. Come on. It's like lifestyles of the rich and famous. The sexiest, most expensive houses first. They're the most fun to talk about. And this first one's a bit of a mystery. 546 14th Street. It's a home built in the late 40s, right? You know, 1949. So postwar and in one of the most desirable locations in town because of its proximity to Chautauqua, Chautauqua is is the jewel in Boulder. Open space is what it is. I conic it is. What people think of when they think of Boulder is that flatiron backdrop and Chautauqua amenities go way beyond that. Because of the community center, the brand new like, they've invested a massive amount of money in the theater. Yeah. So Chautauqua is spectacular as as a venue, as a as an amenity. In a way. It parallels, earlier conversation about the Pearl Street Arts District. Except these these aren't attached dwellings and high density. These are single family houses in an incredibly desirable spot right up against open space. So I would live here in a heartbeat. The prices keep galloping out of control. So I'm like.

Hamish: Well, even in this market.

Osman: 2 Million. I was thinking maybe in a few years I'll be able to swing in. And now the prices are at, well, this one just closed for 4 million. And of course, it's a cash deal. That's pretty typical for higher end property in Boulder. It's sitting on a decent lot, just under 10,000ft². And it's for 4850 total square feet, including the basement, which was fully finished. And when you look at the interior photography and the exterior photography, you see a beautifully manicured and landscaped property, beautifully professionally landscaped. And then you see all these nods to mid-century architecture. Even though this technically wasn't there, it it was built in 1949, but you.

Hamish: Got before.

Osman: All that beautiful exposed wood beams. I mean, this is such an esthetic pleasing home and functionally check so many boxes, including a three car attached garage, which look, there aren't a lot of these.

Hamish: Not in the.

Osman: Road, not in any neighborhood, really. Well, I guess in the newer neighborhoods like Northfield Commons or, there are some neighborhoods.

Hamish: A gun barrel, some, you.

Osman: Know, there are some places where three car garage are more common, but for sure that's more 90s era. So to be able to get that is saying something. So interestingly, no seller's property disclosure.

Hamish: You're kidding.

Osman: Nope. That's what it says. There's no seller's property disclosure. And also, very interestingly, I believe the seller was actually the University of Colorado Foundation, which is listed as the last owner of this property.

Hamish: What is that?

Osman: The University of Colorado Foundation incorporated. You know, that's a great question. There's a lot, you know, universities have, this is not my area of expertise. So I'm just going to say I don't know. Right. But universities typically have multiple foundations that are affiliated. I suspect this might have been like the Chancellor's residence or something along those lines, like they buy the house for the Chancellor and they own it, and the Chancellor or whoever the executive is, right? That lives lives in the house rent free. It's part of the compensation package. But let me be clear. I don't know that for a fact. Right. Okay. But that's probably what this deal is or something similar. Why would why would the why would seize foundation own this house? So interestingly enough, the tax records are a little confusing. It looks like it was acquired for 3.75 and it sold for four. It was acquired in August of 2024, and it sold on September 21st for 250 grand, more than it was acquired for. Exceptional location, very functional. Four bedrooms, six baths for three. Three of those bedrooms are on the main, one in the basement and kind of a split layout for the bathrooms. But again, look at this house. And it is just spectacular as a property in one of the best locations in town. Yeah, I, I guess I could say I'm a little surprised that they exceeded the 2024 sale price, because once you cross 3 million, there's a lot of competition. However, this location and the three bedroom three sorry, the three garage spaces and the, I mean, the nature of how well kept this house was, I think justifies the premium. So I'm going to say market deal, and paying for million for it. They did. You know, it was listed for over a month at 4.45. They did successfully negotiate more than 10% off the price. So I think that's a well bought property and 4 million represents market value. And also, you know, hat tip to our clients who paid less than a million. Two blocks away from this.

Hamish: Just thinking about them recently okay.

Osman: They're going to hate this house because it's going to make their taxes more expensive. But it was already in the comp set. And of course, this house is so much larger than what they own. But still, it's like it just I think it should be a feather in the cap of their investment prowess. They took guts, though, to buy a home that was as old as the home they bought and needed as much work as it needed. But you could see they're surrounded by such high end real estate in such an iconic location that it. And that was a lot of our conversation when they bought that house.

Hamish: That neighborhood will support.

Osman: This, support additional funding.

Hamish: Where they're going with that house.

Osman: Yeah. Will it support additional follow on capital? The answer is hard. Yes, absolutely. And well, even in a market that's seen softening at the high end, this home still sold for more than it was acquired for. Although, I'm sure you know, the foundation is probably a little disappointed they didn't get there for four, four, five. But they still got a pretty good deal.

Hamish: So one of the Chautauqua things is it's just this kind of nestled treetop feeling. I mean, the trees and everything are just so grown and everywhere that there's the privacy, you know, the houses aren't ridiculously far from each other, but it just seems like you're in your own little spot. I mean.

Osman: It was developed and platted at a time when, in contrast, the Dakota Ridge, right, like this is three. You could fit three of those houses if you were using today's standards or the standards from Dakota Ridge, which changed. Right. So standards rules always change anyway. It's the spaciousness and privacy and mature landscaping of this location is very hard to beat. And I think that in the long run this home will hold its value very well.

Hamish: Yeah. I was going to, to you to. Yeah.

Osman: All right. Next 12959 S Lakeridge Trail. This location is called Lake of the Pines. It's one of Boulder's only gated communities and also one that is developed around this private lake. It is spectacular. I've been there. Oh, I don't know, probably a dozen times in 20 years to look at real estate. And all of the homes are architecturally distinct. When the market's week, it's a fantastic time to buy this spot. Fire risk is continue to grow. So I'm sure insurer ability is a factor for this property like it is for anything that is in the lower foothills or in the mountains at all. But this particular house is sitting on a full acre of land over 3000 square foot for the main house. It has. Interesting. I think there's like a gazebo or boathouse or something that is right on the water. It's the first time the property's been on the market since the 1970s. Since I think it was built. I'm a home itself. Was built in 73. I went down the rabbit hole a little bit into whom the seller was, and it seems like entertaining and living in this home was like a joy. And where else are you going to get waterfront access, mountain access, and be able to be in the city of Boulder in about 20 minutes or less? I mean, traffic has grown on, on, you know, the, the highway.

Hamish: So this, I mean, 1970s home and you can look at the photos and everything. It's clearly 1970s. It's charming with the window designs and everything. Sold for 3.6827 50. Funky number. Do you think they're scraping this?

Osman: I mean, it's possible. I mean, you could build whatever you want on this lot, and. But I think the lot size lot I think the lot value was not 3.6. So I, I doubt their scraping it. The whole interior of the house needs to be gutted and redone. So they probably have $1 million budget to redo the house. The house. Okay, that's my guess. I think the architecture from the 70s is still interesting enough that they will keep some of it. I don't think they'll scrape it.

Hamish: Yeah. And then yeah, fire risk. The last time we covered a a Lake of Pines neighborhood sale, that house was the siding was, I don't know what to call it. It's the logs. It looks like a log cabin kind of Lincoln log. Though they'd done fire mitigation from what it appeared, I think they cut away a lot of the brush surrounding the home. This one, that aerial photo showing that the property boundary. I mean, it was invoked to have your house nestled right up against trees and bushes.

Osman: Well, it's not just that the whole house needs to be hardened. Yeah. And so I, I would think that if you're investing 3.6, you're going to put a lot of money into hardening the home for fire risk, which includes residing at different roof and removing a lot of the most combustible trees, which based on the coloring, looks like maybe even juniper really close to the house. Yeah.

Hamish: Yeah, there's the City of Boulder juniper removal thing, isn't there?

Osman: This is Boulder County.

Hamish: Yeah. You're right. And then. Sorry. Like a Pines neighborhood. I'm sure there are some higher square footage homes in the neighborhood. So, that Boulder County size development rule, you still have some room to grow?

Osman: Probably. I mean, that should be part of your due diligence is what's the maximum size you could do for a build out. And given this property was on the market for 68 days. Right. Originally listed at at four. They didn't change the price listed in June for four. And then they accepted this significantly lower offer. But not, you know, not outside of the realm of what's typical. Right. So above 3 million, a seasoned or stale listing, 10% is not an uncommon discount, particularly for a closing in September. But one of the pieces of due diligence you should always be doing is check with the county on the build out feasibility, because there's a moratorium on large homes, and that very much applies even if it's in a subdivision like this. So I think. So I take that back. I'm not 100% sure how the subdivision plays out relative to unincorporated Boulder County, because this is it was platted. There may be different rules that apply. So this is this is even after 20 plus years of doing real estate here in Boulder, I would check with the county and I would cross-reference, I would cross-reference anything that's recorded in title for restrictions. On what? Like there's probably a design review committee that could be more onerous than size limits.

Hamish: Were you representing the buyer? Absolutely.

Osman: Well, even representing the seller, you want to have an understanding of that, because guess what? The buyer's agent, if they're smart, are going to ask you these questions.

Hamish: But if they're not and the buyer wants to know, you can like we did like you did for pinyon, you know, you had the architecture. Yeah.

Osman: The feasibility study would be smart. Yeah. By pay for it and have an architect that's reputable and works in this location be the one doing the feasibility study.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: All right. 8835 Pine Cone Ln. The one I screwed up earlier and told you it was in. Table Mesa is in and is a completely different deal. And this does. Sorry, I said sorry. I said it was in Louisville. And the reason I said it was in Louisville was I thought I was confused with the addresses. This particular property, I think is a great comparison to what you could potentially by in Table Mesa, because school performance is very similar and yet you get a giant lot, 30,000 square feet, similar vintage home and a very, very functional layout. Right. You've got a home that's mostly on the main. Oh is it hold on. It's got it. Yeah, mostly on the main 1800 on the main. And then you've got the remainder in the basement. So very functional and private and with fantastic public schools, a historic area that has some shopping, actually, there's quite a few options in the shopping plaza, but the historic downtown area has a nice restaurant, has, events during the summer that rotary puts on with live music. It's a great spot, and so few people have heard of anyone that when I see a deal that is very similar in price to what you could buy in Table Mesa, I really feel like we should bring it to buyers attention that these do exist, but they are few and far between. So you sometimes have to wait for them to appear, and when they do, you might need to move aggressively. And in this particular case, it was listed in August at one mid-August at the list price of 1.575, and the buyer paid ten grand more than the list to lock it down. They did. They have any disclosed concessions? It looks like they got $10,000 back, so they basically paid list price for the house and the contract had ten grand higher than list. But there was some sort of concession that resulted in that discount. Back to list. Very well bought, provided it's not in the floodplain. And that's something that, you know, there's this there's this trail and ditch right there. And I did not do the flood mapping for this particular property. But Erez, unlike re Colorado, Will has a flood plain field and it was listed at minimal risk. And I believe that to be the case for this location. So I think this is a fantastic house and a fantastic community. And Niwot has a lot of way much more expensive homes. Right. You're not buying at the top of market remotely for Niwas.

Hamish: This is and it's kind of shocking like the point seven acre lot, right next to the high school. You got any kiddos or anything? This is. Yeah. If I had, you know, 1.6 to spend, I would actually be rather upset to find out about this after I purchased in Table Mesa.

Osman: If you were open to anyone. Right. And so it's a 70s or a house, you can't get around that, but it looks like it's been thoroughly updated and doesn't look like a flip. With that said, there are some Ikea things in the house like I look like a kid cabinets and Ikea bathrooms. But most people find those pretty functional and the warranty and quality of Ikea is actually not bad.

Hamish: Really handy.

Osman: It's just some people, you know, kind of turn their nose at Ikea because it's perceived as mass market and they what they want is like here prices and.

Hamish: Bespoke finishes.

Osman: Bespoke finishes and that doesn't exist. So take your pick. I think this actually was a fantastic by. All day long four bedrooms three baths. And you know the funny thing is it's listed as a two car attached garage. But that garage has 576ft².

Hamish: And very detached from the photos.

Osman: So quite frankly that could it be almost, almost a three car garage.

Hamish: Yeah. And you said this before, but how quickly did it go?

Osman: It went very quickly. Yeah. Seven days on market and initially ten grand over list. Yeah. But you had to be ready, right. Like if you were sitting there hoping that you have plenty of time because the market's soft. This is an example of a well bought house where you had basically two days, maybe three days to figure out whether you wanted the house and what you were willing to offer. And somebody was able to get it effectively at list price, which I think is not reflective of a premium to market. I think that it was priced right.

Hamish: I think so too. There are some, you know, very disciplined buyers that are always looking at the market for a particular street or neighborhood or home, and should the right property come up, I mean, you might not even get a chance to get your foot in the door. Yeah.

Osman: All right. Our next one is 909 Sunflower Street, Louisville. And this is what I wanted to contrast with the listing on Tyler last week, which is similar in size and function, but a home from the 90s that had been thoroughly updated. So this is a two story that was rebuilt after the fire or not rebuilt, but built from scratch. This is a new home, which means it also had,

Hamish: Did we? We didn't talk about Tyler last week.

Osman: We did. We just didn't say the address.

Hamish: Okay. What's our plan here? Cut out the,

Osman: Tyler has closed.

Hamish: Has it?

Osman: Yes.

Hamish: Oh, okay. Sweet.

Osman: Let's go. Okay. So we can continue to talk about this. Tyler did sell at a pretty significant premium to the list price. Our clients were not going to go for that. But when you look at that delta between. I think it's 1976. Tyler. Let me get that.

Hamish: I remember including a fun fact about the address, 1875. When did Alexander Graham Paton the telephone.

Osman: The address was 1876.

Hamish: Tyler there we go.

Osman: So that was a 2900 square foot house that sold for 1.327. And this is a.

Hamish: Added cards going.

Osman: Okay. So this is a larger house slightly 3000. Wrong fields. There we go. It's 3600ft². So significantly larger. Five bedroom four bath with a three car attached garage. And of course it's not the same price, right? We're talking about 200,000 more, 250,000 more. But I would venture that for most buyers would with the financial capability of spending $200,000 more would get a lot more value for sunflower. And you take some risk buying new build, right. Like all these systems in the house need to be dialed in.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: Dialed in. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're brand new, right? Everything in the house is brand new. There may or may not be a warranty. It probably was built on spec, so we don't know anything about the particular builder, but it's somebody named Von's 50 LLC with a Po box for an address that's based in Louisville. I don't know if Vons 50 builds a lot of houses. I've never heard of Vons 50, but LLC is limited liability, not maximum liability. So keep that in mind that when you buy a brand new house, especially one that's built by a spec builder hiding under an LLC, that you may or may not have much liability because the only asset in the LLC is the property, right? So so good luck trying to chase it down if there's issues, but a lot of that can be discovered on, on inspection, the choices they make in terms of finishes and fixtures like it's it after 20 plus years in the industry, I will say that it's usually visible and obvious when a home has been built to shoddy Standards by somebody who's a hack and trying to make a lot of money. And I don't get that vibe on this particular house, but you couldn't really tell without a showing. The point I'm trying to make is that there's something happening in this market in Louisville where there's there's a gap happening. Right? Because this house was on the market a long time. It was listed in February at 1.625, and it didn't go under contract until August. So buyers had more than six months or almost six months to think about this one. And it ended up selling, you know, not that much below the last list price 25. They did drop the price in June to 1.6, so it sold for 25,000 below list. But it really it introduces an interesting location and age of home split. Would you rather have an older home that's been thoroughly updated, but might have some lurking problems and arguably a better location? Or would you rather have a much newer home with a smaller lot? And everything is brand new for a slight price premium, and I think with our buyers that we're actually going to talk about in a minute, this one introduces that kind of puzzle piece. But they for sure don't want completely dated and, and needs everything. We've discussed that scenario with them. So we're looking for that middle bowl of porridge not that different from 1876, Tyler, and maybe not quite as shiny sparkly spec homey as 909 sunflower. Yeah, and I guess we're just going to go ahead and say it since we're in lessons from Sales of the Week, but that's our shameless self-promotion as well. That if you are.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: A potential seller of a family friendly two story house in Louisville that that is bridging this segment of the market, you know, the 90s era house that's been updated or the newer brand or newer home that is turnkey in this range of one point, let's call it 1.2 to 1.6. We've got a buyer for you that are fantastic people, and we'd love to help them find a house. They are prudent and they are disciplined. So they were they're not going guns blazing into a bidding war. But, they're they're reputable. They're solid. They've been members of the community for a long time. We're just trying to find them the right place. So if that happens to be you as an agent or as a seller, don't hesitate to reach out. We'd love to chat with you about what you got coming.

Hamish: Yeah, the listing agent for Tyler, I guess, their kids went to the same kids as our clients kids, and so they had a whole chat about it and everything. It was very cute. But they are in the community.

Osman: It's a small town. And that's not uncommon that people know each other and then still have to navigate this complexity of selling a house. And, you know, not there's sometimes multiple buyers and only one winner. And I think there were a lot of buyers for this one, like a lot of offers.

Hamish: There was.

Osman: I think I heard seven. I'm not 100% sure that's based on a vague memory of a whisper number, but there were a lot of people. So that also tells us that there are six other buyers in this market segment. So.

Hamish: This this Sunflower Street home, it turns out it's actually right next door to, my old childhood friends home. Of course, it's the Marshall fire rebuild area in this particular spot of Louisville. I mean, it's it's a good this this is established street and lot lines. It's right by Harper Lake, though it is in subjectively and personally to me, a little bit more of a kind of suburban feel area. And you brought out location and stuff where Tyler Tyler's lot was funky because it was kind of squished against a squished into the corner, but it did kind of abut open space in the lowest will raise. So I'm with you, though I think this new build value granted, check in to the warranty and all the standard due diligence, but it's a good one to bring up to compare and contrast. Yeah.

Osman: I also one last thing about this particular house. I think the color scheme is spot on in the interior. Yes. Like this choice of, you know, color changes by the angle, but it's sort of a pale green like a moss green that is has got some creaminess to it is a very popular look right now.

Hamish: You know, that's Sophie's sage. I think it looks very similar to like the.

Osman: What do you mean? Sophie? Sage.

Hamish: Sophie's, the Audi Sophie just got.

Osman: Oh, the car she bought. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Hamish: Yeah. And then, but also, like, I think sage is just in, like you're saying.

Osman: I mean, she's so spot on the colors and designs, so it doesn't surprise me that she chose a car that's the color, you know, super popular color. But it's what's also super interesting, Hamish, is I like. The photos of the kitchen. There are at least three different color values that I see. Yeah. Based on, on the color correction of the photographer. And I'm going to give this photographer a D minus for that because that's really bad. They should be the same.

Hamish: That's the one thing you gotta like be paying attention for. You need that like visual consistency I, I'm and I wonder if they were doing the same thing. Like the first pass that I'll do is I'll look ambient because the whites look similar. And then at that point I would be so bothered because I'm like, why on earth is the island changing colors on me? And I would probably end up masking it and adjusting it. But yeah, that's 100% a detail.

Osman: So I take it back. I said, these colors are spot on, but the truth is, I'm not even sure what color this island is because every photo over here a different army olive, every photo, it's a different color. So I take it back. I don't really know. I think it's a popular color.

Hamish: It's a psyop to get us in the house for a show.

Osman: It might be.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: But yeah, say the one photo with it at an angle where it looks that creamy sage is, I think, very popular as a color, but who knows?

Hamish: And then the bathroom vanity seemed to be the same thing.

Osman: That seems to be. Exactly. I think that's the real color of this house or of this kitchen island, but.

Hamish: Wouldn't know. Right? I have to go see it.

Osman: No, no, no, it's a mystery. Yeah. All right. Our last sale of the week is 2335 Dartmouth Avenue. And this is a property that directly abuts federally owned land. It is not legally open space. And that's something that I think is really important to understand. Even though it's unlikely to ever be developed. We all know that the federal government is in financial distress, so it may be selling all sorts of assets in the future. It's not inconceivable that the current administration would relocate nest and sell this entire thing.

Hamish: Sure, you might give them the idea with this pod.

Osman: It would. I'm sure they've already considered it because it would be worth so much. But assuming nest is staying and what looks like open space but isn't continues to function like open space, this location is pretty special. I have run up the social trail that's directly to the north of this, directly behind the house, hundreds of times with my dog, and it's a fantastic running trail right up on the mesa and then into Enchanted Mesa with beautiful views. And then your you can even connect right to Chautauqua if you want to. That was one of our favorite hikes when my wife and I lived there to do that hike and then end up at a happy hour at the Chautauqua Dining Hall, or catch a show and turn like an outdoor hike into, like, something else entirely.

Hamish: A mode of transportation.

Osman: And so the houses that have this backing, backing to the, to the federal land have really beautiful views, although some of them are also going to have views of the federal buildings. Right. Like it's a question of where are you? On on Dartmouth. But some of them are spectacular. So this particular house was listed on September 6th. Okay. So this is only a couple of weeks ago.

Hamish: Okay.

Osman: Yeah. As coming soon. The day after it went active, it went to pending. So somebody lobbed in a really strong offer and you could see what they offered because that's what it closed for. They went 207,000. Sorry, $206,001 over the list price, which is astonishing. And likely they've been looking for years because to be that confident on valuation, you really you really have to move fast, right. Like this is like the house itself was built in the 50s. This is nothing special. It's a 3000 square foot house. Has all the problems with the homes built in the 50s. The lot is really, I think, what these people bought. And so forget the house, 880 zero square foot lot and you could scrape it and build what you want, and you could probably build a pretty sizable home here and have that direct access to the back, the backyard, access to the trail system. I at 1.2, I think it's probably about right for the land alone. So we can almost ignore the house itself. But let's talk about the house ranch style with a basement, I believe. Yep. With a basement. So 1500 on the main 1500 basement. Some updates, you know, the fireplace surround, but mostly looking like 50s original, right.

Hamish: Somehow solar or for some reason they've got solar on there.

Osman: They've got a nice covered patio, which, if you've ever had one, is a real perk. There's some updates in here that are not from the 50s, might be 80 or 90s, but look, the entire the entire interior is almost what we affectionately would call a scrape. Back when I got started in real estate today, we can't call it a scrape because the city of Boulder requires you to deconstruct. So the real purchase price, assuming that's what they're going to do, is the value of the house plus deconstruction. Cause so the value of the land plus the construction costs, right. But these box on a box, ranch style houses are still really good platforms for doing what we call a pop top. Right? Like you, you take it down to the studs, you add a trust to increase the main level ceiling height. So you go from eight foot ceilings to ten foot ceilings and then you build a second story. There have been so many versions of that, although most don't do the trust they should. That's a huge upgrade, and this location will easily support the value of that type of project. Or maybe these people are just going to live in it, but they certainly didn't hesitate to go really strong. On the price 200 grand over the list and now sets the comp value. Right. So this I think I, I maybe they look I got to say I, I'm not crazy about spending 200 grand over list but that might be market. They might be right. And if they're planning to hold it for a ten year or 15 year hold, even if they paid 100 grand more than the list. Look, dollars are depreciating. This is not one where unlike that one. So this is the difference, right? We earlier in the podcast, we talked about in our tales from the trench, a property where somebody lost $300,000 because two years later, four years later, they had to sell it and they sold it into a downward moving market. And honestly, the house was nothing special, right? This location is something special, and it supports a proper build out of an amazing luxury home. So I think that they're like, I don't think this is going to be a loser for these people. I think they're going to build a beautiful home on it. Whether it's a restoration or second story pop top, or they're going to take it down, they're going to remove it and build an entirely new home. I this is not a this is not a money loser. This is a location that supports the 1.2.

Hamish: Yeah. I'm completely with you. I was a little critical, when I looked at it before we recorded this pod. There is a long Dartmouth in the Highland Park. You've got Kenwood Drive and Norton Street that connect you to Coachella. And so I had originally thought that this was right at that intersection of Dartmouth and Kenwood Drive, and that sees traffic all the time. As you move further west, you know, the quiet it's going to be the further up the hill you'll be. And yeah, that's where I was critical. But genuinely, this should be a reasonably or if not pretty quiet little street. And it's a nice little hill, you know, you look up, you look along the street and it kind of reminds you of 70s neighborhoods. The design and a lot of the homes have been updated, but the wide streets and the cars and the kids on the bicycles and everything, it's a great spot. The, power lines on the back, I mean, that's those are big old transmission. Well.

Osman: No, I think they're neighborhood lines.

Hamish: Yeah, just neighborhood lines.

Osman: I mean, this is Highland Park, so you you know, this. We've done a whole video. Actually, Ian did a whole video on Highland Park. And the advantages of this location, the history of this location, it is truly something special with the one thing that I, without being on the ground that I would like to see, is exactly what happens when you go up. Right? Are you are you facing ugly federal buildings, or can you orient away from that and actually see the Flatirons? I think they're further enough west that you see the Flatirons, but I'm not sure without actually standing on the roof or popping up our drone to go see what the view looks like. If you were standing on the roof, because that's where the money is.

Hamish: I mean, to speculate, right? I don't think you're seeing the Flatirons, but I don't think you're looking at ugly federal either. You might be looking over some some nice grasslands.

Osman: Yeah. I think you're farther enough west that you're past the big federal buildings. Yeah. Just keep in mind that it's not risk free, okay? Like I just said in the beginning of this, the feds could sell this land and Boulder could protest all at once. But the feds will do what they want. And so this could be one of the largest future infill developments in Boulder in recent Boulder history. I don't think it's going to happen. I'm not predicting that. But let's face it, the administration has had science in its, you know, it's crosshairs for it. And it's it it really is punished. Places like Boulder for its support of Democratic candidates. And so it would not surprise they've targeted, you know, Noah, I have not heard of nest being targeted, but I just.

Hamish: I wouldn't be surprised.

Osman: I would not be. Nothing surprises me about this administration. So it's not a zero risk. That's what I have to say.

Hamish: We looked at a home on the same street, if I'm remembering correctly. That had a very wonky attached carport garage conversion. I'm not sure if you remember that at all. It's from actually the same. We looked at it with the same buyers that bought in that Chautauqua neighborhood.

Osman: It was right next to the Creek drainage.

Hamish: That's right.

Osman: That's why we didn't pursue that one, because there was there was a lot of uncertainty over how that farmer's ditch disappears right here. How does this work?

Hamish: Just vanished.

Osman: The future development. Right. There's a giant water great there. And where's it going? And so this was it was too much risk for our buyer of that particular property because of the drainage of the farmers ditch.

Hamish: And this one not having it. Yeah. No. I was yeah, I was initially very harsh about it, but after reviewing the location. Good sale. Okay. Animated. Exciting. I'm thinking I'll do, like, a Hot Takes new segment.

Osman: Oh, I see what you're doing. Let's let's talk about the news. And these are our Hot Takes. So, boy, the big one is what we introduced the podcast with. And that is the upcoming vote on all of these ballot issues. And the biggest one is this $400 million, permission to in debt our community for an additional $400 million. And quite frankly, it's I some of these politicians are a little late to this game. Right. Like now that there's criticism like we've been criticizing this for like three months. So finally, Casey Becker is coming out to say that, you know, against it that she's against the blank check and Open Boulder. I don't know how long this organization has existed. I'm really grateful to see it. And I'm super impressed with the white paper and the people that are involved with it. So I'm, I guess I should rather say, because it's Boulder. And I hate to be disappointed that I'm cautiously optimistic that voters are going to send this one back to the ballot box and the sorry, send it back to the drawing board, because without accountability for what we have wasted our money on, how do we know they're not going to do it again? And I think the answer is they will do it again. You don't hand somebody that has shown a history of fiscal mismanagement, a blank check to go do it again.

Hamish: Billion dollar check, you know.

Osman: So that's the short, long and short of that. I do encourage people to read the, the white paper and to make their own decisions on this.

Hamish: That opinion piece is well written to and I think it kind of what is it embodies a pretty good point in which, at least from what it appeared in from reading that opinion article, Boulder used to be, I think, a lot more community involved in community, community listening. And, it's like it's gotten too big for its britches in a sense, you know, and it's no longer listening. It's I know better than you, approach, politics and the season for the public opinion season. Call it for indenting yourself and issuing bonds and everything is over. I mean, I think fiscal responsibility is very top of mind for pretty much everyone, especially, from the government.

Osman: So I, so I, I've never served on council. I don't think I would ever want to serve on council. It's not an easy job. They're constantly under attack and embattled by the public. I also wonder what type of people would want to run for council like, because it seems to me that it's become a a feather in their cap, or an.

Hamish: Ego stone.

Osman: An ego thing, or a stepping stone to, moving up to higher levels of government, which Casey Becker did, and I, I like Casey, I've met her before. I don't think she was on council. When council made the decision to buy Alpine Balsam in a very rushed process, without any public process at all. Yeah, it was it was a decision that was made quickly. And the justification at the time, as I recall, was they were trying to scoop it before a private developer scooped it. And it turned out the city was the dumb money in the deal. The city didn't do a feasibility study. The city did not understand the cost of deconstruction of the hospital and all the asbestos that was in it. And now we have this building that we've, you know, the office space and what we paid for the affordable housing. It appears to be we paid 244% more than market, according to this white paper. Right. Which, you know, these are back of the envelope comparisons, okay, that they they averaged a bunch of price points to make a point. But for sure we paid a lot more than market. And I just I think that our community is really smart and is not going to fall for this again. And so we need to clean up our government. We mean we need more transparency and we need more accountability of what decisions were made along the way. I'm not saying people should be fired, but that's sometimes as part of accountability. And when we compare ourselves as a city to Longmont, Longmont appears to be really well run compared to Boulder. Right? And I made this joke to a friend of mine and client who we sold a home to in Longmont, and she loves her city government. She thinks they're really making great decisions, and she's a very astute follower of government. I joked with her, I'm like, you know, I really wish we could fire Boulder and hire Longmont to run Boulder. Yeah, because just like you fire a bad HOA manager, we should be firing all of city government and higher Longmont government.

Hamish: Doubting the.

Osman: Good one. Run, Boulder, please, because you're doing a better job.

Hamish: There was a shooting.

Osman: And I say that I say that tongue in cheek. That's a joke okay. But but seriously like we need accountability and we need change in the city of Boulder. And I'm super excited to see other organizations and individuals see this, particularly somebody as what's the word as, who has the background of professionalism? As a as Terry again, if I mispronounce your name. Terry, I'm sorry, but I'm super excited to see a CPA who's had your track record care and get involved and, and be part of this organization that's trying to clean up our local government.

Hamish: That's where I mean, one of these things you'd hope is that, you know, our coverage. Having Tara on the podcast, increasing mentions about the spending on Reddit, us cutting, I cut and posted that $400 million, segment from one of the earlier podcasts. One would think one would hope that the democracy part of things in the city starts really listening. I mean, it's going on the ballot. We will see where Boulder ends up, but I think it's kind of becoming pretty clear that they're out of touch, you know?

Osman: Absolutely.

Hamish: Say my bad joke. Okay. It's ballot measure two K. Well, why not ballot measure 400 M okay. All right.

Osman: 400 Million K. Yeah. All right, all right. Next news item, BB. SD passed the resilient schools proposal. No surprise. And there are people up in arms about it because they feel like there was very little public process that the D had made this decision. And even though they pretended to listen to the public afterward, they really weren't that it was a done deal. And sure enough, it passed very quickly. So, I don't really know what else people expected to do. And it may be an imperfect proposal. And I know a lot of families are upset and maybe they rightfully should be. I'm just not surprised that passed. And other than the speed of which it passed, and I hope that BSD did not do a. So I've been part of businesses that had to go through cuts, had to do layoffs, and I wasn't in leadership, but I was directly adjacent and reporting to leadership. And one of the things that we saw as a pattern was they were doing death by a thousand paper. Unintentionally, but clearly that's what they were doing. Instead of doing one and done and one and done culturally works better because you can you you cut and you heal. The wounded.

Hamish: People move on.

Osman: But death by a thousand paper cuts is a horrible strategy, and I really hope D did not do that with this particular approach, because the trends that underlie why we're losing students are not going to change. There's zero chance of Boulder becoming radically affordable and attracting a bunch of young families. Who are we kidding? So is going to continue to shrink. And I hope that they considered that that this is a cut for ten years or 15 years, not a cut that we have to redo in three. Yeah. And with that said.

Hamish: Fair point.

Osman: Look, D and Colorado in general has what has been described as a paradox with education because we are a state that spends far less than most and yet our schools outperform and B the SD schools have been really good. Most of our clients send their kids to public school, which is not something that affluent people across the country do. And the reason is because our schools perform really well, and I really hope our schools continue to perform well. And they had to make hard decisions. I was not involved with that, but I think this is now past us.

Hamish: Right. You've got here Broomfield served by four districts.

Osman: That was noted in a Reddit. Yeah, and I did not know that. And I don't know if it's true, but, you know, Broomfield and I didn't realize it. There were four school districts that operate in Broomfield.

Hamish: I know two, and I'm thinking high school level. So maybe the other districts operate, you know, like K through 12 or whatever.

Osman: Districts usually are. The whole. Yeah, kit and caboodle.

Hamish: So legacy of high school and Broomfield High School are the two ones Broomfield rival with legacy. The zoning was so funky. I lived less than a mile from the crow flies from Broomfield High School across the street, essentially, and I was for Legacy High School instead of Broomfield High School. Broomfield High School was best. My mom fought for open enrollment, so I would go into BVS D and be with D because legacy being Adams 12 people just we didn't like Adams 12 as much. My aunt actually worked for Adams 12 at Mountain View High School or Mountain Range. Granted, she wasn't working directly with the kids, but yeah, I knew Broomfield was too. And Broomfield being its own county. Listening to our podcast last week, yeah, they they Broomfield used to be Boulder County and my grandpa actually has a license plate a, the owner of the old Boulder license plates, from when it was and I don't know if Broomfield what their plan is for school districts or kind of how that's going to go. I'd like to see be of a stay in Broomfield. I think SDE does a great job, and I was pretty happy to be educated under that school district. Also, you're more likely to get the snow days because he was largely boulder oriented and so he got more snow and boulder.

Osman: I like your student perspective on. Yeah, I mean, once upon a time, being a student in the school district is helpful. But, you know, schools change over time. Super. And our future is just going to be fewer, fewer schools. It's just written into it. But most people, even when they don't have when they don't have kids in particular, schools are somewhat secondary to their decision process. But they shouldn't be. The schools clearly are correlated with real estate performance over time. Yeah. And so I'm I'm glad the schools that most of our clients are in right. Most of our clients are are Table Mesa and they're in the city of Boulder. I'm glad that we were able to keep one Table Mesa school, Bear Creek school. They moved everyone in a Bear Creek. Bear Creek will now be at like 90 plus percent capacity.

Hamish: 97, 90.

Osman: Three, which is fine. And I don't know what's going to happen. This is the real estate angle. What's going to happen to Mesa Elementary? What happens to the school grounds at not just Mesa Elementary, but Community Montessori? Because I think Mesa is getting something else in their community. Montessori. There's no indication of what happens to that building and those grounds. And it's huge. It's a very large parcel.

Hamish: So in the middle of.

Osman: Those people that are on Yale and other streets that are directly adjacent to Community Montessori, this news should not just be about the school closing. This news might be about that building and that property being completely redeveloped within the next five years.

Hamish: With you too. On the schools being kind of front of mind as far as real estate. And I see schools as vitality or like community investment. You know, I think they're really important to the health of a neighborhood or the health of an area. If you can't have generational turnover in an area, it kind of starts to die off.

Osman: I don't know exactly what you mean by that.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And there is generational turnover in every neighborhood. It kind of they go in waves. Yeah. And that's why sometimes people get concerned that, wait, why are there three for sale signs on the street. Well, because of how this was developed. In waves, you get waves of people moving in and waves of people moving out. It's usually coincidence, but we should note it right is part of our due diligence. Once you're under contract, let's find out if there's something weird going on. Like, is everyone leaving because there's underlying gas leaks or, you know, is there like, we're heading in a spooky season? Is there like a poltergeist situation happening here? What's happening that's causing everyone to leave at the same time? Usually it's just these generational waves.

Hamish: Yeah. And that's and I tested that against myself after I said it. And I was like, well, downtowns are like youths, right? Like downtowns of cities and stuff. It's usually younger college. No. Anyway.

Osman: I mean, I don't know, but the point depends on the city. Right? So so if you talked about the city of Boulder, downtown is elderly people because that's where Mapleton Hill is. Yeah. And those are affluent. I wouldn't say elderly. That might have been a little bit much, but it's older folks that live downtown in Boulder. It's not a bunch of people in their 20s and 30s because there isn't high density, but in a major city, you're more likely to have younger people living downtown because there's high density and more affordable housing. And it's hip and it's cool, and they want to be downtown. So it's not always affordable, but they want to be downtown. That's where the bars are. That's what the scene is. And all the people with kids went off to the suburbs because they don't want to be downtown.

Hamish: That's okay. That's where I'm the grab me some grace. But the point is, you know, if we're shutting down schools and I'm thinking to me as well, in my area where the middle school and the elementary school just shut down, I have a hard time seeing a rotation of generations. Like, I don't think I'm going to be seeing a whole bunch of kids in my neighborhood anymore. And so my neighborhood might kind of lose that bit of Italy.

Osman: I mean, it's also because your neighborhood is no longer as affordable as it was to young families. Yeah. And so they they're sort of caught and more and more young people aren't even having families. So this is also another trend in the right, you know, in the, in the hopper of why things are happening the way they are. And look, no, we can't satisfy everybody. And I think we're having read a lot of discourse about SD and the Resilient Schools proposal. My sense is that they made a hard decision, and there's a lot of people that see that they had very little choice but to make a hard decision, and there will always be people that are unhappy with that decision, always that that don't understand economics and think that what they bought into five years ago or ten years ago will always be the case. And that's what I mean by people spending $200,000 for a premium lot that backs the nest. It's not zero probability that nest will always be there. There's a there is a chance that nice will be redeveloped into something completely different, particularly as you look at science under attack by our current administration. Right. You may want to think about that before you throw down a premium. It doesn't mean you shouldn't. It just means you should have been advised that that is a that's one of the jobs of a real estate agent, is to help think about things that the buyer or seller is not considering in their thesis, based on your experience in the community and your experience in this industry. I think we can move on.

Hamish: We gotta get in there on timing.

Osman: So it's time to carve out.

Hamish: Yeah. Should I bring this up? Is it mine first?

Osman: I mean, you, this is what you chose. So yes. You should. This is what you wanted to talk about? More.

Hamish: Or less like, multiversal theory for me, at least stems from my understanding of it through the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Osman: Okay, are you gonna t this up a little bit more? Because some people may not even know what a multiverse is. Yeah, so most people know what the universe is.

Hamish: Yeah. And I mean, the universe that's in its name, uni one. There's there's one. Massive verse.

Osman: Big bang. Yeah.

Hamish: There's existence.

Osman: Existence that's billions of stars and planets and galaxies and all. Yeah.

Hamish: And I think for a long time that's kind of been the status quo, the accepted kind of model, not even accepted. But like the broad term has always been like we live in a universe. And then and for me again, the, the, my understanding of a multiverse has come from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but essentially you've got, you know, just a, a run of coexisting universes at the same kind of time. Maybe the time is marching at the same point. And for me, for the longest time and what I'm seeing in online and everything is, I think more and more people are starting to think, well, you know, in another universe, you know, maybe I got the job or in another universe and maybe houses are free or the probability of like, anything is possible. And there are just like multiple realities, right? Multiple dimensions.

Osman: Reality that reflects every choice. Yeah.

Hamish: But people are still calling it a universe isn't a universe.

Osman: And this is this is my rub.

Hamish: This is my conversation.

Osman: Versus a theory. It's like that. There are multiverses is a theory.

Hamish: Isn't universe theory?

Osman: Yes. Yeah.

Hamish: But like,

Osman: But the word universe has become colloquial, right? Colloquial sort of everything out there. Right. And multiverse is, the word multiverse is starting to enter our lexicon. And there it's not just Marvel. There are other shows that show there was. I just watched a I was on a flight, and I ended up sucked into this whole series that involved multiverses, and it was fascinating to see the story writing or give me the name of. Yeah, I didn't even keep this, like storyline together with a multiverse, you know, environment. They did it. But it was it was really quite innovative, the way they managed to. And then there were some things in it that just didn't make any sense at all. And we're kind of we're kind of like, there was a black box that people would go into closed the black box, and it would jet you into a hallway and you could choose from all these multiverses. Okay. But when you thought things, what was behind the doors would continually change. So if you're imagining like something really scary, you open the door. That could be that really scary world out there because you imagined it. And so it was kind of a fun idea. Yeah. Like from a storytelling device perspective, I, I of course, this doesn't have anything to do with real estate. This is just a fun topic. This is.

Hamish: Yeah.

Osman: And so it's, you know, if you if you are a student of the multiverse concept, it's interesting to think that they're at every, every moment of every day of every decision. There's another you out there and which one is you? And I mean, for me, this just brings it back to simulation theory that maybe we're in a big simulation. I see enough reason to believe that.

Hamish: It still holds up right under multiversal theory, that there could be multiple simulations.

Osman: That consciousness is is a hologram. You're receiving consciousness. And the you know, what you see is, is a hologram. Like, it's it's it's interesting. It's fascinating. It starts to sound a lot like religion. And so we usually don't talk about religion.

Hamish: Pretty good. Yeah. Speaking of shows though, have you heard of fringe?

Osman: Yes. Oh yeah, I've seen fringe. That was. That's an old show.

Hamish: One of my faves.

Osman: Yeah.

Hamish: Yeah. And you know, he grabs his son from the other dimension.

Osman: And he steals the son. Casual, the casual drug use. And that is hilarious.

Hamish: There is a lot of casual. Yeah, you know what? Growing up watching that didn't impact me as much as I would have thought. All right. But, Yeah, fringe was great. It's just a, you know, I was just listening to a podcast, and I hear them say universe, and I'm like, oh, we're still we're still on universe. Okay? And you're right. Colloquial. Colloquial. You know what I'm saying? It it just encompasses everything around us, our world. So, maybe I'm just being a bit nitpicky, but in some writings you'll hear, you know, and the his decisions echoed throughout the multiverse or, this is the only thing that you can find in the multiverse, but just a it's a thought thing.

Osman: It's a fun theory. Yeah, I think it's interesting and I and it's it there are thought experiments that go along with it. But the relevance of it in our day to day lives I think is almost irrelevant. Right. Totally. Other than I, this is also going to sound a little religious, but I think that you get what you put out there. Right? In many ways in life and the vibes and the energy and your intention. And so, I think it was this might be an Oprah ism, but the Oprah ism is to not feel a need to be the one that, creates justice in the world. Like, if somebody has wronged you, karma takes care of itself. And I kind of feel like that has some sort of resonance with the multiverse theory that don't worry about it. Like it? It works out in the end. Focus on what's positive and good in your life.

Hamish: What goes around.

Osman: Creating it and not on retribution, on justice and your personal. Whatever slights, somebody cuts you off and you want this person to be harmed for it while you're driving, like that's absurd. Yeah. So I in terms of philosophy in life, there may be some relevance there, but otherwise it's just an interesting.

Hamish: It's fun topic.

Osman: It's a fun topic.

Hamish: Yeah, I, I, I like the idea. I think it's fun.

Osman: Are there any points in your life that you wish you could jump back into this multiverse and have made a different decision?

Hamish: Wish that I could have, like undone? No, but things that would be fun for me to, like, go and explore. Like if I had the option to stay in the life path that I'm on. That'd be great. But I, it's the same as, like, if I had a time machine, it would be so cool just to go back and see the dinosaurs, you know, and like just to observe. Speaking of fringe to be an observer you know. Yeah.

Osman: Well I, I have thought about that. There are certainly points in my life that I would have made a different decision. But all of those decisions have led to this moment. Right. And I love my business. I love working with the clients and the colleagues that we work with. And I particularly love my my wife and life partner. And had I not made the decisions I made. Right. Good and bad, I would not have met her. The odds of meeting her were infinitely small, and the timing was infinitely perfect. And so with that in mind, it's like, you can't I can't really personally want anything to have changed in the past, but had I made it, had those same decisions appear today, I would not have made like I made some bad decisions. I think I mistreated some people in life. In my early ages that I would never like, I. I never would have done the things that I did. So no, we learn as humans.

Hamish: And it's like as we sit today, we are 100% certain of this, but I cannot be certain of anything. If I had done that one thing differently, you know, like, I know that the result of my actions has led me to this point, but I can't say for certain that if I hadn't have done X or Y or Z, or changed my mind back then that anything would have turned out for the better or anything, you know, I.

Osman: So this is where you and I disagree, because I don't think everything in this moment is is like, this is real. In fact, when the land of the small right, the closer you get to an object at and you enter into subatomic levels, it's mostly energy states and light whizzing around, at least to the best of our knowledge. Which means that what looks like material reality is actually just light, and electrons and subatomic particles spinning around in probabilities. So that and the probabilities that actually get changed by the observer effect, which which just completely blows out everything. And so I don't agree that reality is just reality no more.

Hamish: So like, would you wish you could go back and change things? And if going back and changing things means I wouldn't be where I am today, I don't know if I take it because I'm certain of where I've ended up today.

Osman: Got it. Yeah. I think we're in agreement.

Hamish: Join us next time for, our aliens. Real.

Osman: Our aliens real, right? Yeah. Okay, so my carve out and again, carve-outs, remember, are just whatever we want to talk about. But upcoming this weekend is Taste of Fort Collins. And my wife's family is up in Fort Collins. And she has gotten us some tickets. So we're seeing Modest Mouse. And we're going to have a really good Saturday night with family and friends. You know, it's billed as delicious music, delicious music, delicious food, live music and community energy. And, you know, the price points are totally reasonable for for this event. So I think it's going to be very, very well attended. Weather looks pretty good for the weekend. So if you're up in Fort Collins. You might see me out at Modest Mouse.

Hamish: Floating on. Modest Mouse. Yeah.

Osman: Yeah, I keep thinking, I keep. I keep almost confusing it with Dead Mouse. Totally different genre of music. I was thinking this mouse.

Hamish: Fish, modest Mouse and fish. For some reason, those wires crossing my.

Osman: Brain are interesting. All right, well, I think that is it for this House Einstein podcast. If you are interested in learning more about House Einstein and our brokerage, the brokerage that supports this podcast, you can find us at HouseEinstein. com. Be sure to check out our social media. You'll find us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook x LinkedIn TikTok. I guess we're still doing things on blue Sky. Okay, great. Glad to hear it. And we wanted to thank you again for joining us. We deeply appreciate your time and attention, your feedback, your comments. And of course, when you knock on our door and want us to represent you, we deeply appreciate that too. Thanks for joining us and we will catch you next time.